AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I see your point, Sade, and I’m sure Uncle Lennard will agree to convey to my father that the misunderstanding was settled.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say a hint of relief crosses Sade’s eyes. Lennard and Gertrude nod at each other, but it seems she’s not done yet.
“Anyway, there’s still the matter of my reputation,” she says.
A muscle ripples in Sade’s jaw.
Gertrude gives me a smile that doesn’t seem to end, the corners of her mouth rising further and further up. Or maybe my brain is distorting reality, wrapped in heat as it is now. My knees are about to give up, and it’s only my last sliver of dignity that keeps me standing. I can’t collapse entirely in front of these golden sharks.
A long silence stretches out, my pulse pounding in my ears.
There it is, the ugly truth. The reason why Sade swore protection to me was to make sure I didn’t do anything that might harm his family–or his fiancee. That’s why he cleared my name for the whole campus. To keep me compliant and to dissuade whoever might try to harm his empire by using one of his ‘satellites’. The urge to write washes over me, to scribble angrily.
“I believe you,” Gertrude says. Then, with a dramatic tilt of her head, and tapping her chin with her finger, “but the entire campus is now whispering that you’re taking the maid seriously. That’s a big blow to my name–and, of course, my heart.” She places a hand on her chest. On the wrong side, of course, because this reptile of a woman surely doesn’t have a heart. “So I’m going to need you to do something in that respect.”
“Like what?” Sade asks dryly.
She taps her chin again, pretending to be thinking, even though it’s clear she already knows what she wants. She made up her mind before she even set foot in this mansion. Then, gripping the sides of her chair with both hands, her crossed legs tightening as if what she’s about to say turns her on, “I want you to use her, and then spread videos of her in all the guys’ chat groups on campus. I want everyone to know how much of a slut she is.”
A buzz rips through my eardrums. It messes with my vision and, for a moment, I think color just drained from Sade’s face, too.
“Only that will show them that I’m the only woman who matters to you. Prove it to the world, and that will prove it to me.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I’m not even sure who spoke until I notice Micah’s pinched expression. He arches an eyebrow in that way that would send shivers through a fucking demon.
“If he doesn’t, you both will have more to worry about than your enemies sniffing around your–” she makes quotation marks in the air, “satellites. Uncle Lennard here can paint a clear picture of how troublesome the relationship between our families would become. I’m sure Doggart here isn’t going to just sit around and watch with his arms crossed while everything that’s held the Kings together for centuries is being trashed for a fucking maid.”
Towards the end of the sentence, her venom and anger mix to paint an ugly hue of red on her skin that’s visible even under her much too thick foundation.
“My family would appreciate a token that the relationships between Kings are as ironclad as always,” Dogg says.
Jeez, his parents must have really hated him to give him that name. Something I heard Micah comment on a while ago, too, when Dogg proudly said he’d been actually named after his grandfather. Judging by how mean and dirty a bastard he is, I place my bets on the first variant.
“And how can that token be another person?” I say, my limbs trembling with rage. My arms are so tight next to my body that they hurt, my fingers curling in and out to keep me coping with this. “You can give each other all the tokens you like, but do it amongst yourselves. There’s no way I’m playing along.”
“Oh, but you will,” Romano says. I look at him to find him staring back with every ounce of viciousness I’ve heard about. All the doubts I ever had evaporate. This man is capable of walking over dead bodies to get what he wants, and mine would be of no consequence to him.
“Think about everything that’s at stake here,” he goes on, rounding every word with the arrogance of royalty talking down to a lesser creature. “Your father’s job, his future, and even yours. You made yourself powerful enemies in your attempt to climb the ladder, Justine.” He shakes his head like he’s disappointed in me. “I thought you were different. I really did. But it turns out you’re a gold digger like all the others, if not a very smart one.”
“I suggest we stop right there with the insults,” Sade warns and, to everyone’s surprise, Romano’s jaw snaps shut. Immediately afterward, his signature polite smile appears.
“Of course,” he says. “No need to turn to insults as long as everybody does what is required of them.”
Sade’s eyes are blazing as he looks down at his adoptive father. They’re so intense that I expect the duke to go up in flames, which is probably why he chooses to keep staring at me instead of his son.
The struggles Dad had to go through run through my mind as if this were the last moment of my life. He’d never had a hope of getting out of the ghetto where we used to live. He’s a tough man, and he could keep me safe, but he was gambling his life for it every day. I still remember the day he got this job, and when he first took me to see the mansion. The dreams of a new life we talked about while watching it from the car.
Sade might be a calculating bastard, but his situation is pretty fucked up, too. Conflict already simmers between him and Carlton, and that alone could wreak havoc for the entire country. Many people would be caught up in it and suffer. Adding trouble with Gertrude’s and Dogg’s families would be the icing on a Molotov cocktail.
This isn’t a decision they’re making about my life. It’s a fucking sentence.
I open my mouth to try and at least negotiate my situation, but Sade speaks before I get to.
“Done,” he declares.
My head whips to him. No, he can’t be doing this to me. Not again.
“What point then to saving me out of a shit hole, if you’re going to throw me into an ocean of it?” I bite out.
“As much as I hate agreeing with Romano on anything,” he says, “he’s got a point. We all have to accept our destiny. Mine is to lead paramilitary groups into wars. I’ll be dancing with death most of my life. Yours is to be used and punished for being a gold digger.”
