Page 119 of Bad Little Bride

And…

“Holy shit,” I breathe. “Katana is the final Greyson girl.”

Chapter

Twenty-Four

Boston

I didn’t sleep,not for a single moment, and it didn’t help that Enzo went to play bad Batman in the middle of the night, leaving me to my thoughts with no possibility of distraction.

Katana Fikile is really Katana Henley, heir to the east and the completion of the cardinal compass that is the girls of Greyson. She’ll be at the prep school come fall, attending as nothing but a tadpole in a pond of sharks, swallowed and spit on over and over again with zero respect until she begins to earn it, inch by exhausting inch.

If she can even manage to do that, and based on what I know of how she was raised, I’m not convinced. The girl has likely never even seen an R-rated movie until she found the little bit of freedom the mansion has afforded her, so our little show in the kitchen yesterday may very well have melted her skin off from the heat of embarrassment alone.

She wouldn’t last five minutes at The Enterprise, and she’ll be expected to take charge of the girls there? Run anunderground gambling ring full of girls in lingerie and spotlight stages?

There’s no fucking way.

She’ll be chewed up and spit out…probably by my twin.

Rocklin can’t stand weak women. To be a Greyson girl means to be the opposite, and the girls they bring into the life of scheming and underground, unsuspecting crime are no different.

I can’t allow Katana to step onto that campus as a Fikile and disgrace the name everyone in our world knows to fear. Her fault or not, Enzo will not suffer from her mishaps, nor will I.

Being a pretty, perfect little princess is a common role for daughters of powerful men, but even the prissiest of us are taught to protect ourselves.

Which is exactly why, at six in the morning, my hair is tied back in the tightest ponytail I could manage, and I’m dressed in spandex shorts and a sports bra, slipping through the door in my room that leads to hers.

I pause instantly, having expected it to simply open right next to her bed—or that must have been what I expected when I initially found out where it led, as an unexpected sense of confusion washes over me the second my eyes fall on the space. The space that isnother room, but more of a mini room that gaps from hers to ours, a giant screen taking up nearly the entire wall with a single chair across from it. Dozens upon dozens of small squares are lit up, the security camera feeds playing across them before a few split off to different views. I spot my old room instantly, noticing that every single corner of it is displayed on these screens and they don’t switch to another space. No, they stay as they are, not lapping a second of time.

“He really was watching me,” I mumble to myself, a small smile on my lips.

Some might get pissy over something like this, but I quite like the idea. Would I have been upset about it had I seen this at a different time? Maybe, but that’s irrelevant now, isn’t it?

Refocusing, I push out a sharp breath. With an overly aggressive fist, I bang on the door in rapid repetition until I hear movement on the other side, but what I don’t expect is a giant male with a shaved head to tear it open, his AK pointed straight at my head.

I raise a brow, and he visibly pales, dropping to his knees with a bowed head.

“Miss Revenaw, forgive me.”

I ignore him completely, stepping around to find a wide-eyed, half-asleep Katana.

“What—”

“Get up,” I cut her off. “Dress like me and be in the hall in five minutes.”

She draws her blankets up to her chin. “Please don’t kick me out.”

“Four minutes.” I head out her open bedroom door, the one the guard must have barreled through, and don’t look back.

To her credit, she’s in the hall with one to spare.

She follows me down the stairs, and only when we reach the bottom floor do I realize I have no idea where I’m going. I’ve never seen the gym, and I’m not about to ask her to show me around what’s supposed to be my own home, so I head out the back terrace instead, following the path Grandma led me down and out onto the sand.

I start jogging, and eventually, she catches on and follows after me, her footsteps clunky and the toes of her shoes dipping into the sand because she has no idea how to be light on her feet. It’s only going to make it harder for her to manage the distance I’m about to take her on.

We get about a half mile before her open-mouth pants reach me and I shake my head, doing my best to ignore her. At three quarters, she begins to whine.

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