Page 77 of Reign By Wrath

“Cut the shit!”

I laughed out loud. At this point, I was being pleasant to piss her off. Weird that kindness was a trigger for Saylor Burkhardt.

“Where is it?”

“By it, I assume you mean this.” I wiggled the phone above my head. “Let’s toddle up to your room. This is going to take a while.”

A frustrated breath flared her nostrils. Opening up to me on the phone hadn’t softened her a fraction. Saylor did not wish to spend more time with me than was necessary, but this was. I was ending T.O.D. for good. Everyone who was hurt by them would receive justice.

The justice that Winter deserved.

“Follow me,” she barked, marching up the steps. “Don’t loiter, don’t gawk, and don’t pretend like you belong.”

“Whatever you say, cuz.”

The tense line of her shoulders showed me what she thought of that.

Saylor took me down the same hallway from that night I spent with Alistair—eating, joking, and talking of the days we didn’t get to spend together.

Stepping inside Saylor’s room, the pang of hurt fled under awe. Think of a luxury department store with high-priced items everywhere and all displayed in the perfect arrangement to make you want, want, want. Think of it, and you still wouldn’t be close to what it was like walking into the fever dream of towering ceilings, a revolving bed, purple chandeliers, and a wall of windows that overlooked a garden even more magnificent than the Wilsons’. I could throw my shoe and hit something I could sell and feed a family of five for a year.

“Wait there,” Saylor said, “and don’t touch anything.”

Saylor disappeared through double doors, then came back out carrying a magazine. She ripped out a couple pages and laid them on the desk chair. “Okay, now sit.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I slapped the pages off. “I’m not a dog.”

“My mistake,” she shot back, smirking. “How am I supposed to know if Dregs are house-trained?”

“Okay, just for that, the price went up.” I stuffed Everleigh’s phone back in my pocket. “I know to you, empathy is just something you read in a book once, but now you’ve lived it. You know what it’s like to not be a Royal. You know what Dregs go through. The difference isyour ass deserves it!”

Her jaw clenched.

“You attacked, mocked, betrayed, and deceived the Royals. You gave them a reason to ice you out, so imagine what it’s like to go through it every day for no damn reason. Treating people like this just because they don’t have as much money or connections as the Royals? Do I really need to tell you how stupid that is?

“So, if you want to be queen again, you’ll do it right this time. The current system has to go. The Royal line as you’ve known it is done.”

She flashed me big eyes. “Want to elaborate on what the hell that is supposed to mean?”

“Everyone is so obsessed with climbing up the ladder. Five guys tortured and drove my sister to suicide to leapfrog a few rungs. You say you wouldn’t have let that all happen if you’d known the truth, but I read through a few of these dares on the ride over. Winter isn’t the only one. Royals are using the club to bully everyone on the outside to their lowest point. Prove that you care, Saylor. Put a stop to it.”

Saylor dropped on her ridiculously large bed. “What am I supposed to do? This nasty club is finished. Gone today. But afterward, I can order Royals to be nice to Dregs all I want. It won’t make a difference.”

“It will if there’s no longer Dregs and Royals. We’re all the same.”

Saylor tossed her head. “The Royal line is more than a bunch of rich kids ranking themselves. It’s a connection of families ranging from those most threatening to the Burkhardts to the least.”

“That’s how they’re ranked?” My head spun. “And that’s why the Wilsons are right below you. You don’t control any of the business sectors they dominate, and they’ve got a boatload of blackmail to sink you.”

Rolling her eyes, she nodded. “Royals climb the ladder by making more money, building stronger alliances, and taking more and more pieces of our pie. Dregs are Dregs because they don’t matter to the Burkhardts. It can’t be that way for the Royals. Their companies, strategic marriages, and the rest don’t just disappear.”

I smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

An hour later, we were neck-deep in the garbage from the site and arguing over what to do about it.

“It’s the same problem,” Saylor said. “We can’t turn this over to the captain. I might as well finance her yacht and third vacation home myself. The first thing she’ll do is auction off the chance to make their evidence disappear.”

“What if we went to the media?” I offered up. “Put it all out there.”

---