I lay awake, imagining Faye in her bed above me, wearing those sexy as fuck Snoopy pajamas that clung to her curves, fuming because I’d interrupted whatever was going on with her and Titus. And even though the thought of them touching made my body burn with jealousy, I didn’t care – Titus was a good dude, almost good enough for her. He wouldn’t fuck her over… unless I commanded it.
But I did wish…
I imagined creeping upstairs, rolling in bed beside Faye, my fingers tangling in her hair as I trailed a path of kisses along her neck, across her collarbone, my lips closing over her nipple until she writhed and begged for more. Mmmmm. To hear Faye de Winter beg for me…
But I remained still, paralyzed even as my dick jerked with anticipation, turning over the situation in my mind, looking for a loophole, a solution.
There was none.
I couldn’t help him without the Manderley Prize. And I couldn’t get the prize unless Faye left Manderley. Unless I broke her. And my time was running out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Faye
Whose face was it?
I bent over my laptop in my corner of the library. I was supposed to be working on an essay on Sibelius, but I couldn’t focus. My fingers kept tracing the skin on my arm where Titus had touched me. My lips tingled with the memory of that sizzling tension drawing us together.
Stop it. Stop thinking about it.
Don’t picture Titus naked under the sheets. Don’t consider that hecouldn’thave been the one up in my room. He wouldn’t have risked running down the stairs naked, which meant that in the time I’d made it to the second floor, he ran downstairs, and climbed into bed without being out of breath or smelling of sweat…
I just didn’t believe it.
So who else could have done it? Harrison had gone down to the gatehouse, and Master Radcliffe’s lights had been on in the stable house when I walked back to the house. So neither of them were inside. Madame Usher could barely fit up that staircase – no way would she have been dextrous enough to get back down so quickly, so it wasn’t her, either. Aroha had been with me, and Elena, Dorien, and Heather had been in the Blue Room.
The only one I couldn’t account for was Ivan. I’d assumed he was in the Blue Room because he never left Elena’s side, but someone had to have been in my room… because the only other possibility was that a ghost did it, and that was ridiculous.
Ivan was the only one who could have done it. And I was sick to death of taking the Muses’ shit. It was time to fight back.
* * *
It took me a couple of days to figure out how to get back at Ivan. He and Elena went everywhere together, and despite the fact she never said a word to me and looked like a stony-faced bitch, I didn’t want to involve her. This wasn’t her battle.
Then, one night over dinner, Madame Usher announced an upcoming visit from the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. He was in America recruiting students for a week-long intensive residency and requested a performance from each of us, so we’d be hosting him for a full-blown recital of our most polished work. Something my mother said flitted through my mind.
She’d been trying to land a contract with a celebrity actor who was launching a line of merchandise, but another PR company was angling for the deal. The guy who ran this company was famous for not disclosing sponsored content on social media – he built a couple of successful celebrity brands off the back of his “authentic” influencer marketing, while my mom did everything above board, which meant her campaigns had less reach. He badmouthed her all over the city, and I kept asking her why she didn’t fight back. She’d smiled. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m keeping my hands clean while he digs his own grave.”
Sure enough, two weeks later, an investigative article in the New York Times exposed this guy’s shady practices, and the FTC swooped in. No one wanted to touch him. De Winter PR got the celebrity deal.
Mom was clever. She knew that people who refuse to play by the rules eventually got caught out in their own lies. She’d given me all the tools I needed to show the Muses that they couldn’t fuck with Faye de Winter.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Faye
While the students sat through one of Madame Usher’s history of music lectures, I had to clean the bathrooms, change the sheets, and vacuum any visible floor space in their bedrooms. Usually, I tried to hurry through it as quickly as possible, but today I hesitated at the door of Elena and Ivan’s room.
Let him dig his own grave.
I whipped through the bathroom, cleaning as I went. It was Elena’s domain – her cosmetics decorated the counter, and a pyramid of her dirty laundry wedged the door permanently open. More clothes and shoes obscured her bed – it was a miracle she slept at night without accidentally poking a Louboutin heel through her eye.
Ivan’s things were much neater – his bed made with military precision, a small pile of dirty clothes placed in the hamper, a stack of music books arranged on his desk. That made it obvious where I needed to search. I pulled out drawer after drawer in his armoire, hunting for the skeletons I knew had to exist. I didn’t find anything other than perfectly folded shirts and rolled socks. Marie Kondo would be so proud—
Hello, what’s this?
At the back of his sock drawer, my fingers grazed a baggie. I pulled it out and held it up on the light, watching white crystals cascade through the plastic.
