Page 131 of Green Flag
“I thought it was you,” Pedro said with a smile. “I couldn’t mistake you anywhere.”
My laugh was forced as I tried to see past him to Luca answering questions, half-faced away from me.
Damn it.
I knew how to punch now if I needed to.
And Luca had said that if Pedro so much as touched me, he’d ‘handle’ him.
But not here. Not where there were witnesses and cameras. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Hello, Pedro,” I said, and I wanted to avoid looking at him, but with the crowds on either side of us, pushing us closer, he stepped forward, not a foot away.
I forced a smile, then added all the warmth to it from my tours where I’d had to pretend to be lovely.
Though it wasn’t just him. Because he had his hand around the waist of a young woman. My age? Maybe younger?
“Surprised to see you here,” he said and gestured around us.
I scoffed.Yeah, right, Pedro. As if you haven’t constantly been on my heels for nearly a decade.The thought surprised me — the harshness of it. The disgust.
But, that was right, he might have loved me, but he’d used me.
It just hadn’t sunk in yet.
“Here? In London? Where I live? After you said you’d ‘see me soon’?”
“You haven’t spent Christmas with your family in years,” he said with a shake of his head, ignoring the remark about his message in front of the woman beside him.
“I’ve been busy,” I said stiffly.
“Indeed,” he sighed and squeezed the young woman closer to him. She was smiling. “But I meant here as in a fight. You hate violence.”
“I just wasn’t any good at violence before,” I said, a sweet smile accompanying my threat. “But I was here to give support.”
“You were here supporting Tyler?” he asked with a frown, looking over his shoulder to where I’d been sitting.
“No. Obviously not.”
“You were sat—”
“Keeping tabs, are you?”
I looked over the clueless woman. She was petite, with dark hair and a polite smile on pink lips. For someone related to him, her complexion was far paler than his warm, dark tones. “Nice to meet you,” I said and offered her my hand. “My name is Everly Bacque. I assume you’re his niece?”
I’d never met his niece before, but I knew she was as interested in horses as I had been. She screamed rich, with her long, glossy hair. We were meant to go to riding school together in the summers when I stayed with Pedro when I was a teenager.
She blinked and shook her head.
“Niece?” Pedro asked. “I don’t have a niece.”
The stadium went quiet.
Because that wasn’t what I remembered.
“Your niece who has her own stables,” I said as if he were stupid. Was there an incident in prison that knocked his head and gave him long-term amnesia?
“Your niece,” I said again, desperate for something to twig and for him to say ‘gotcha!’ or something. Anything.
