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Chuffing, he frowns. “There’s something you must understand about their father, Princess. He must seem to you a very cold, callous man. He is, of course, but there is one thing Rufus Ashby holds sacred above all things. Creation.”

Mouth tensing, I look up at the sky, still feeling Lex’s deposit drying in my panties. “To create is to reign.” The words taste like bile to me.

“There’s more than one way to create life.” Danner nods at the dead vines and wilted things. “Perhaps this one can bring you the peace you went into that dark nook searching for.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And if it doesn’t?”

He winks, taking another sip. “Well, it still makes a fine tea spot for these old bones.”

15

Verity

“Go around back please.”

“Are you sure, Miss?” Danner’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.

With zero hesitation, I reply, “Yes.”

I hear the flip of the turn signal, and the vehicle turns down the narrow alley. For a week I’ve been dreaming of getting back here—home—but now that the gray building is in front of me, I’m nothing but a tangled mess of nerves.

But I haven’t missed a family dinner since I was a teenager, and just because I’m the Princess and my mother is furious at me, doesn’t mean anything changes.

The car stops, the engine shutting off. I smooth down the gray skirt and ignore the pink rug burn still visible across my knees as I open the door.

“Princess, you’re supposed to let me do that,” Danner says, moving slow as… well, as slow as a really old man.

“I’m just excited,” I say, meeting him around the front of the car.

“Is that why you’ve chosen to come in the back door?” He frowns, the judgment clear in his tone. I shouldn’t be sneaking in. It’s not very Princess-like of me.

“I just haven’t really seen anyone since the ball.” I take a deep breath, scanning the alley. “I guess I’d like my entrance to be a bit more low-key.”

“Regardless,” he says, looking suddenly severe, “you hold your head high. You’re the Princess. The creator of the next heir.”

Maybe to East End I’m those things, I think, heading to the back door,but to everyone inside, I’m a traitor.

He follows several steps behind. He’s not just here as my driver–that much I’ve sussed out on my own. Danner is my chaperone. Ashby’s ears. The Princes’ eyes. I’d hold it against him, except he doesn’t bother dressing this up as anything less.

The hallway I enter is dark, nothing but a flickering fluorescent light buzzing overhead. Even back here, I can smell the spicy scent of spaghetti sauce and garlic bread cooking in the kitchen. Everything is richly familiar and I catalog it as if it’s been years instead of a mere week. The thin carpet. The scuffed walls. The badly painted Bruin logo above the locker room door.

I stop at the door of the cutslut lounge, taking a steeling breath. “Wait here.”

“Miss, I can’t—”

Turning to him, I shake my head. “It’s the women’s locker room, Danner. I can handle myself.”

He stands by the wall, hands crossed at the waist like a bodyguard. What he thinks he can do to protect me here, I don’t know. The man is ancient. Even the greenest DKS boys could snap him in half. But if this is what it takes to get out of that mansion, I’ll take it.

Pressing my palm flat against the door, I shake off my nerves and step inside. Voices bounce off the walls, the nonstop chattering of the girls who call this their sanctuary filling the space with lively laughter. The sound feels like home, and I tuck myself in the corner by the door to bask in it, just listening.

“That blue looks good on you—brings out your eyes.” I recognize Kathleen’s voice among the group, my chest warming.

“Aww, thanks, babe,” Maggie, a pretty brunette who joined the cutsluts last year, replies. “How’s it going with Kazinski? Any progress?”

“If you call him asking me for anal progress,” she laughs, “then sure, why not.”

A locker slams. “At least he didn’t ask for a threesome with some random girl he picked up at the last Fury. That’s what he did to Laura.”