AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER VII
Justine
Ididn’t expect Sadeto kiss me sweetly and lustfully on my bed for a whole hour. I leaned in after him, satiated yet still longing when he ripped himself away with a groan and blended back into the shadow.
“Expect to hear from me soon,” was the last thing he said to me, his voice gruff. “I’ll make sure your dad knows you’re fine. He thinks you’ve been attending Romano and his guests, and I’ll confirm that.” Then, lower, “rest.”
I couldn’t see his face at that last moment, but I felt myself plunge down many levels into the depths of him. To a place where no one else has been before.
And then he was gone.
It took another hour of dumb-faced fantasizing and replaying his kisses in my mind for reality to kick in again.
I sit up on the bed, awareness about my situation seeping in.
It’s late, but I can’t be alone with my own thoughts right now. They’re spinning like crazy as my brain automatically tries to find a solution and bring my life back to a comfortable state, so I pick up my phone and hurry to the bathroom. I let the water run to fill the bathtub, and sit down on the toilet seat, phone in hand. I need to feel this conversation is more hidden than even my affair with Sade.
Then I call the one person I know can give me a halt right now.
She picks up after the second ring.
“Justine?”
I just breathe into the phone for a few seconds. She doesn’t speak, just waits. That’s the thing about her. She understands these things. She can be patient.
“The shit hit the fan, Eva,” I eventually croak.
“What do you mean?” she asks patiently. As if nothing I could say would be out of the ordinary or fucked up.
I tell her what happened from the moment Mrs. Jones sent me to the dining room, not sparing any detail. By the time I’m done, the water is almost overflowing from the tub, so I turn it off and start taking my clothes off, holding the phone between my shoulder and my face. Foam from the bubbles splashes on the tiled floor when I finally sink in, placing the phone on the windowsill and putting Eva on speaker.
“Romano is every bit the piece of shit the older staff make him out to be.” There’s no mistaking the hatred in my voice as I say that. “I can’t believe he ever came up with the idea of paying my tuition fee. Men like him don’t just make decisions like that, they don’t cross their minds.”
She lets out a long sigh.
“Duke Romano Royales isn’t the one who pays your tuition fee, Justine. Sade is.”
I still with a handful of bubbles in my palms.
“What did you say?” I whisper.
“It was him all along.” Another short pause, another sigh. “But please don’t tell anyone. This is highly confidential information. If Sade ever gets wind that I snooped...”
“How long have you known this?”
Her voice turns sterner. “Not that it should matter, but not long. I started looking into things when I realized that you were much more to him than just a plaything. When I found out, it actually made sense.”
“But,” I whisper, stunned. I’m not even sure Eva can still hear me. “How is that even possible? Why would he? I mean, that was almost a year ago, shortly after Dad started working here.” I stop abruptly as an idea hits me. I grab the edges of the tub, rising into a sitting position, the foam clinging to my breasts. “My poems! He said he started wanting me when he first read them. Could it be that–” Shame colors my cheeks as it dawns on me. “He’s been sneaking into my room from the start. He must have known that my poetry was about him. When he first took me at the party, he already knew it was him I wanted, and Dean was just the consolation prize. Back at Mel’s mansion, as the masked man, he even said that he was punishing me because I’d betrayed my muse.”
