“You said there were no other options,” she said, her voice cracking. “And yet you just said another one right there, telling your friends that you kicked me out. Let’s think of some more.”
“It’ll be easier to convince these people that you’re not a threat ifyouleaveme,preferably cursing my name and sobbing all the way through the lobby, screaming that you wished you’d never met me. But as you hypothesized about medieval kings yesterday, a heartless royal such as myself might have staged a sham ceremony to get you into bed, and then once I’d fucked you, I tired of your commonness and am disposing of you.”
Her dark eyebrows jumped.“Commonness,huh?Rude.”
“No one will question it. Happens all the time.”
“But does it?” Her nose scrunched as if she smelled something foul.“Really?Nowadays, rich people formlegally binding relationshipswith normies just to boink them for a few days? I don’t think so.”
“We manipulate everyone because we don’t care. Because there are no consequences for us.”
There really weren’t.
Lexi slowly shook her head. She was convincing herself she didn’t have to leave, I couldfeelit. “That one billionaire guy didn’t evenlegallymarry his weird new wife when they rented out Paris for their pretend wedding, and he even bought amagazine so she could be on the cover in her too-tight skanky wedding gown,” she mused. “They just had an overpriced party and made everyone look at them while they said legally unenforceable vows to each other. Their fake priest wasn’t even ordained inanything,so that dude actually did pull a Henry the Seventh. No one signed a legally binding marriage licenselike we did.God didn’t bless that marriage, just Mammon.”
A smile tightened my mouth, but I twisted it into a grimace because this conversationmustend with her leaving me.
Admitting to Lexi that mentally sparring with her was the most exciting thing to happen to me in years would be counterproductive. The gray yes-men and dull wits of the emotionally stunted upper class bored me. “Those nouveau riche tech bros are the pinnacle of gauche. It amuses us that they believe they will have class if they commit the crimes against humanityourancestors did. They paint their unfashionable homes in faux-gold paint as if it evokes the Hermitage, but it looks crass. We don’t associate with them. The few of us who did slum with them lost their titles and succession numbers, as they should have.”
She nodded, her nose still scrunched with disdain. “Yeah.Ew.Andgross.But still, we’rereallymarried.”
“I’ll tell them it was fraudulent, that it wasn’t legal. No one will know. No one will care.”
“But we signed the wedding license, and it was notarized and deposited. Itwasn’ta bogus wedding.”
“They’ll believe me.”
“It’s easy enough to dig up a marriage license with even halfway decent Google-fu. People will know it was legal.”
“Ican convince them.”
“Butcanyou?” she argued, her voice adamant.
John Borbon’s disbelief when he’d pulled me aside at the Omnia bar to again interrogate me about Lexi intruded into my thoughts. “Of course I can.”
“I don’t know, there, Nico. You seem pretty straight-laced. What was that thing about you demanding your school teachmore Latin?”
“As anelective. And I’m not uptight. I’m just not an idiot.”
Lexi had me back on my heels, nearly on the ropes, in this dispute. I was defending myself instead of shepherding her toward accepting my viewpoint.
Tricky girl.
I dug in, desperate to win so she would see herself out of my life and be safe, and yet I was grinding my feet into the proverbial intellectual mud, matching wits, enjoying the sparring, and watching the pretty pink rise in her cheeks.
I didn’t want her to hate me, but I should have.
“ButIcould convince them of things,” Lexi insisted, her dark eyes bright with stars from the window’s morning sunlight and lamps behind me. “I’m an actor. If we decide on a story to tell them, I can do it.”
“Excellent. Act like you’re pissed as hell at me and stomp through the lobby and out of my lifeso you will be safe from these motherfuckers because I would not be able to bear it if anything happened to you,”I growled at her, not raising my voice because Ueli sat just beyond the door.
Shit, I was saying too much, but the heat, from needing her to get the fuck away from me and wanting to tumble her into the sheets and make her gasp, was a torment.
“But I don’t want to leave you with these guys breathing down your neck. Country folk don’t run from a fight.”
“You must. I insist.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, andIdon’t leave friends in the lurch.”
