Page 33 of Lavish
Yvonne fell silent.
Dante took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I’m talking about an arrangement. A merger. Permanent. So you both can’t fuck the other over.”
I blinked. “A merger?”
“You end this goddamn feud right now. And I’m not talking about some fake handshake and a smile. What’s something in this town that can ensure that between both of you?”
We all looked up at each other, and it was like the air got sucked from the room.
“A marriage,” Vincent said reluctantly.
But then, all eyes turned to me.
“Fuck no.” I shook my head, the anger rising in my chest. “You think I’m just going to marry into their family like nothing happened?”
“You will,son.For all our sakes,” Pops spoke up.
“Then who will I marry? Gigi?”Please don’t say it. Don’t say it.
Yvonne looked at me. “Serena.”
CHAPTER 7
Serena
A FEW HOURS EARLIER…
The bartender handedJenese her French Blonde, and she took a sip. “Perfect.” She smirked at me.
“Why are you here?” I forced my fingers to loosen their grip around my glass, but my heart was another story. It hammered against my ribs, panic coiling tight beneath my skin.
“Don’t be like that, sugar. It’s me.”
I hadn’t seen her in years.
I made sure of that.
Yethereshe was.
The woman who pulled me out of my shell and shoved me into fire. The one who taught me how to read a room—and how to tear it apart if it didn’t bend for me. The first person who ever saw past the nervousness and timidness and told me,You could be more.
“I don’t do ghosts,” I said, taking a sip of a whiskey that scorched all the way down.
We’d met at a party years ago. Mama had just torn me down in front of two board members. Said I wasn’t ready. Said I needed polish. Said I was “too emotional.”
That same night, Jenese put a glass in my hand and said,“Fuck what they think. Wanna know how to run shit?”
I did.
Jenese tapped her long acrylic nails on the table. “I missed you. And I think you missed me too. We’re just two friends having drinks?—”
“We’re notanything.”
Jenese thrived on the chase. If I let her know I was nervous, she would be on me like a fly on shit.
“You used to consider me the mother you never had.” Jenese pouted.
“You were never that to me.”
