Page 27 of Souls and Sorrows

“Meet whom?” a gruff English voice asks, and in seconds, Jonas Wolfe is filling the camera with his wild, dark brown curls and piercing violet eyes. He bends, giving a guarded smile and a half-salute when he notices who Lenny is speaking to before turning toward her and cupping her jaw in his hands.

I grind my teeth together, irritated with the interruption, and I look away just before he brings his lips to hers. Palmer snickers, likely at my total discomfort, and I clear my throat when a low moan breaks the sudden silence.

“Sorry, mate,” Jonas says, and I glance back to see him wiping Lenny’s bottom lip with his thumb before licking whatever residue off and pulling away. “Just can’t get enough of her. You know how it is, I’m sure.”

He leaves through the side of the screen, and I stare at my sister’s flushed cheeks. My brows knit together as her flush turns fuchsia, the reality of what he just said settling in.

“I might have texted him as soon as you said you were getting married,” she admits, resuming her painting.

“Okay, I have to go.” Moving my hand to the mouse, I swing the cursor over the red End button. “Thanks for the support.”

“Whoa, wait a second!” Palmer shakes his phone. “Are you gonna tell Mama?”

“No.”

Click.

As if that self-righteous bitch has any right to know what’s going on in my life.

Not when she ditched us, heading back to Savannah less than five minutes after they lowered my father’s empty grave into its plot. And certainly not when she made no effort to contest the will he’d left behind, bequeathing the Primrose fortune—outside of the nest eggs set aside for her, Lenny, and Palmer—to me.

Leaving me to deal with the guilt over being the sole heir and unsure of how to break that fact to my siblings. Not to mention, I’m still unable to even the playing field by gifting them cash or assets since my father did a fantastic job, legally binding the inheritance to me and ensuring that if it left me, it would be seized.

I’m still not even sure where he had amassed the billions. At the time of his death, my father was purportedly in extreme debt to the mafia, and it was no secret that he was desperate. Yet the funds padding my accounts and the properties leased in my name beg to differ.

Shutting down the computer, I close the venire and shove it into the safe behind my desk, swiping my phone and shrugging into my coat. The outside air is particularly chilly for a late September afternoon, the breeze picking up when I step out of Cupid & Associates a few moments later.

I turn west, my gaze landing on a tall, shadowy building off in the distance. When I first swung by last week, she wasn’t there, not that I was at all surprised; if it was easy for my assistant to find, I’m certain the location had already been on Vitus’s radar, and she would have been stupid to have gone there, knowing he’d be looking for her.

Word on the street is that Vitus is out of town though after receiving an anonymous tip regarding his parents’ whereabouts in Montreal. Something about a networking opportunity and moving illegal jewels through some pig farm upstate.

And I’ll bet my little quarter-billion-dollar bride thinks she’s safe. A beautiful nightmare, wrapped in spandex, expensive jewelry, and a snarky attitude, living her life as if she belongs to no one.

But she doesn’t know who sent Vitus away.

Or that I have no intentions of setting her free.

8

A single flickeringlight provides bare minimum visibility into the dilapidated lobby. There’s an old ticket window against the far wall, separating the two halls on either side of it that lead to different auditoriums. Tables sit overturned with chairs hanging from their edges, and piles of trash and dust litter the corners of the area, creating a repulsive smell and film in the air.

When I was younger, Palmer and I used to fuck around in this theater when we came to the city. Even back then, it was lackluster.

Now, it looks like the remnants of a war-torn country, and I can’t fathom why Ariana would want to rehearse here rather than at any of the numerous architecturally sound institutions in the city.

Passing the ticket window, I take the hall on the right, squinting through to find theater three. The door is open, soft classical music playing from a speaker somewhere inside, and I round the corner slowly, doing my best not to draw attention to myself.

My feet carry me to the back row of cushioned seats, though I do my part to stick to the shadows as I take one of them. Slinking down as low as I can get, I focus my attention on the stage as a young woman takes it, keeping her back toward me until the score begins.

The gentle notes of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” fill the darkened auditorium, and I find myself mesmerized as everything seems to suddenly come to life with an audience.

Thoughaudiencemight be a generous term, considering I’m the only one here and this is hardly a show fit for public discretion.

She starts slow, stiff and unpracticed, as though warming up to the number. A glide of her hips as she shuffles across the stage, then the flicker of her pointed feet against the polished floor and a sweeping of her long legs in wide circles.

Her movements are borderline pornographic, the motion of her delicate, feminine frame like wax drizzling over me.

Clad in a short-sleeved pink leotard that contrasts with her tan skin and a pair of frayed slippers, she twirls and kicks for each crescendo and decrescendo. Her arms come up, meeting atop the chestnut bun on her head, and then curl back down in front of her pelvis, and she arches into the motion, keeping her chin pointed outward at all times.

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