Page 4 of The Villain's Beast
“What?”
“Your phone number,” he said again, slower. The tip of his tongue darted out of his mouth, worrying the place where his lips came together. “So we can meet up and do this assignment.”
“I’m surprised you’re going to work with me on it.”
His jaw moved back and forth, eyes flashing. “I can’t fail.”
“Neither can I.” I cleared my throat and stood up, clutching my book and my notebook against my chest, then I gave Fletcher Sinclair my phone number and ruined the rest of my life.
Chapter 3
Fletcher
Icould have completed the assignment on my own. With my eyes closed.
Because once, when I was younger, my father had told me to get good grades and that fell right under the third rule.
So, I could have done the assignment myself. I should have done the assignment myself.
I shouldn’t have asked Gideon for his phone number. Even though Gideon had only managed to somehow get more good looking over the months I’d spent ignoring him, my attraction to him wasn’t what had kicked me into gear. It was a burning hot rage toward my father and the video call we’d had over dinner where he’d laid out the details for the next eight years of my life for me.
“You’ll graduate top of your class at RHP,” he said, “and the same at RHU. Then you’ll marry.”
I hadn’t even managed a protest. Hadn’t gotten past opening my mouth, which was clearly too much of a response on its own. No sound had come out, but my father’s eyes narrowed just the same and that familiar cold fear raced through my bloodstream.
“And you’ll marry,” he repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
One day I was going to crack a molar for how hard he made me grit my teeth sometimes.
“Who do you want to marry, Fletcher?” he asked me next.
I licked my lips slowly, knowing there was a right answer and I needed to get it on the first try.
“Whoever you tell me to,” I said quietly.
“Even if it’s a woman?”
My breath caught in my throat, and I bit my lips together between my teeth wishing we were on a phone call instead of a video one. But my father was a calculating man and he knew how to read people’s tells, including mine. He always wanted the upper hand and he’d beaten the need for it into me at a very young age. The fact that I still slipped around him sometimes was my greatest weakness and we both knew it. My father made a habit of knowing everything about everyone around him, but I thought I’d at least kept that one revelation about my sexual preferences a secret.
“Whoever you tell me to,” I repeated.
“What if I want you to marry awoman, Fletcher?” His words burned as he sneered at me, the intensity of his hate pushing against me with every word. “What if I wanted you to fuck her on your wedding night and knock her up? Ensure the Sinclair family an heir.”
Choking on my spit, I blinked hard. “I’m a virgin, sir. I don’t?—”
He cut me off, raising a hand to silence me, even across state lines.
“I would strongly suggest you don’t stay that way for long. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
He dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth. “Your mother wants to hear about school now.”
And with that, I’d been dismissed.
After hanging up with my parents, I’d lost my appetite entirely and decided to instead pace my room until my heels ached. Years of biting back my feelings and my rage had narrowed down into a sometimes hours-long routine of talking myself off a figurative and sometimes literal ledge. It was nearly Saturday when the pain in my feet finally quieted the anger in my brain, and Gideon’s phone number burned a hole in my pocket, because even though I needed to get over myself and call him, I didn’t want to. If my father had any idea how his newest order to finish top of my class had fallen in direct contradiction to his steadfast demand offuck the North family, he would have had me out of school so fast I wouldn’t have even known which way was up.