Page 119 of Sinful Bride

“Fucking hell, Pash. Do you see this?” Sofi holds up a framed print of my face superimposed over some other guy’s body in a tuxedo. In his arms is a woman in a wedding gown, Paris’s face edited over the model’s.

Daphne frowns. “Let me see that.”

When Sofi hands it to her, she takes a closer look. “Interesting.”

Then smashes it over the stair banister.

She doesn’t stop there. One by one, Daphne rips photos of me with Paris off the walls. She shreds and stomps and hurls them in every direction.

“You okay?” I ask my clearly not-okay wife.

“Yup!” She tears another batch of newspapers into tiny bits and tosses them up. “Just redecorating!”

“You know this isn’t important, right?”

Daphne pauses and looks at me, hair mussed, flyaways stuck to her forehead with fresh sweat. “Tell me what you’d do if Conrad’s place was covered by my face on a bikini model’s body.”

I sigh and nod. “I’d burn the place to the ground. Carry on.”

She does exactly that, straying from my side to destroy Paris’ homemade wallpaper.

When I glance over at my siblings, I catch them counting out a wad of cash that Mak hands Sofi. “What?” she asks when I glare at her. “I told you from the start this bitch was crazy. I told you not to hire her, not to fuck her—but did you listen? Nope. So yeah, I placed a bet on how long before she went off the deep end.”

“I just see the good in people,” Mak says with a mournful sigh. “It’s my tragic flaw.”

“We’re here to do a job,” I say. The reminder is more for them than for Daphne, but she rejoins my side when she sees we’re moving deeper into the house. She’s smiling faintly, I notice. Strange how attractive I find her jealousy.

It doesn’t take long for us to find the mad queen of this madhouse.

Paris is sprawled across her couch, one leg draped over the back of it and the other dangling to the floor, a big set of headphones clamped down around her ears. Her sleep shirt is bunched above her waist, pulled over on one side to expose a breast that she squeezes and kneads with one hand.

The other is buried between her legs…

While she watches a press conference I gave early last year on her laptop.

My God. Paris has seriously gone off the deep end. It takes a sick fuck to get off to me discussing Chekhov International’s Q4 financial performance.

Daphne snarls and lunges for Paris. I try to hold her back, but she slips through my fingers. She reaches the couch, plunges her arm over the side, and grabs Paris by a fistful of hair. “That’s enough!”

Paris shrieks in surprise and pain, clawing at her head as Daphne yanks her to the floor. Sofi, ever the instigator, steps up to help. She slaps Paris square across the face before she can even finish her scream.

This ought to be simple. Paris, as crazy as she may be, is a civilian.

But when her dazed eyes land on me, I realize this isn’t going to be simple at all.

The crazy runs even deeper than any of us might’ve guessed.

When she sees me, it’s like everyone else in the room vanishes to her. The tension melts from her body, she sighs with relief and reaches for me. “Pasha! Baby, you’re here!”

Mak mutters, “Shit, man. She’s out of her mind.”

I back away and Paris’s hand falls through empty air. She’s still smiling, though, even as Sofi’s handprint reddens on her face.

“I know why you’re here.” She giggles and pinches her nipples through her shirt. It looks like she hasn’t washed it in a week. “I know what you want, baby. I’m all yours.”

I hold up a hand to stop her. “I just need some answers, Paris. That’s all.”

“Oh, like an oral exam?” She licks her lips, biting the bottom one as her gaze homes in on my crotch. “I love oral…”

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