Page 5 of King of Pride

She saw the handprint immediately.

Zoe went still as a rock, her mouth falling slightly open in shock. Her eyes flicked back to Rose’s face, and without another word, she reached out, grabbed her hand, and pulled her away from the crowd.

She led Rose toward the side, behind the bar counter, where fewer people were gathered. Then she stepped closer and reached up to touch Rose’s face, her expression filled with confusion and growing alarm.

“What the hell happened? Who did this?”

Panic flashed in her eyes. She wasn’t shouting, but her voice was loud enough for Rose to hear the alarm trembling beneath it.

Rose answered immediately.

“Ivan. He slapped me because I accidentally broke Jessica’s gift.”

Zoe stared at her in disbelief.

“He hit you?” she repeated. “He slapped you in the face? Or—”

“Just one slap,” Rose interrupted.

Zoe’s eyes hardened even further.

Something about those three words seemed to make her anger burn hotter. She stared at Rose, her jaw tightening as fury flashed across her face.

“That asshole,” she snapped.

A few people standing nearby turned at the sudden outburst, but Zoe didn’t care enough to lower her voice.

“You’re breaking up with him, right?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me you’re going back to him.”

“I broke up with him,” Rose immediately assured her. “I walked out immediately.”

But her heart faltered as the pain she had been trying to suppress suddenly resurfaced in her eyes.

“He cares more about his ex-girlfriend’s gift than he cares about me.” Her voice tightened. “He hit me because I broke a gift that his ex-girlfriend had given him.”

Zoe’s anger hardened.

“Motherfucker.” She shook her head furiously. “He never learned his lesson, did he? Jessica walked out on him after sleeping with him for five years and then disappeared into the wild just because she found a nice opportunity.”

She lifted two fingers into the air, mimicking Jessica’s baby-pitched voice with an exaggerated expression.

“Everyone knows why she moved to France, don’t they? She got together with the owner of that company where she said she was going to work. She’d been sleeping with him and then moved to France to live with him. And then she gave Ivan the excuse that she wanted to further her own career.”

Her lips curled with disgust.

“All a load of bullcrap! She wanted to get ahead by sleeping with more men so she could marry one of the richest.”

Her mouth twisted as she spoke, her voice nearly shaking with rage.

Zoe put her hands on her waist. The black dress she was wearing flowed with the motion as she planted her hands firmly on her hips. She then adjusted the strap of her dress that had fallen off her shoulder before turning back to Rose and snapping, “If it weren’t for you liking him for a year, I swear I would have never let you be with someone like him. Do you remember what all his friends kept saying? All the things that we heard?”

Rose nodded as she stepped closer. Then she turned around, grabbed one of the martinis from the bar counter, and downed it before slamming the glass back onto the counter and turning toward Zoe.

“It’s not like I only heard it once. He got together with me because Jessica left him, but I didn’t mind at all because I always thought he was one of the men I admired.”

Zoe’s voice rose as she spat out, “That motherfucker! He got together with you just because he wanted to get over his ex and show her that he could get into a relationship with another woman, just as she had done. But I thought after he saw how much you liked him, he would change his ways and realize what garbage he had thrown away and what he had. But you cannot teach a monkey what the value of a diamond is.”

Zoe tucked her hair behind her ear.