Page 72 of The Kiss of Deception

“Your persistence is as admirable as it is exasperating.” I huff, digging in anyway.

It’s divine, my moan attests.

“Zoe.” Mother makes her arrival known. “Perhaps do not use your talent of insulting compliments on Rosario.”

“It’s not a talent. It’s an art I’ve mastered.”

“Well.” Mom pulls the seat to my left side, folding her hands on the quartz island. “Own them.”

With a hum, I spin on the stool to point the fork at the subject of my insult. “Rosario, you’re annoying. Your cake is amazing, though.”

Her good-hearted laugh ricochets against the red mahogany cabinets as she stretches her toes to grab more dessert plates. She positions a perfect piece in front of my mom, retracing her steps to her small slice on the other side, where she remains standing.

Much like herself, Mom takes her opportunity to steer the conversation in her preferred direction. “How are you, darling?”

I don’t hesitate. “Bored.”

I stepped back temporarily from my job, strongly advised to minimize exposure as the investigation unfolds. In reality, I was pressured to leave by all parties, my responsibilities reduced to remote work as a compromise.

Brown eyes soften with understanding. “How’s the investigation going?”

With a raised eyebrow, I volley her question back. “I could ask you the same, Mother.”

As a judge in the highest court of Massachusetts, she has contacts, and thus access, to privileged information that I can’t fathom.

With her sigh comes the answer I expected.

Nothing.

The investigation halted early. How a person can vanish into thin air is beyond my comprehension—yet that’s what happened, by all accounts.

Lucy whatever-last-name is a ghost.

Meanwhile, I’m well on my way towards madness.

With so much free time on my hands, there’s no room for avoidance anymore. I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of social media, faced with the implications and complications of this game of deception and destruction as they finally catch up to me.

Brazen blind hate from hordes of faceless icons floods my accounts with in-depth analyses of my suitability to be the princess of Miles’s fairy tale, breaking down my appearance, status, wealth, and Lord knows what else. I had anticipated repercussions—hatred is the backbone of society, after all—and I’m not foolish enough to believe such concepts were left in the last century.

The beauty of our times is they’re timeless. Just like misogyny.

Yet no amount of awareness and preparation could prevent the impact.

A little or a lot, pain is pain. And it hurts.

It hurts, as much as I tell myself it shouldn’t. Reading all the ways I fall short, all the reasons I can never be enough—and I masochistically gobble it up like I’m thirsty for punishment.

The wave of judgment receded as weeks went by, only to resurface with the force of a tsunami. In face of my sudden mysterious disappearance from the screens, Miles and I are the hot topic again, as the public jumps to conclusions that don’t favor me.

How much worse will it be when the inevitable breakup is announced? I’ll no longer be the gold-digger girlfriend, just another poor little girl who so naively thought she could have it all. The tiny journalist who wasn’t enough for the star of the national team.

And in that future, Miles will be confined to my past.

I’ll look back and remember him coming home hours after practice with fresh groceries to cook dinner for us, some days carrying flowers, some days chocolates or candy, some days new books; all while I’m busy eating his food and overthinking—replaying every interaction from the very first one, struggling to reconcile the man I’ve been getting to know with the image I had in my head.

I need him to remain the villain, now more than before, or I’ll never be able to walk away unscathed—it’s selfishness as much as self-preservation—but that’s become an herculean task in which I don’t think I want to succeed.

I sigh, I think.

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