Mother walked away to presumably bribe some web hosts.
A spiny silence crept up in her wake. Lottie rubbed one arm, eyes on the floor.
A thousand words ran through my head, something to rewind the time, all of them useless.
“Lottie, believe me, I had no idea someone was filming.”
“I think this is the worst day of my life,” she whispered.
“Lottie—”
She picked up her dress, walking swiftly across the ballroom.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Who filmed that? How had we not seen? It wasn’t exactly private back there…fuck. I needed out of this facade, even if for only a minute. I headed past the bastard table minus the bastards who couldn’t be fucked to attend. I’m sure my mother would rip my ear off about that later. Past people I’d never met in my life, who I’m sure were only here so Mother or Grandfather could use this invite as a way to manipulate their interests. Past friends who didn’t give a single shit about me.
In this world, those are friends.
Snitch was in my head, in my blood. Every step I took, she swirled like a shimmering ghost around me, her wide as walnut eyes following me. I couldn’t reach the columns fast enough. I pulled a joint from my inner suit pocket, lighting it quickly and taking a long drag, trying to banish her.
Mother really wanted the world to believe we were perfect. The ballroom was covered in white roses. Morbidly fitting, white roses were the symbol of both weddings and death. The goodie bags—sponsored by designers and including boutique tech, streetwear, items you couldn’t get anywhere save this wedding—were already trending.
I couldn’t wait to see that shit pop up on eBay.
Everyone here was smiling, laughing, enjoying the couple of the century’s wedding of the century.
I’m the only one you don’t have fooled, Grayson.
I inhaled smooth smoke, staring out windows lining the ballroom at stars piercing the velvet sky. This party would last all goddamn night. Another inhale, and a rocky, jagged exhale.
I’d once thought Snitch was poison ivy, but getting her out of me was going to be like ripping out thousand-year-old tree roots. If I ever managed to succeed, I would die with it.
I must have stayed between the columns for at least thirty minutes, getting so stoned the gold-and-white wedding started to blur.
I watched Lottie as she made the rounds. She wore the Crowne tiara and glimmered under the chandelier light. Her dress hugged her curves…I remember something being said about hand-cut lace roses.
Whenever she thought someone wasn’t looking, her smile flickered and died.
Sometimes I watch you.
I shook my head, trying to lose Snitch’s raspy whisper.
Lottie was beautiful, perfect, gorgeous—and just a few hours of being my wife was slowly draining her. I kicked off the wall, determined to join her and salvage as much happiness as I could from this wedding.
“I told you to stay the fuck away.” Snitch’s angry whisper perked my ears.
I stopped short. For a second, I thought my ghosts were actually talking back.
I must really be going fucking insane.
Then West spoke, and ice filled my veins.
“You’d rather stay here and work for my sister?”
I looked around, trying to find them.
Why the fuck was she with West?
“What you’re offering isn’t much better,” Snitch hissed.
West laughed.
“You raped me,” she snapped.
I must’ve heard wrong.
This is a nightmare, not a dream.
“Stop fucking saying that!” West growled. “If I raped you, then why did you want me to call you back? Why did you cry over me, Angel?”
An icy calmness came over me as I listened to West dig his own grave. I focused on where I’d heard them. It sounded like they were just on the other side of the column, probably near one of the chocolate fountains.
I’m gonna kill him.
“Pictures!” My mother’s wedding planner appeared before me like a specter. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. A little birdie told me you like to hide. First the bride and groom, then the family, then…”
I could barely hear her. The muscles in my hand fucking hurt from how much I flexed them.
“Grayson?”
If he could breathe after I finished breaking all the bones in his face, maybe I’d let him live.
“Are you okay?”
I always knew Westley du Lac was a fucking snake.
Pot calling the kettle black, maybe. I shook out of it, pushed past the petite woman, but she grabbed my arm.
The fuck? She might not be a servant, but she had no right to grab a Crowne. I stared at her fingers, then slowly lifted my gaze to hers.
Lottie.
I blinked, coming out of a fury-fueled daze.
Lottie had grabbed me.
“Lottie?” I looked at her hand on my arm again.
Lottie snatched my hand, tugging my fist open. I stared at my hand numbly, at the streaks of char against my golden palm and the red burn marks from squeezing it so hard. I forgot I’d had a blunt.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“I…uh, zoned out.”
She gave me a bereft look, eyeing my burned palm. “Do you need to go to the doctor?”
We both knew that wasn’t an option.
Grayson Crowne couldn’t disappear from his own reception, not after the video.
She handed me a thick cloth napkin. “Hold it until the bleeding stops.” Her lips thinned, and her stare hadn’t let up. “You were supposed to lie low. You’re making a scene. Can’t you just play pretend for a few hours?” She shot looks at the wedding planner watching us with shrewd eyes, the paparazzi a few feet behind her. “We’ve been doing it our entire lives…”
I gripped Lottie’s shoulders and her eyes grew. “I want to do more with you than play fucking pretend, Lottie.”
Her eyes grew at my words.
I looked around, trying to spot Snitch.
“You’re still looking for her,” Lottie said, hollow.
I owed Lottie. Now there were people in the world who knew the truth of our wedding night. Knew I’d fucked someone else.
But rape?
Fucking rape?
I found Lottie’s eyes. There was nothing to make this right. I’d ruined the most special day of her life.
She exhaled, trying to shrug out of my hold. “Let’s go take pictures.”
I tightened my grip, holding Lottie in place.
Everything in me said to go find Snitch. To make sure she was okay.
Or to beat Lottie’s brother to a pulp.
What do you do when you want to do the right thing, but whatever right you choose will end up wronging someone? How do you choose?
“They’re waiting,” Lottie said softly.
It was tense. Awkward. Wrong. My mother knew I’d fucked someone else. Her mother knew. Hell, I’d bet the famous photographer positioning us, muttering something under her breath about contrived, knew.
The only one who didn’t know everyone knew yet was Snitch herself.
Still I couldn’t stop thinking about Snitch. All the times I’d been jealous about West, had goaded her, had used it against her.
I was fucking trash.
She hadn’t opened up to me. There was still so much she kept from me.
“Grayson, you’re not smiling,” Lottie whispered miserably.
I affected the smile. The famous Grayson Crowne smile, the one no one knew meant I was miserable.
No one but Snitch.
We took photos until the reception blurred into glittery gold. Until I didn’t feel the muscles at my cheeks twitch. The bodies next to mine were interchangeable, so I didn’t pay attention to the arm landing on my shoulders until he spoke.
“Hey, bro,” West said, the smile in his voice like oil.
My blood went
cold.
The music died.
I craned my neck slowly, meeting his dark brown eyes. It seemed to happen in slow motion. He smiled and made jokes with the photographer, joked with his dad and my mom.
As everyone—my mom, grandfather, sister, Lottie and her brother, parents and grandparents—posed for a family photo, I threw a right hook, crunching into West’s jaw.
It was a sucker punch, but I still felt pretty fucking good when he landed flat on the marble floor.
“Brother-in-law,” I corrected.
Three
STORY
* * *
I swear everyone was staring at me. Whispering. Snickering. I knew the servants were going to do something, get back at me somehow, and the hair on my neck was stick straight. It didn’t make sense that the elite would be watching me though.
The room crashed silent.
Then the sound of cameras went off, like a thousand bugs clicking their wings.
I lifted my head in time to see West fall into Beryl Crowne, and Beryl hit the marble. Grayson stood over Westley, shaking out his hand. I knew what that meant better than anyone
He looked like the boy I used to watch. The arrogant Playboy Gray.
But wilder. Messier.
I don’t know what preceded it, and I know I should’ve stayed away, but I ran over.
Beryl was already on his feet, adjusting the lapels of his black tux, but West was on the ground, blood coming out of his mouth and nose. I dropped to my knees.
I knew what it meant if this kind of incident continued unchecked or spiraled. You could never blame a Crowne; you rarely blamed a guest. But someone had to be blamed, and it was always a servant. If someone like Beryl Crowne was affected in the incident? The blame would burn like acid.
“I think that’s her,” someone said.
Her?
“What the fuck?” Grayson said. “Him? You’re choosing him?”
Another slamming silence, followed immediately by more clicks and bright lights, this time directed at me. Everyone was staring at me.
Choosing him.
Did he have any idea the consequences of his choice of words? I wouldn’t look him in the eyes. And while seconds passed, it felt like an hour as I tried to navigate the thorny, sharp maze he’d just erected for me.
“It’s her,” someone said, more loudly.
“Definitely her.”
The cameras kept clicking, and I could tell some were videoing. Her? What did they mean by that?
I knew Grayson and I were already a rumor.
The servants had made that clear by excommunicating me. While the Crownes had stopped the rumor at their gates, and the du Lacs had cut it off at the press, it was still out there. In blurry photos. If we weren’t careful, others would get wind of me, and I wouldn’t be able to live my life.
Hidden. Unseen. The way I’d always been.
I cautiously looked away from the crowd.
“I apologize, Mr. Grayson,” I said quietly, tension threading my words as paparazzi snapped my photo. “I didn’t mean to pick someone over a…Crowne.”
I chose my words like I was picking the best, most precious jewels. It wasn’t that Grayson was jealous; he was furious at me, an untrained servant. “I understand Crownes always come first.”
Grayson snatched a champagne glass and downed it in one gulp, as if what I’d said just drove him to it.
“That’s not what I fucking mean—”
“We always value our guests,” Tansy said, cutting him off. “You’ve done well. Grayson is just tired from giving all of his attention to his newlywed. You know, boys will be boys!”
She finished with a dismissive laugh, but I heard the tension in her words. What she wouldn’t say to a room full of paparazzi.
Silence descended once more.
“What’s your name?” someone yelled, breaking it.
“How did you meet Grayson?”
“When did you fall in love?”
Fear strangled my spine.
I couldn’t speak. Staring into a thousand lenses and phones. How did they know? How could they possibly know?
“Come on,” West said, lifting me off the floor. “I think we should go.” His tux was wrinkled, his fluffy curls in disarray, but he acted like it was nothing.
“I’m supposed to be helping you,” I replied numbly. He shot me a smirk with his now-bloody plump lips.
Tansy immediately launched into damage control, but Beryl stared at me.
Icy.
As did Grayson.
Grayson watched me, Lottie watched me, Beryl watched me. So did a few reporters, even as Tansy played damage control.
We exited under the gold leaf banner that read Couple of the Century.
GRAY
* * *
I itched to throw another punch when West put his arm around her like he was an injured deer or something.
It was one fucking punch.
That guy used to win in fight nights at Rosey.
Lottie placed her hand on my elbow. “Grayson, please.” Desperation weighed Lottie’s words. For the first time, I looked outside my anger, at the reception.
My grandfather, whose tux was wrinkled and eyes were hard. Yeah, I’d hear about this all right. Past the press, who would be paid off not to write this story with some other steamier piece, to the crowd. A crowd filled with cameras, vicious smiles, and a desire to sate whatever bullshit following of a few thousand sycophants they had.
A crowd who could not be paid off.
“This wedding is a fucking disaster.”
“It’s all anyone is talking about now.”
“We said lay low.”
“And you punched him.”
Multiple family members were whispering at once. My mother, Mrs. du Lac, my grandfather, her father…all saying basically the same thing: What was I thinking?
Lottie’s mother and mine, her father and my grandfather, stared at me, waiting for an answer I couldn’t give. How the fuck did I explain this? I’d heard West is a rapist. Was I supposed to just let that slide?
But it would devastate Lottie. And I’d already devastated her enough for a lifetime.
I rubbed the back of my neck, finding Lottie’s eyes only.
“Lottie…”
“If you say you’re sorry—” She broke off, then shook her head on a scoff. “You couldn’t even go one hour without making it about her. All that ‘I’m your husband now’ stuff was just bullshit. When she appears, you don’t see anything but her.”
Lottie went back to our table.
I dragged my hands through my hair, watching her leave. I reached into my suit pocket, retrieving a sucker, slamming it into my mouth.
Somehow I’d fucked up everything with Lottie and yet still hadn’t done enough for Story.
“I have been planning this day for years.” I glanced to the side, surprised to find my grandfather hadn’t left with everyone else. “Since before you were born. This was the start of a new era. We’d have not just a kingdom, but a dynasty, a world in which everyone bows to the Crowne."
“Do the du Lacs know that's what you've planned?” I gritted.
“You know I still remember your father’s wedding night,” he responded instead. “It was also very…memorable.”
He was much too calm. This was the time he should be threatening me. Reminding me he could send Story to jail. Instead he reminisced.
“He also left your mother high and dry,” he continued. “Something about a pregnancy. He was so…” Grandfather took a breath, sounding annoyed. “So unreasonable.”
I narrowed my eyes. “The triplets weren’t born until years later.”
“I wasn’t talking about the triplets, Grayson. For her sake, I hope you wore protection.”
The lemon sucker seared my tongue, biting. “Excuse me?”
“Your father barely got away with it the second time.”
“You might have had to threaten me into this marriage, but I’m here n
ow. Unlike you and Father and every other goddamn male Crowne, I will honor my vows.”
Grandfather laughed. “Funny way of honoring her.”
He patted me on the shoulder; then, adjusting his tie one last time, he affected a smile and joined the reception. I stared after him long after his body had disappeared into the crowd, his real meaning falling over me like ice water.
My father didn’t have any more children than the triplets outside his marriage.
Numb, I rejoined Lottie at our table. I said nothing, because there was nothing I could say to make it better. She pulled out her phone as the music continued.
“The marriage of the century.” She held up a gold plate engraved with the words Marriage of the Century.
She pushed her cheek out with her tongue.
“Online they’re calling us the sham of the century. Fraud of the century. Joke of the century.”
“Lottie…”
She dropped the plate with a clang. “We have a wedding night to finish.”
She stared out at our reception, dead eyed and determined.
Four
STORY
* * *
The minute we were out of the ballroom I shoved West off. He could stand—he was barely hurt.
“I’m sorry—” West started, but I turned on him.
“Stop! Stop saying you’re sorry. I’m really tired of the men in my life using me to make themselves feel better. If I have to feel like shit, so do you.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but to his credit, didn’t.
I could still hear the ballroom, the music playing as if nothing had happened. The way Grayson had looked at me seared into my chest like a brand. Scarring. White-hot.
“What was on their phones?” I asked quietly, afraid of the answer.
“This is you, right?” West held out his phone for me to look at.
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