The Lie That Traps (Lies and Truths Book 1)

26. Gulliver

GULLIVER

Everything I thought I knew about Izzy is turning out to be completely wrong, and I feel like a fucking asshole for judging her simply because of her last name. In my defense, the rest of her family are toxic, manipulative liars, and I assumed she was just like them, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Everything that’s happened to her in the last seventy-two hours is entirely my fault. From the moment I saw her screaming her own name, I used her, and I blackmailed her. I made her an unwilling accomplice in my scheme to convince her parents to give up on their ambition of making me their new son-in-law. Then I refused to hear her when she tried to tell me what impact my actions would have on her.

When she opened her hotel room door and I saw her face, I was torn between wanting to throw up and wanting to hunt her parents down and fucking kill them. Izzy was attacked, but she isn’t a victim. She’s too strong for that. Instead of falling apart, she’s determined to fight back, and the more bloodthirsty she gets, the sexier I find her. I’ve been attracted to Izzy since the day she came to dinner pretending to be her sister. The timid, innocent side of her is alluring, but the way she looked me in the eye and unflinchingly told me that her being attacked was my fault changed everything.

I don’t want to use her anymore. I want to fucking own her. I want to hold her close and make sure that nothing and no one ever hurts her again. I’m young, I’m rich, I have influence and power, and I’m only a fucking teenager. The world is my fucking oyster, but tonight, the direction of my future changed. Now I’ll use my money to help her. I’ll wield my influence to aid her and my power to protect her. I’ll be her weapon; she just needs to tell me where to aim.

It’s been three days since we found her at the hotel. Her family doesn’t know where she is, and apparently, they don’t care, despite the fact that the last time they saw her, she was broken and bloody. Davis has had to talk me out of paying Barnaby Rhodes a visit more than once, and if it wasn’t for Izzy’s plan to destroy her family, I’d have gone and beaten the shit out of him already.

Even though our lives now feel intrinsically linked, I still don’t know Izzy that well. But I can already see how special she is, and it baffles me—hell, it baffles all of us—how her parents can have just disregarded her as a person, as anything more than just a lookalike, to step in for Penelope as and when they need her.

Izabella is everything her sister isn’t. She’s strong and determined and angry, but even as she plots her revenge, she’s not being cruel. The guys and I have suggested a hundred ways we could make her family suffer, but Izzy is only interested in watching them hang themselves with their own rope.

Her plan is simple but brilliant, she steps out of the shadows and into the limelight with me and the guys behind her. Then she sits back and watches as Penelope fails AP algebra or one of her other classes without her sister to cheat for her, and the Rhodeses lose it all.

The list of rules Penelope has to follow is exhaustingly long, and if she fails to adhere to a single one, she forfeits everything. Personally, I’d prefer watching them all explode in an epic ball of fire, but Izzy prefers the subtlety of her own version of revenge, and I suppose it’s sort of poetic justice when you think about it.

Izzy is a fucking enigma. With all the bullshit her family has thrown at her, she could easily have become jaded and hardened, but she hasn’t. She’s sweet and funny and pure enough not to let this cruel world we inhabit change her.

In the days we’ve spent together, Izzy has settled into our group like she’s always been one of us. Despite Kip’s obvious crush, she seems to have happily friend-zoned him, laughing and joking with my friends while we watch movies or play video games. Her face is still a mess, but the bruises are fading to an ugly yellow color, and the cut on her cheek has healed to nothing more than a small red line.

The interview with The New York Times is scheduled for the end of the week, and although our engagement might be fake, I’m more than happy to tell the world she’s mine. The level of animalistic possession I feel for the girl sleeping in the room next to mine and wearing the ring I slid onto her finger is all-consuming.

In the past three days, my guilt has morphed into something darker and twisted. I hate knowing that she was hurt because of me, but instead of apologizing with words, I want to make it up to her on my knees with my face between her tempting thighs.

I want Izzy to be mine. I want the ring she’s wearing to be a real sign of my ownership. I want the fake image we’re going to show the world to be real. But I don’t deserve her, and until I do, I’m going to keep the filthy, depraved fantasies I have for her hidden inside my mind.