Page 21 of Vicious Prince (Violent Kingdom)

He shrugs. "It's nothing."

"Come on, spill," I say. "If I can't have any excitement in my life, at least I can live vicariously through you."

"Well, I might've met a girl."

"Really," I say. "And what might this girl's name be?"

"Never you mind about that," he replies. He pulls two travel brochures out of his back pocket. "Fiji or the Caribbean?" he says. I make a face. "Poor little rich boy," I mimic him. "Can't decide where to take your new bang buddy?"

He rolls his eyes. "Fiji it is."

It's then that I notice the small suitcase in the corner. "When are you leaving?" I ask, suddenly alarmed.

He shrugs. "Tomorrow, I guess. Whenever we can fire up the jet."

"Nathan, a Capulet jet is not going to take you all the way to Fiji. You have to get on a commercial flight for that."

"Ugh," he says, frowning. “I know, right? We're flying down to LAX in the company jet, meeting the commercial flight there. Peasants, they’ll call us.”

"Again," I say, "Poor little rich boy."

"I'll send you a postcard," he says.

"How about I just stow away in your luggage?" I suggest. "I think that would be less painful to everybody. Daddy can forge my signature on the marriage certificate, put one of my embryos in a gestational carrier. Jesus, I don't even need to be here at all."

Nathan starts fussing with my hair. "That's true," he says, "But you're forgetting the most important part."

"What's that?" I ask.

"The part where Joshua Grayson gets to wear you as arm candy."

"Isn't that what Photoshop is for?"

Nathan laughs. "I guess. Anyway, they're not going to let you leave the country, because we all know you'd never come back."

"Well, the least you can do is pick me up a souvenir, okay?"

"Done," Nathan says, moving my hair into the exact same style it was in when he started fussing with it.

"It's going to be fine, Avery," Nathan says, suddenly serious. "Just get through tonight, and take it as it comes. I don't even think it will be as bad as you think it is."

I turn on my little podium to face my cousin directly. "Nathan," I reply, "Come on, man. Don’t bullshit me. You and I both know it's going to be worse."

Chapter Five

AVERY

No more minutes left on the clock; we’re at zero hour, here. No cataclysmic natural disaster has slit the earth and swallowed me whole; no superhero has swept in to rescue me.

This ishappening.

I need somewhere to wipe my palms; but the puffy skirt of my gown doesn’t seem appropriate.

“Avery Capulet, everyone!”

Five hundred pairs of eyes look my way as I sashay down the middle of the glass-ceilinged ballroom my father has decked out with nauseating arrays of flowers, of twinkling fairy lights and enough champagne to fill the San Francisco Bay that shimmers beyond the heights of our palatial hotel.

Really, that is what it’s called: The Palatial Hotel. Because it’s like a damn palace built on the edge of the financial district, full of Austrian crystal chandeliers and Calcutta marble floors.

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