Page 158 of Vengeful Princess

I shivered. The thought of the big Russian punishing me was surprisingly hot, which blew my feminist credentials to smithereens.

“What are you smirking at?” Eden asked as I dropped into a chair opposite her. I quickly sent Kyril a pointing middle finger emoji and shut down the messaging app before he replied.

“Nothing.” Her eyes narrowed as I took a huge bite of cake and moaned a little in appreciation. Cake was something I’d fallen in love with while here.

At home, cake was a rare treat. My father didn’t have a sweet tooth, so our cook mostly made savory food. We only had cakes on special occasions, like birthdays. And that was only if the cook managed to evade Torrance’s eagle eye.

One time, he’d seen her baking a cake and worked out why. The bastard waited until she tried bringing it up to the attic and then smashed it on the stairs, right in front of Verity. My sister had cried for hours, devastated at losing something she’d spent weeks looking forward to.

I hated that man and his mindless cruelty.

“We need dresses for the Christmas Ball,” Eden announced once I’d eaten the last bite of cake and washed it down with some coffee.

Landon sauntered over, ignoring interested looks from the female students in our vicinity. His damp hair told me he’d come from the gym. The memory of what we did in the medical room made me shiver, and not from the cold.

“Dresses? They better be sexy dresses,” he told me with a wink. “It would be an awful shame if you hid that banging body.”

My eyes narrowed. “So I’m a pretty bauble for you to dangle on your arm all evening?”

Eden coughed and tried to hide her smile, but Landon seemed oblivious to the danger.

“You’re pretty spectacular and I want people to know you’re mine, so yes?”

“I’m not a fucking Christmas bauble, Landon! And for the record, I hate parties, so I probably won’t go.”

Eden looked at me in surprise. “I thought you had fun at the Masked Ball?”

He looked confused. “Masked Ball?”

Oh shit.Eden didn’t know the guys were unaware of my presence at the ball that night. I tried to glare at her, but she was too busy grinning at Landon.

“Yeah, you know, the one at Blackwood Manor? Cinderella here scored an invitation and took her pumpkin for a ride. I hear it was a fun night. Lots of crazy shit.”

I may have embellished my lies, mostly to entertain her.Fuck my life.

Landon turned to me, puzzled. “You were at the Forsyth Masked Ball? How come I didn’t see you?”

“Err, I didn’t stay long. Popped in and then left real quick. Like I said, parties aren’t my thing.”

“You probably didn’t recognize her in her sexy dress, mask, and red Jessica Rabbit wig,” Eden continued, further digging my grave. I loved the girl, but she really needed to read the room.

“A red wig, eh?” I could tell from his expression he’d put two and two together. “Did you enjoy my little show in the pool house, Cinderella?” he asked with a dangerous glint in his eye. “I still have your shoe. Feel free to come and pick it up this evening. I’m sure the guys wouldloveto know you were at the masked ball.”

“Oh, she told you?” We all looked up to find Milo standing there, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“You knew?” Landon hissed, his gaze flitting between me and Milo as my life unraveled.

“Should I have kept my mouth shut?” Eden whispered. I shook my head. It wasn’t her fault my life was a tangled web of threads. Honestly, it was a miracle nobody had figured out who my father was yet.

Dario knew who I was, but he hadn’t said a word to the guys. The fact he’d stayed silent made me uneasy. Given how he hated me, he had no reason to keep his mouth shut unless someone, aka my father, had ordered him to stay quiet. Which meant he was here at my father’s behest.

I knew Dario’s father and mine still worked together. Fausto Peretti was my father’s accountant. He moved the money around, funneling cash from the illegal businesses into legit ones while minimizing my father’s tax liabilities. My father didn’t trust many people, but he did trust Fausto.

Dario had always planned to leave the life he’d been born into, taking me with him, but it was abundantly clear that his plan had gone up in smoke. Or, more likely, everything Dario had whispered to me during our stolen afternoons was a lie.

He’d lied about everything else, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume he’d never had any intentions of walking away from my father’s fucked up world.

“Yes, I knew,” Milo confirmed.

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