Page 140 of Vengeful Princess

After an evening in her company, I was beginning to see why the others were so attracted to her. It wasn’t her looks - although, with her dark eyes, olive skin, and lush curves, her beauty was indisputable. It was more her aura.

At first glance, she was very hard to read. She gave nothing away. But when she let her guard down, as she had this evening, she lit up the room like the brightest star in the sky.

But beneath the superficial smiles and laughter, I could sense a deep well of pain and trauma. Not unlike my own. We’d both suffered immeasurably. It was impossible to know who’d hurt her, as Milo still hadn’t figured out her real identity, but I didn’t think she was here to carry out some nefarious plot.

For one thing, she’d made very little effort to spend time with me. If she was a journalist, she would have taken every opportunity to hang with me. Instead, she’d mostly ignored me in favor of my friends.

Part of me wondered if this was a cunning plan. Was she playing the long game? It was possible, but I sensed nothing amiss. And my instincts were usually spot-on, which was why the undercover journalist working in the admin office last year had raised my suspicions. That bitch had been too full on and persistent, always flirting and hovering around us.

I also trusted my friends. Of all of us, Kyril was by far the most suspicious, so if he liked her, she was legit. He would not have let her into our circle if he believed she was a danger to me or any of us.

And I hadn’t forgotten how she’d broken through Milo’s defenses. Milo was notoriously antisocial, but I knew he spent most of his nights with her. They weren’t fucking because Milo didn’t do sex, but he’d definitely crossed a line or two.

When I looked up, Kyril had Landon on the floor and was punching him in the gut. Not hard enough to cause any real damage, but enough to hurt like a bitch.

“Can you idiots quit it so I can think?” I groused. Dad wanted me down in London in a few days, for some stupid business dinner with some of his cronies. Knowing him, he’d invite Camilla along too, just to piss me off.

At least Landon was also heading down to the city, so we could hang out once our mutual commitments were done and dusted. It had been a while since we visited Madame Rosa’s club.

“Are you busy this Friday?” I asked Kyril. His fist paused mid-trajectory. Landon took advantage of the distraction and threw another punch, but Kyril blocked it easily while not even looking.

“Show off,” Lan muttered.

“Apologize and I’ll stop trying to ruin your pretty boy face,” Kyril retorted, still looking at me. “I am, why?”

“Oh, I just wondered. Lan and I are in London, so I thought we could make a night of it at Madame Rosa’s.”

Kyril jumped up like a cat, no longer bothered about beating on Lan. “I've got a job to do for my father.” He scowled, which told me all I needed to know. “But I wouldn’t be up for that, anyway.”

“Oh?” That surprised me. Kyril loved the girls at Madame Rosa’s. They were always happy to accommodate his more base desires.

Kyril shrugged. “I’m with Thea. I’m not fucking around on her. She’s all I want.”

My jaw dropped, my whiskey forgotten. “What, so you two are exclusive now?”

Lan sat up wiping blood from his lip. “No more nights at Madame Rosa’s for me, either. I’m a married man in all but name.” The smug way he said it made me want to ring his bell. I totally got why Kyril lost his shit with him.

“You sadbastardos,” Dario said from the doorway. The three of us looked up in surprise. None of us had noticed him hovering there like a foul smell. “You do know she fucks anything that moves, yeah?”

Kyril growled ominously and I rolled my eyes in exasperation. He’d only just calmed down.

“Since you have yet to explain how and why you think this, we’re not willing to listen to anything you say.”

Dario smirked. “I’d rather let you find out the hard way, like I did.” Then he scoffed some more and spun off back into his room, slamming the door in his wake. A few seconds later, some awful rock music began shaking the walls, making my ears bleed and my head hurt with an impending migraine.

Great.None of us would catch any sleep now. He really was a selfish cunt.

As Kyril grumbled about stupid Italianmudaks, my mind caught on his comment about how he spoke from experience.

We’d already guessed they knew each other, but not how or why, since neither of them were talking about it. Landon had tried asking Thea, but she clammed up and refused to say. All shewouldsay was Dario was an asshole and someone she’d known as a kid.

Milo had done some digging on him and discovered his father was some kind of bent accountant for the mob, but beyond that,we knew very little about his background. I honestly had no clue why he was here.

The asshole never seemed to study or attend classes, although from what Milo had told me after hacking into the college server, he was supposed to be majoring in math.

Maybe he was some kind of genius prodigy like Milo? Milo never attended classes either. He just submitted assignments and sat exams, usually passing them all with full marks.

I supposed it was possible Dario was like Milo, but it didn’t quite fit. My gut told me there was more to him than we could see, and given the college accommodation office had assigned him a room in our apartment, I needed to keep a close eye on him.

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