Page 6 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

He hummed a wedding tune I’d only ever heard in movies.

“You really think she’ll marry Beck after you’ve killed me? She’d be stupid to say yes.”

“She doesn’t exactly strike me as very smart to begin with.”

Asshole. Del was probably one of the smartest people I knew.

“You’re such an idiot,” I laughed, trying to lace my voice with as much contempt as I could. Julian just raised his brows while he crossed the kitchen to get himself a knife and a fork. “Even if Delilah marries your brother,youwon’t get access to the Montgomery estate.”

“Well, not yet,” Julian mumbled and shoveled a piece of sandwich in his mouth. “She’ll pop out a child two or three years from now. And then if something were to happen to Cordelia Montgomery, her child would inherit the whole lot. Sure, the inheritance would be tied up in a trust, but who better to oversee the trust than Daddy dearest. You know, women die in childbirth all the time, right?”

I gaped at him. He’d kill Delilah. If he got her to marry Beck, she was a dead woman walking. And for what? My stupid inheritance? Hotels and money? None of that even mattered anymore. “As of Friday morning, 8am, all the assets that were tied up in the Montgomery name will be gone, Beckett. Except for my house and my personal trust, which is probably less than what you take home in a year.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone? You couldn’t have bankrupted your father’s company in six months. You had no access to it while it was legally tied up.”

“Oh no, that’s the best part. Delilah was going to give a big speech at the White Ball next week. All the money is funneled into the Theresa Montgomery foundation to stop violence against women.” I blew my bangs from my face, hopefully flashing the growing bump on my forehead and the drying blood on my lip. “Do you see the irony of this situation?”

“Bullshit. Nobody would be that stupid. You and that girl have been lying to everyone for weeks.” He picked up his gun again, nostrils flaring. “This is just another lie, trying to weaselyour way out of here, so you can crawl back to your little boytoy and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”

Boytoy? Victor? Where was Victor?

“Hey!” Del yelled from the backdoor right before throwing a small potted plant across the room. Instead of hitting Julian, it smashed on the floor, adding soil to the shards and wine cocktail.

Backdoor… Had she climbed out of her window?

The two of them exchanged some heated words while I still tried to figure out how Del made it from her bedroom and into the kitchen with a broken arm and god knew what other injuries.

A moment of silence fell. My breath rattled up my throat. “What happened to you?” I asked.

“Car accident.” Del swallowed. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, you know. He wants to wine and dine me, rape me, kill me, and make you the only real Cordelia.”

“Busy schedule, Julian, huh?”

Del saw the gun coming as much as I’d seen the phone. He whacked it at her head. In her messed-up state, Del stumbled backwards, trying and failing to catch herself on a chair and falling into the drinks cart instead. I yelled something unintelligible, and tried to bend around the side of the table, if only to be a few inches closer to Del.

Fresh blood gushed from the wound on her forehead and if she’d been pale before, she was turning sickly green now. I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t have her blood on my hands. But I couldn’t even throw my weight sideways enough to move the chair anymore, because Julian had lodged me against the table. I twisted my feet and flexed my shoulders. If I knew how to dislocate my joints to get out of these restraints, I would pull my bones apart, just to stop Julian from hurting her.

“Go back to your room Delilah. Beck will come check on you in the morning. At least we can now all stop pretending.”

“Pretending?” She stuttered.

“Oh dear, you really are as blonde as you look, huh?”

I saw Beck behind his brother a moment before the others spotted him, his eyes torn wide as he took in the scene. “Julian, what the fuck?”

The two of them argued. Then all three of them argued. I barely paid attention, my eyes solely on Del. The cut on her forehead didn’t stop bleeding. She was barely staying upright. Somehow, she made it across the room to me, grabbing my hands behind the chair. I tightened my fingers around hers as fast as I could. Beck wanted to get her to a hospital. That was good. He could get her out of here. Keep her safe. At least for now. She folded over and threw up at one point, but it wasn’t much, mostly bile - and in the grand scheme of things, that seemed like an easy fix.

I didn’t click back into the conversation until the name Yelchin dropped.

If Victor wasn’t here by now, they had something to do with it. He’d been perfectly safe from his family for five and a half years, and they weren’t going to screw that up for him.

“Leave Victor out of this,” I hissed. “You want my name? You can have it. I’ll marry either one of you right now.”

“Too late.” Julian shrugged. “His family picked him up right after he got Delilah released from the hospital for me. He really thought he was hiding, huh? They only let him stay here for this long because they knew how valuable of an assetyouwere. It cost me quite a bit to get them to pull him off, but he was just never going to leave your side.”

No, no, no.Julian couldn’t have just sold him out.

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