Page 58 of Filthy Rich Ex's Brothers

Wiping my face with the back of my hands, I stutter through a sob and say, “That fight we had the other night? I told her about, like, being interested in all three of them. You know her—I thought she might judge me a little, sure, but she wassomad about it. Said I was beingmessy. I realize now it’s because it would be messy forher. If she’s with Alex, she doesn’t—doesn’t?—”

I interrupt myself with a hiccup, and Lillie leans in, wrapping her arm around me. Patchouli is all around me, and it reminds me of my grandma, which only makes me cry harder. Grief can slam into you at the oddest of times.

“I can’t believe her.” Georgia leans back, running her hand over her hair and shaking her head. “Do you think—I mean, do you think that’s why he did that to you in the first place?”

It takes a moment for my brain to process that.

Since seeing her in that room, I’d just assumed, automatically, that Bianca went after him following the break-up. That it was the stuff-on-the-lawn incident that signaled her opening. It never crossed my mind that she could have been with Alex before that.

That my best friend could be the reason my things ended up on the lawn. That she could have cheated with my boyfriend. That she could have been a catalyst for the record player I’ll never be able to use again. Music I will never hear the way I heard it sitting in my grandmother’s living room.

My stomach turns when I remember that I was on the phone with her that day. That she heard, firsthand, the account of the humiliation. Did she know he was going to do that? Was she involved? I try to think back to what she said, to her tone, to anything that might have given it away.

“Why would she do this?” Sid asks, wincing slightly when I hiccup again. “I mean, it’s not like she’s ugly. Surely she couldhave found someone better than that dickhead.” He glances at me quickly, “No offense.”

I hiccup again, “None taken.”

“It could have something to do with her family,” Grayson wonders.

“You mean like,” Lillie says, “her grandfather and stuff?”

I nod because it makes sense. “He always said awful stuff about her only being good for marriage. No matter what she did—getting her master’s, landing that really awesome internship—he didn’t care. So maybe she went after Alex because it could get her an in with a powerful family.”

I feel sick again, and bring my hand to my mouth. It’s a nightmare. They lean in again to comfort me, but before they can, Sid’s phone chimes loudly from his back pocket.

“One sec,” he draws back, checks his phone, and frowns. “What the fuck?”

Grayson leans over his shoulder, sucks in a breath at whatever he must see on the screen. “Dude, are they in the bushes? Who the hell is that?”

As though “they” can hear us, there’s a flash just outside the window, like lightning. We all glance over, deer in headlights, to see a camera lens pressed against the glass like an eye, pointed in our direction.

I let out a short, warbled scream.

“What the hell?” Georgia cries, jumping up from her spot next to me.

Then, everyone is up. Lillie pulls the curtains shut, Georgia shouts a question about calling the police. Meanwhile, Sid is grabbing a baseball bat—with a sock on the end?—from the closet. He and Grayson head for the door.

“Wait!” Lillie grabs his arm and pulls him back, her lilac-colored hair swinging violently with the movement. “Wait,shouldn’t we think—like, what are they doing—like, why, before we open the door?—?”

What the guys said about Stephen Oakley flashes through my head, and I feel even more nauseous. I should have thought about this—I should have listened to them. But I didn’t, and now I’ve dragged the paparazzi back to my friends.

Alex’s vengeance—even after what he did to me.

Sid looks pale and keeps glancing to the window where the flash came from. “I’m really not cool with pictures of us getting out.”

“I think it’s—they’re here for me,” I stammer, in a small voice. “They told me that Alex would try to get revenge.”

“What the fuck?” Sid growls, face going stormy. “Revenge by sending a bunch of perverts to crawl around your house? That’s a major invasion of privacy.”

Grayson puts a hand on Sid’s arm, clearly trying to calm him down, especially since Sid is still holding the bat, and there’s a decent chance that he’ll burst outside and start swinging.

“Yeah,” Lillie says, slowly, and we all look at her. She’s staring down at her phone, which illuminates her face eerily. “I think they’re here for you, Serena.”

When she turns her phone around, the images that stare back at me from a gossip magazine website grab me in a chokehold. Snaps of Travis and me at the hotel, some of me and Ryan in his restaurants. Then, impossibly, one of Graham holding me that first day, when he kept me from hitting the ground at Ryan’s place. It looks incriminatingly intimate, though it was completely innocent.

Photos of me with all three of them. And I didn’t even realize they were being taken.

There’s a loudknock, then athumpagainst the outside of the house, almost like the press are trying to scale the siding and getto the roof. It makes me feel like a fish in a barrel, panicking, swimming in circles with nowhere to go.