Page 147 of The Grand Ruin: Lance & Scarlet-Part One

“Who made the payments? It wasn’t her.”

“I can find out. It will be easier now we know it was her.”

I nod, running my tongue across my teeth.

He’s so fucking in love with her.

“What if I don’t tell him? What if I get rid of her another way, make it about something else instead of his money?”

“You don’t think he’ll leave her?” Ben asks, understanding my train of thought.

“I don’t know.”

I don’t know shit.

“Could you make her leave him? You’ve got that stag tomorrow night. You could plan something, something that will see her off.”

My nostrils flare as heat burns in my chest.

If she left him, he wouldn’t ever know it wasn’t real for her. He wouldn’t know that she used him.

I’d give my right arm not to know how utterly disposable I was to my family. To go back to before I knew what they’d done.

Anything for a better reason than the truth.

My eyes meet Ben’s, and I give him a nod.

TWENTY-SIX

Scarlet

If someone had told me this time last year that I’d be going to the shops to buy a pregnancy test for my brother’s girlfriend right now, I’d have laughed in their face.

“All right, girls, in and out this time.”

I smile as Lucy makes hurried strides ahead of Megan and me as we approach the pharmacy. We tried the closest shop to Nina and Mason’s place, but when Lucy reached the front of the checkout line and spotted one of her mum’s friends on the tills, she panicked and stuffed the test in the magazine section.

“Just let me pay for it this time,” Megan tells her, rolling her eyes at me. “Such a damn drama queen.”

“I’m sorry, but I do not need my mum asking questions. Because if it’s not mine, she’d want to know whose.”

“She’s not allowed to say anything, Luce,” I reassure her.

“Yeah, I know.” She shakes her head. “I just panicked.”

Lucy and I stand at the entrance as Megan goes in search of the tests. “How’s Nina today? She hasn’t been answering my calls.”

“She isn’t answering any of our calls. I think she’s worried one of us will say something to Mason when she’s so sure she isn’t actually pregnant.”

“Do you think she is?”

She side-eyes me, then shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s careful and takes her pill religiously. I think she’s just scared right now. And it doesn’t help that her mum has been hounding her again for money. It goes against everything that she is to say no. She’s all over the place.”

I frown. We arrived home from Bora Bora three days ago, and I only spoke to Nina a few days before that on the terrace. Had her mum called since? “I didn’t think she’d called in a while.”

“She hasn’t. But Sarah Anderson is a complete dick. A nasty woman who only cares about herself.”

“All right, let’s go make the little whorebag pee.”

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