Page 18 of Broken Truths

He smirks at me, and I’d love to throw in his face that his fiancée keeps trying to hop on my dick, but that’s so far down on my list to worry about, I won’t waste the brain space.

Drumming my fingers against the table, it takes several seconds before I realize Grandfather has stopped talking. I peer up at him, my back straightening at the look he’s giving me. Shit. I’m going to have to act like my life depends on it. The old man is already suspicious, which is why he carved his initials into my chest. I can practically feel the slashes he cut into me burning right through my shirt.

All the other physical shit—the cuts and bruises—I display like a coat of armor. His initials? I plan on getting those covered up the minute they heal. I can’t stand the fact that he branded me, which I’m sure is why he fucking did it.

“How’s our girl?” he asks.

I temper the gag in my throat and the overwhelming anger that makes me want to bash his face in and tell him if he ever calls Edenhis girlagain, I will kill him so quickly he’ll have no fucking idea what happened.

He’s showing a little too much interest. He suspects something is going on, I bet, and he doesn’t care if I figure it out.

“She’s been keeping her distance. She’s all but moved into the house with the prince. Alaric, too. I’ve been trying to soften her up again…”

“Anne-Marie said she saw you at the coffee shop.”

Vincent waits for my reaction, expressionless. He was never very smart, but he’s got a poker face to rival the best of them.

“Like I said, trying.”

At this point, I have to assume he told GrandfatherEden was the reason behind the Pound of Flesh ceremony. Maybe the old man even knew it when he kidnapped me and openly admitted for the first time that he killed my father.

“I pissed her off enough for her to contact you about getting back at me, right, Vincent?”

Vincent pauses briefly. It’s just a nanosecond of a reaction, and I only saw it because I was looking for it.

“Why is that, Leonardo?” Grandfather asks. “I told you to do anything possible but instead, you’ve managed to make her an enemy.”

“She’s not,” I say smugly, leaning back in the chair like I own the place. “I brought a girl to the Hall and she got mad.” In my experience, it’s best to keep as close to the truth as possible. I did try to bring a girl home, and I did make Eden jealous. Of course, that’s not the only reason. “Then there’s the part where I let her dangle from the ropes over the river where her sister died.”

He chuckles. “That’s Knights business. You couldn’t have done anything about that.”

I shrug nonchalantly. “Not how she sees it.”

He makes a sound of derision. “Exactly why cunts can’t be Knights. I’ve told them and told them,” he muses. “Has her sister come up at all?”

“Not to me. She probably thinks I fucked her.”

The Jarvis family patriarch grunts. “Except she was a virgin.”

A cold shudder rips through me, and I try with everything I have not to show my revulsion. How does he know she was a virgin? This is not something a rich old man who has the power to do anything should know about a girl like Delilah Astor.

“Pity,” Vincent states.

“Pity you can’t say the same about Anne-Marie,” I snark.

Vincent whips a pen at my head, and I just barely move out of the way.

“You mad I had her first? Before she became all loose?”

This feels real. I’m not acting. I really am a dick, and I think it’s hilarious Vincent is going to marry someone I fucked first. A part of me hopes he thinks about it every time he slides inside her. Every time she calls his name, I hope he knows it’s just an act and that she screamed mine so much louder.

“I don’t know,” Franklin Jarvis says, interrupting my thoughts. “I had her, and she didn’t seem loose at all.”

My stomach twists. I’d almost forgotten what Eden and Oliver saw up in Anne-Marie’s father’s office. My gaze darts to Vincent, and even though he’s smiling, he’s pulled taut. Like this is all a show. He doesn’t like the girl he’s about to marry being talked about like this.

Jesus. Does he actually have feelings for her? If he does, the marriage will never work. Grandfather will have her whenever the mood strikes him. Vincent has to know this.

Jarvises don’t marry for love. They marry for money. For power.

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