Page 110 of Necessary Cruelty

Thirty-Two

I’ve never slept as wellin my life as I did last night.

Not that Zaya would know that. I was up before her and sitting on the couch with my vape in one hand and my phone in the other by the time she rolled out of my bed.

My bed.

I thought I would hate having her in my bed, even if it had been my idea for her to stay with me in the first place. Leaving her alone in that dilapidated old house wasn’t an option. Not that her grandfather would provide much defense against a home invasion, but at least he was lucid enough to be a witness. Her brother is still sitting in jail and her grandfather is in the care home, not that he would be up to providing much defense.

But the minute that the lowlifes down in the Gulch realized she was in that house all by herself, Zaya would be a sitting duck. Bringing her to the manor is the only option that makes sense, doesn’t mean I was looking forward to having her invade my space.

I woke up curled around her as dawn sent pink streaks of light through the curtains, only realizing then that it had still been dark when I closed my eyes. Usually, I can manage fifteen or twenty minutes at a time before something startles me awake.

But last night I slept like a baby, at least for a few hours.

Zaya seems oblivious to my thoughts as she fidgets in the passenger seat of my Maserati, pulling at the hem of her dress. Her gazes shifts to the display every so often to check the time, obvious impatience written into every line of her body.

She runs for the double doors as soon as I pull into the parking lot, the tardy bell clanging over the loudspeakers. The girl cares a hell of a lot more than I do about being late.

My phone rings, and I lean back in the seat as I answer it, so I can watch her ass as she races up the stairs.

It is a very nice ass.

My father’s voice comes over my phone’s tinny speaker. “How is it going with the Milbourne girl?”

Oh, just a little bit of dry humping before school while my godmother waited in the other room.

“Fine.”

“I didn’t bring up the pregnancy codicil at dinner, because I wasn’t sure what you had already discussed. Is she agreeable?”

I’m surprised he’s asking, because I sincerely doubt he wants the unvarnished truth. “We just need to work out some of the details.”

My father lets out a relieved sigh. “Giselle tells me that the Shore Club had a cancellation, so we can hold the reception there, but that means the ceremony will need to be moved up to three weeks from now. Hopefully, enough of our friends can make it that the turnout will be appropriate. A few of my business partners and their wives already have the date penciled in.”

Penciled in? He makes my wedding sound like a round of golf. If it wasn’t fake, I might be offended.

“We really don’t have to go through with this,” I hedge. “Everything is already legal as it is.”

“Someday you’ll understand the sacrifices required to be who we are. You are a Cortland.”

I’m already marrying a girl that I’m pretty sure tried to kill me when we were kids. And after compelling her into a fake marriage, I’m going to trick her into carrying my child. There isn’t anything more Cortland™ than that.

“Like I give a shit.”

“Watch your language.”

The phone dangles from my fingers as I see Principal Friedman coming out the main doors, on the lookout for people smoking or playing hooky. I wonder if Zaya got to class on time, if she felt good walking down the halls in an outfit that highlights her beauty instead of hiding it.

I wonder if anybody has said anything about the giant rock on her finger.

“Dad, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk about this later.”

I hang up before he can respond.

My relationship with my father has always been…interesting. I hate to call it complex, because that implies there are multiple layers when it has always been aggressively superficial. But it’s not precisely distant. He cares in an absent way, spending most of his time working or living the life on public display that is expected of the Cortland patriarch.

To hear him tell it, my father married Giselle because he wanted me to have a mother. But my earliest memories are of nannies and frigidly cold rooms in a deserted mansion. Giselle is smart enough not to act like a stereotypical evil stepmother, but I never got the impression that she married my father out of a desperation to play the nurturing mother. The glitz of constant parties and events seems to have been a much greater allure.

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