Page 11 of An Heir to Blood and Power

I’d surreptitiously checked Jimmy’s sisters’ socials that morning, trying to see what they’d done after the wedding, if they had acceptedherand what they thought ofher,the other woman who had stood up and spoken during our ceremony.

I hadn’t been able to find theiraccounts.

They’d not only thrown me out of the group chats, they’d blocked me on our socials.

My paltry friends and followers count was less than half what it had been only a week ago.

The only accounts still following me were my few high school buddies who weren’t in Jimmy’s circle.

Mostly my theatre nerd friends.

My very neglected theatre friends hadn’t abandoned me.

Yet,of course.

I had to remember that.

Yet.

My five-year desperate attempt to infiltrate the Johnson family hadn’t worked, and they’d mass-blocked me.

Nicolai was planning out loud about when he would dump me.

Everyone left, eventually. If my theatre nerd friends knew what was going on with me, they’d pull back and treat me like the pariah I was.

The truth hurts, you know.

CHAPTER 4

clementine

LEXI

Clementine, an astonishingly waify-slim, moonlight-blond woman with tilted gray-blue eyes, was already sitting in the rear seat of the SUV when Ueli (I’d finally figured out the security boss-guy’s name) picked us up from the Billionaire Sanctuary private club/hotel.

She was sitting in the middle of the rear seat with her knees tightly pressed together and her feet delicately perched on the axle hump in the vehicle’s floor.

Her dusty-pink houndstooth suit jacket and pencil skirt fit so snugly that they must have been custom-made for her, and she must not have gained or lost a freakin’ ounce since the tailor had stretched them around her reed-like form.

She looked me up and down, an unreadable expression in her eyes.

Nicolai held the door for me as I clambered into the tall SUV. The floor was almost as high as my knees, and crawling into the back seat elegantly was dang-near impossible.

So I crawled in.

The lightness in Nicolai’s voice seemed unbothered. “Lexi, may I introduce my cousin, Clementine Kaas. We were also atboarding school together in Switzerland. Clemmy, this is Lexi Romanov, my wife.”

My. Wife.

Again.

And he’d said it to yet someone else, and she was his cousin.

Man, he just threw that my-wife stuff around like it was the truth or something.

When I’d been lying alone in my twin bed back in my Scottsbluff apartment, I’d fantasized about Jimmy calling memy wife,even though he rarely even introduced me as his fiancée because “everyone already knew.”

I stuck out my hand at Clementine to shake as Nicolai shut the car door behind me, rocking the SUV a little on its struts. “Hi! Great to meetcha!”