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I shake my head, snorting. “Oh, Red, you were so much worse. You weren’t some old woman to parade me around on a leash to make her feel young again. You were this ridiculously hot redhead, all innocent and pure. Someone I might have actually wanted.” Giving in, I finally reach out and touch her leg, running my fingers over the pale skin. The frantic buzzing eases. “You’re defiant and determined. You’re all the things that he beat out of us a long time ago.”

“I understand,” she says, blinking down at my hand.

Touch me touch me touch…

I slide it away, fingertips dragging against flesh. “No, Verity, you don’t.”

But her green eyes snap abruptly to mine. “Over here, I’m a symbol of health and fertility—of the future. But it’s all false imagery to convince the rest of Forsyth that the Princes are above the rest. That we’re more civilized, with our masquerades and ceremonies. That he’s a loving and doting family man, when really, it’s the opposite. He’s a monster, and he’s created more monsters who, deep down, are rotten to the core.”

“So you think I’m a monster?” I bare my teeth, willing to take the title. I deserve it.

Some of that fire in her eyes bleeds away. “That’s the problem, actually. I don’t think you need to be. None of us do.”

“Us? You including yourself in that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

She sighs, leaning against the back of her chair, her hand resting on her belly. “You’re not the only one he created, Wick. He’s my father, too.”

It rankles inside, this thought that she sees herself as one of us when she’s only been his daughter for five months.Try nineteen years, I want to say. But my brothers and I… maybe we were the test run. The exercise to work out all the kinks. If he’s created us, then in some way, we’ve created him. Taught him all the best ways of controlling hurt, angry, lonely people.

Already, he’s made her into something to be used. Isolated.

“God, we’re really all fucked, aren’t we?” I take a bitter swallow of champagne and stare across the river, looking at the sun as it dips behind the trees. Trudie is probably losing her shit downstairs. There will be consequences for abandoning her, but I just can’t seem to care.

She’s not the one I want to touch me.

“Julian,” Verity says suddenly.

I lower the bottle. “Huh?”

There’s this very particular way her hair sways in the wind. Not heavy and full of hairspray, but light and floating. Right now, it’s billowing around her shoulders, her eyelashes fluttering as she basks in the breeze. “For the baby’s name. Julian. What do you think?”

I pull a face as she looks at me. “I think he’ll get his ass kicked on the ice with a name like that.”

“Hmm.” Her lips purse. “Pace told me he thinks I should pick out a name. It wasn’t really on my radar before, but now I keep thinking about it.” She wrinkles her nose. “So that’s a ‘no’ on Julian?”

At this moment, after dropping all this truth on one another, I want to be able to tell Verity I care, but I just can’t. I don’t want anything to do with this baby. It’s just another cuff linking me back to Father.

“Call it whatever you want.” I pick up a tart and give her a wink. “As long as it’s not Julian.”

She picks up a macaroon and tosses it at me, but I snag it easily out of the air and pop it in my mouth.

“You’re a pig,” she mutters, the playful glint in her eyes softening any sting to it.

“I’ma pig?” I gesture to the trays. “You’ve eaten a dozen of those little cake things in ten minutes flat.”

Her jaw drops, laughter spilling from her throat. “I had to! You were going to eat them all!”

A gust of wind blows off the river, and Verity shivers, wrapping her arms around her upper body.

Inspiration strikes.

“Come here,” I say, beckoning her over.

The look she gives me is wary.Fair.

“You’re cold, but I’m not ready to go back down there,” I say, shifting my legs to either side of the lounge chair to make room. “I won’t bite,” I smirk, “hard.”

There’s one long, last beat before she rises off her chair, turning to sit between my legs.Finally, I think, wrapping my arms around her. It’s just as good as I remember from those short nights in her bed, folding her into me like a new organ. Nudging my nose into her hair, I pull in the scent of it, different from how she smells when she’s in East End. There’s more lavender now, but the scent of rose is still there, peeking stubbornly underneath.