Page 340 of Poor Little Rich Girl

He steps back, looking satisfied. Mackenzie falls into Antony’s arms. He wraps her body in his, holding her close as he lays a kiss on the top of her head.

What?

Why is he looking at her like that, like she holds the stars in her eyes?

Somewhere back in the recesses of my mind, the pieces are fitting together. But I can’t access them through the fog of drugs. I don’t even know if I can trust the blurred, dreamlike images before me.

Antony and Mackenzie? What the fuck?

Mackenzie peers down at me, her eyes sparkling with satisfaction.

“Look at her face all twisted up,” she smirks. “She’s trying to understand. Should we explain?”

“That might make you a villainous cliche, babe.” Antony looks at his watch. “On the other hand, Nero’s still cleaning up at the docks, so we’ve got time. Whatever you want to do.”

“I want to tell her everything. I want my sister to understand exactly how we fooled her. I want her to die knowing how the real queen took back her throne.”

Mackenzie leans against the side of the coffin, trailing her finger over my arm. I can see her doing it, but I can’t feel it.

“Once upon a time,” she says in a singsong voice, “there lived a wicked king and queen in their castle on the hill. The queen became pregnant, and the wicked king wasn’t happy with the size of his empire, so he sold one of his children to a criminal in exchange for some treasure.”

He sold me.

My birth father didn’t want me. I wasn’t a person to him, just a commodity.

The pain of it slices through my chest, as raw as the first day I found out about it. I didn’t think I could feel pain after the guys left and my sister pumped me full of animal tranquilizer, but the human body is amazing, right?

Mackenzie continues, “One princess was left behind – the unlucky one. While her sister went off to live a magical life in a far-off land, the princess endured years of torture at the cruel king’s hands. She thought there was no way out of her fate, until one night when she helped the drunken queen into bed. As the queen tossed and turned and ranted and raved, she admitted everything. That she’d given birth to twins. That the king had drugged her and taken her baby and she only knew about it because she kept a secret diary. That the princess had a sister she’d never ever met, who lived across town with the handsome crime lord.

“So the princess went to find her sister. She just wanted to meet her twin. She’d been so lonely, you see, trapped in the castle with only the evil king and queen for company. She wasn’t allowed friends, not even the Golden Boy who wanted to save her and make her good, even though she knew she could never be good. But then the princess saw her sister’s life.”

Mackenzie isn’t stroking me like a cat now. She scratches her nails along my arm, drawing deep rivulets of blood. Claw marks.

“I spent months following you,” she hisses, dropping the sing-song voice. “Your father thought he was oh so clever hiding you away, but you weren’t hard to find. I rented a shitty apartment opposite your house. I even got a job as a waitress to work some of the August parties. And do you know what I saw? I saw a girl who didn’t appreciate how fucking good she had it. A mopey, sulky little shit whining that she couldn’t go outside or go to school like normal kids because she was just too special. Because the handsome crime lord kept her in a gilded cage. Well, fuck you very much, Claudia. You got the life that I deserved, and you squandered it being sad and bitter. They weren’t even your real parents, but they loved you. Why should you have that and not me? So I took them away from you.”

She… wait, what?

But I can’t interrupt Mackenzie. I can barely even see her now – thick, grey fog is closing in around my eyes again. It takes all my will to keep my focus on Mackenzie and not give in to the bone-deep weariness in my limbs that calls me back to oblivion.

“But first, I needed a way to get close to you,” she says. “I needed to know what I was dealing with. So I went down to Colosseum one night and introduced myself to the man of my dreams.”

Mackenzie throws her arms around Antony. Pain stabs at my chest. How ironic that the only part of my body with feeling can feel the sharp twist of Antony’s treachery.

Never forget that only the ones you love can betray you.

“She gave me a hell of a fright,” Antony says, holding Mackenzie close. “I thought you’d somehow figured out a way to sneak out of Uncle Julian’s house. But Mackenzie explained everything. She showed me the evidence she’d found – the doctored birth certificate, the mysterious disappearance of a midwife and two doctors at the exclusive facility where both mothers gave birth. And there was the evidence of my eyes – she looks exactly like the cousin I’d grown to hate.”

No, Antony. It’s not true. You were my friend. You looked out for me when I had no one else. You don’t hate me. It can’t be true.

It can’t…

“That’s right.” Antony leans over the coffin and spits on my face. I don’t feel his saliva roll down my cheek. I’m too numb now to even feel the knife of his betrayal twisting in my chest. “I despise you. I have ever since the day Julian told me you would be his successor, and that my job was to watch over you always. All the time he’d been training me, giving me tests, showing me how the empire worked, I thought he was molding me in his image, ready to adopt me as his heir the way his precious Roman emperors did with their successors. But instead, he takes me aside and tells me that he’s training me to be your tribune, your advisor, your protector.” Antony wrinkles his face. “Your babysitter.”

No.

Nonononono.

All my life you’ve been by my side, you’ve watched out for me. You pulled me out of the grave that night. How can you hate me? How can you…

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