Necessary Cruelty: A Dark Enemies-to-Lovers Bully Romance (Lords of Deception Book 1)

by Ashley Gee

  That sounds like a typically asshole move on Vin’s part. I won’t try to defend what he’s done, but my mind sticks on a very specific part of what she said. “So the two of you have never…”

  “Not all the way. It was like he was saving himself, or something.”

  “Oh.” My mind whirls at that. Vin’s parties have been legend for years — I always assumed that he was sticking his dick into anything that moved. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Sophia isn’t done as she stares me down, makeup destroyed and clothes rumpled. “I really wanted to lie to you, make you think I’m carrying his baby to drive some sort of wedge between you. But you two have always had something crazy and special, something I couldn’t touch no matter how much I tried. And I did try. But I want better than this.” Seeming almost wistful, her hand touches her belly for the briefest moment. “I have to be better than this.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her expression is droll. “Don’t thank me, Milbourne. You’re the one stuck with him now, and it only takes one mistake to fuck up your whole life.”

  Before I can decide how to respond, she is already shoving past me toward the door.

  Another three weeks go by like I’m living in someone else’s dream.

  Vin seems to consider it his mission in life to make me as comfortable being the new Mrs. Cortland as I possibly can be. Even though I know it’s just because he wants to ensure I hold up my end of our deal, it’s hard not to just let myself enjoy it.

  I won’t let him buy me a car, not when there are already dozens sitting in the garage at Cortland Manor. But he is also always there to take me where I need to go, so it seems like a moot point, anyway.

  Every day, we attend Deception High where we exist in this surreal bubble of attention for a few hours that makes it nearly impossible for me to focus on schoolwork. And every night, we go back to the pool house and fall into his bed together.

  The bed he has never shared with anyone before, not even Sophia Taylor.

  I still feel a shiver of premonition when I think about her. She hasn’t come back to school since that day I found her in the bathroom, probably because she assumed that her business would be all over Deception by the next day. Because if our situations were reversed, I’d walk into school to find blue and pink streamers decorating my locker and people holding out their bellies and laughing when I walked by.

  But I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t. Sophia doesn’t have to worry about that, though I don’t have any way to reassure her.

  She is living my nightmare, the one I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy.

  It gets easier to forget about that under Vin’s dedicated attention. Although I’ve become as militant as possible about contraception, reminding him about condoms pretty much every chance I get. He promised to take me to a clinic for the pill, but they’re booked out a few weeks for new patients.

  The same thing that happened to Sophia will not happen to me.

  When I finally tell Vin about what she told me on the way home from school, his reaction is to burst into guffaws of laughter.

  “That is rich.” He just shakes his head. “I always knew she’d end up with three kids and slinging diet shakes to the other PTA moms on Facebook. She got there a littler earlier than I thought, but still.”

  Vin seems patently unconcerned with Sophia’s potential fate, which only makes me feel sorrier for her. She would kill me if she knew I had come close to anything approaching pity.

  I drum my fingers on the armrest, trying for a severe expression that utterly fails. “What if she said you’re the father?”

  He laughs so hard that he nearly cries.

  “Is she the fucking Virgin Mary now?”

  I tell myself that I don’t actually care what Vin has done in the past. In fact, I don’t care what he does now. Our marriage is fake, and we’re only being so nice to each other because we both get something out of it.

  Lie detector determines that was a lie.

  “Obviously not, but I think you know that. And if you don’t remember that day in health class, it only takes one time.”

  “One time is still too many where Sophia is concerned. In fact, I’ve only ever had sex with one girl.”

  He says it casually, not like a bomb being dropped in between us.

  I just stare at him. “I’m not an idiot, Vin.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’ve done stuff with other girls, just not that.”

  “I saw you leave with her after the Founder’s Ball,” I splutter.

  “And if you’d stuck around for another five minutes, then you would have seen me slam the door of the pool house in her face.” His hands are squeezed tight on the steering wheel, but that is the only sign of any tension in him. “For some reason, I wasn’t in the mood for a shitty blow job that night.”

  “You’re making me feel sorry for her.”

  “Sophia only gets exactly what she asks for,” he grumbles. “The rumors of my sexual proclivities are just that. Fucking rumors. Sorry to ruin any of the fantasies, but I mostly spend my nights getting blackout drunk and hanging out with my friends.”

  Unless he was sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.

  Of course, no one but us has ever known about that, which means the rumors never had a chance to spread.

  No one has ever known about us. Except us.

  Every time that I thought he came crawling straight from someone else’s bed into mine, I hated myself for giving in. The compulsion driving him was always obvious, but I assumed he was obsessed with hurting me because of what I’d done. I always thought that it was just another bit of punishment to make me complicit in my own destruction, to remind me that I would always be less than nothing in his eyes.

  Now I realize it might have been something else entirely.

  I have to look out the window as the million-dollar houses of the Bluffs drift past my blurry vision. My tears are worthless, but that doesn’t stop them from coming. In that moment, all I want is to take back the past and tell him the truth about what my mother did.

  I kept silent to protect the person I loved.

  Turns out, I was wrong about which love I needed to protect.

  I can’t say that the feeling slams into me all at once. My heart is like the metaphorical frog in a pot of water slowly being heated to a boil. I should have jumped out right from the very beginning, but the heat came on so slowly that I didn’t notice it until much too late.

  My heart is on fire, and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself.

  I love him, and he will never feel the same way about me.

  Vin doesn’t seem to notice my struggle to pull myself together as he hums along to the radio. I desperately want to tell him, to spew out proclamations of desperate love that will ensure he steers this Maserati off the nearest cliff. Vin might like to screw me, but he has made it very clear that the only thing I will ever be to him is a means to end. You don’t hate someone for ten years and then suddenly abandon it for the opposite emotion.

  I can’t ever tell him how I feel.

  Instead, I ask, “Who do you think the father of Sophia’s baby is?”

  “Someone who I hope is smart enough to run like hell.”

  Thirty-Four

  I’m not sure when I decided that Zaya and I are permanent.

  I keep telling myself that it’s just the novelty of having someone to play house with that has me twisted up. It would be a struggle to remember the last time anyone used the oven in the pool house for something aside from drying out weed, if ever. But Zaya is obsessed with her newfound ability to prepare meals using more ingredients than what comes in boxes from the food bank. All those years without a mother seemed to have primed her for playing happy homemaker.

  She cooks, she cleans, and she sucks my dick like it’s the absolute highlight of her day.

  But as much as I like a gorgeous and willing girl to come home to, it’s more than that.

  W
hen she smiles at me, I feel a pressure in my chest that makes it difficult to breathe. Any time she manages to wake up before me in the morning, which has been happening more and more often these days, I find myself rolling over to inhale the pillow where she slept. It always smells like the conditioner she uses, vanilla milk and plumeria.

  I’ve bought about a dozen bottles of the stuff so she isn’t tempted to switch to anything else.

  Fast forward a year when she has a newborn baby in her arms and a more comfortable life than she has ever dreamed of, it won’t matter that we started with a lie. It won’t even cost her anything. A baby might delay the start of her future, but she can still go to college. I’ll have a nanny sit in class next to her if that’s what she wants.

  I can give her everything she never had — it would be stupid for her to walk away.

  I’ve never been able to take my eyes off her. It used to be because I was thinking of more and more creative ways to torture the truth out of her. But it’s hard to care about the past when the future is punching me in the face.

  When I watch her now, it’s only because I struggle to tear my gaze away.

  Getting her pregnant started out as only an obligation, something that needs to happen for me to keep my inheritance. But I find myself watching her for signs of morning sickness or tenderness in her nipples, although sucking on those until they’re hard as almonds on her chest has always been a favorite pastime. Even though I’ve managed to put a few pounds on her, she is still skinny enough that a baby bump will probably be obvious pretty early.

  Even in my own head, it’s hard to call it love. There are too many other emotions wrapped up between us for me to put a name to just one. If love is forgiving her for trying to poison me when we were kids and never giving me reason why she did it, then we can call it that.

  Also obsession, possession, and any emotion that involves never letting her go.

  A few years after it all happened, I read the medical report. There was enough concentrated oleander in my blood to represent thousands of flowers. Something like that doesn’t happen by accident. The poisoning had to have taken place over weeks, with a higher dose on the day that I finally collapsed. My weak heart had nothing to do with poor genetics and everything to do with the effects of all the oleander being slipped into my food.

  A poisoning that started when Zaya became my childhood playmate.

  But if I can forgive her for that, then she can forgive me for playing a dirty trick on her womb.

  Maybe someday, I’ll convince her to finally tell me why.

  Although I’m not sure I really want to know.

  The day of our wedding ceremony dawns bright and clear. Harsh waves crash on the silky sands of the Shore Club, and the water is too frigid for even a toe dip, but the beach is there to look at and not to swim in.

  That water is cold enough to stop your heart after only a few minutes.

  There is a nice metaphor in there for the rich people of this town, pretty on the outside but deadly when you get too close.

  Giselle has truly outdone herself, which isn’t precisely a compliment. Hundreds of white wooden folding chairs are decorated with gauzy bows, forming a semicircle around a raised altar that has to be the result of about a hundred hours of illegal labor. Almost everyone in town has RSVP’d, and this is shaping up to be an event that puts even the Founder’s Ball to shame. Everything, from the decorations to the view, is like something from a manic chick’s Dream Wedding Pinterest board.

  It’s perfect.

  And I can’t wait for it all to be over.

  Giselle spirited Zaya away early this morning when I was still barely awake. My stepmother insistent that we do the full pre-wedding workup, everything from hair to makeup to sitting in a dressing room and sipping champagne with Giselle’s vapid friends for a few hours. Apparently, I’m not allowed to see her until she walks down the aisle because of some bullshit related to bad luck.

  The fact that we’re already legally married doesn’t seem to have filtered through the haze of Giselle’s wedding planning.

  Iain is standing up as my best man, with Elliot and Cal behind him as my other groomsmen. Zaya’s bridesmaids are a few random daughters from families on the Bluffs, handpicked by Giselle based on their dress sizes and coloring.

  God forbid that the wedding photos embarrass us.

  When the music starts up, I’m almost grateful that my stepmother insisted on hiring a full orchestra to play. The Bridal March wouldn’t have the same power coming from a tinny loudspeaker.

  Emma comes first, dressed in a pink confection of a dress and flinging handfuls of flower petals in every direction.

  But at the sight of Zaya walking down the aisle, it doesn’t matter that my friends are snickering behind me and the closest bridesmaid is surreptitiously checking her phone.

  I don’t care about anything except for how beautiful she looks.

  Her hair is done up in a twist with gentle curls framing her face. The one thing I insisted on was that the stylist Giselle hired not do anything to straighten it. Her dress is a creamy ivory, fitted at her slim waist and flowing into a full skirt that makes me desperate to find out what might be underneath it.

  If there is a garter on her thigh, I am definitely tearing it off with my teeth.

  The music swells just as she steps up beside me.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she murmurs in my ear.

  “Or an angel.”

  “Shut up.” She rolls her eyes, but the blush on her cheeks makes it clear that she appreciates the compliment.

  “You know how I feel about dresses — can’t wait to get up under this one.”

  She stifles a giggle just as Father Mackerly begins the service.

  This time it feels like second nature to gently kiss her when we’re pronounced man and wife for the second time in as many months. The surprised gasps and appreciative murmurs from the crowd don’t even faze me. I wonder how many people just lost bets on whether or not I’d actually go through with this.

  I have never given less than a shit about what people think.

  My hand grazes the flat plane of her belly over stiff lace as she pulls away from me, mind whirling over the possibilities. Up until now, all of this felt like playing pretend.

  Now, it’s real.

  We have about five minutes to enjoy congratulations before Zaya is being whisked away again by the wedding planner. Apparently, she has another dress to change into for the reception, because this hasn’t already been enough of a circus.

  She casts me an apologetic smile as her hand slips out of mine. I still feel the heat of her against my palm even once she disappears from sight. I take a glass from a passing waiter to calm my damn nerves.

  I try to mingle without looking like the only place I want to be is upstairs and between my wife’s legs. My friends have already claimed their bridesmaids and have melted away to seal the deal. Nothing unwads panties like a wedding reception. The stink of marital bliss must be some sort of aphrodisiac.

  I check my watch again, shocked to find that less than a minute has passed since the last time I looked at it.

  Someone bumps hard into me from behind, and champagne splashes my suit.

  “Looks like you do always do get what you want.”

  I turn to see Jake Tully of all people, looking like he has spent the better part of the day drowning in hard liquor. The sour smell of it wafts off of him. My gaze takes in his wrinkled suit and bloodshot eyes. “Someone has been taking advantage of the open bar, I see.”

  “Fuck off, Cortland.” He swipes the sleeve of his suit jacket against his runny nose, leaving a trail of snot on the fabric. Hopefully, that shit isn’t a rental. “And congratulations, for now at least. Something tells me I’ll eventually end up with your leftovers again. Third’s time the charm.”

  The anger on his voice is for more than the ass beating he got on the first day of school or whatever happened at the Founder’s Ball. It o
nly takes a minute of mulling it over before something clicks into place for me. “You and Sophia.”

  “She came running to me after you dumped her, probably thinking that it would make you jealous or some shit. I wanted to get back at you, too, so it seemed like a fun time. A few more times after that just for fun, and now my life is over.” Jake gropes for my glass, and I let him take it. Hopefully, a few more gulps of champagne will be enough to get him to pass out somewhere. “You know, I didn’t believe it when people said getting in your way would only mess me up. Guess this is what I get for not listening. Whatever demon owns your soul definitely puts in long hours.”

  I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. Nobody told him to stick his dick where it doesn’t belong. “Just because Sophia is pregnant, doesn’t mean she’ll stay that way.”

  “With the way my luck is going, I’m not taking bets.” He eyes me over the rim of the champagne flute as he drains it, tipping the glass upside down for the last few drops. “But maybe I’m not the only one whose luck has run out.”

  Something in his tone makes me wonder if the guy is as drunk as he seems. He looks at me like he would like nothing better than to pound me into the dirt, even if he knows better than to try.