Chapter 4
FOUR
GEMMA
Under a ceiling dripping with Swarovski crystals designed to look like stars, I lingered among the glitterati, smiled for photos, swiveled and laughed with socialites. Smile. Laugh. Pose. No longer Gemma, but Gemma Crowne, America’s Princess.
One by one, men approached. In the back of my mind I heard the nasally, rapid-fire drawl of the auctioneer: Ding ding, step right up, America’s Princess is for sale. I gave them my Gemma Crowne smile, my head a mental Rolodex of information my mother had stocked.
He’s from old money.
He’s from new money.
He’s broke—but royal—and looking to marry into money.
Sure, he’s old, but he’s too old to expect sex and his family line goes back to the Stuarts.
I was careful with my responses—crafted.
Every word I spoke a headline.
Every photo a potential to go viral.
I had perfected this. The ability to be present and disappear at the same time.
The storm outside had broken, no longer raining a sheet of metal. My mother had already commented on how it had fucked up the valet—not in so many words. To her horror, people would have to fetch their own cars. It was now softly drizzling. Far away lightning crashed into the black ocean waves.
My eyes drifted to some old and famous rug my mother had hung for display, and the two girls staring at it, pretending to care.
Blaire’s curly black hair was done up in diamonds.
The hair that Kennedy colored weekly, and that gained her millions of followers, was dyed a soft pastel pink and straightened down to her waist. She’d toned down some of the e-girl look that made her famous, a piercing removed from her nostril, the pink in her hair made more acceptable by a headband.
They saw me and pushed their tongues into their cheeks, mimicking a blow job.
I laughed.
“Gemma?”
Oh. Right.
I blinked back into the dead eyes of some…tech mogul? I don’t know. He was explaining crypto to me. Guess what he’d said wasn’t supposed to be funny.
Oops.
“So…you were saying I should invest in Bitcoin, because it’s more established or something?” I twirled the yellow diamond pendant at my throat. “Altcoins are too volatile for someone like me?”
“Uh-huh.” His eyes dropped to it, to my neckline and the subtle cleavage designed to catch attention without being obvious.
“Hmm…but what about staking? Or are you just, like, holding your coins?”
His eyes grew, coming back to mine.
Bad Gemma. Tansy Rule #1: Let them be smarter.
“Uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m gonna get a drink.”
I watched him walk away, still playing with the pendant.
Noticing a lull in the meat market, Kennedy and Blaire beckoned me to them.
Kennedy raised a small bag with candy-colored pills into the air, just as someone stepped before me, blocking them.
Brown hair, green eyes—he was like every other man here with the same arrogant, self-important countenance.
“Gemma.”
My name slid oily from his lips. I knew him as one of my brother’s friends—or, I guess, ex-friend. Gray hadn’t been seen with any of his old friends since finding his wife, Story.
This man was old-school. Which meant he had a reputation for harassing and assaulting women, but his bank account still had enough zeros in it. He’d always watched me unabashed and lecherous, but I’d been with Horace. He might not respect a woman, but he respected a man’s claim to her.
“Geoff.” I plastered on a smile.
“Gemma Crowne finally on the market.”
I ignored the nausea in my gut and demurred. “Surprised you’re still on said market.”
Barf.
He grinned at my compliment. “I’ve waited a long time to try such famous pussy.”
I let my smile drop. “Oh dear, my mother is calling for me—”
He grabbed my arm as I tried to leave.
The smile on his face hadn’t moved, but now his eyes dripped something mean. “You know, I’d be doing you a favor fucking you. Isn’t that what all this is for?” With his free hand, he gestured at the party. “Whore you out so your name means something again?”
That hurricane feeling slid into my veins. America’s Princess is supposed to play dumb at blatant disrespect, bat her eyelashes if a man held his hand up to hit her.
It was getting harder to play the role.
I laughed. “I think you have severely overestimated your dick’s social capital.”
Sharp pain spiraled out from where his fingers pushed white into my skin.
“Don’t be a bitch,” he hissed.
“Geoff!” Kennedy appeared, behind her Blaire. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Geoff let me go, but not before giving an extra-sharp squeeze.
“I haven’t seen you since you totaled the first daughter’s car,” Blaire added. “I thought you were shipped off to some black ops island.” Blaire and Kennedy discreetly stepped between Geoff and me, peppering him with questions.
Bruises had started to form where he’d gripped, purple spots snaking up my arm like a delicate lace sleeve.
The girls eyed my arm out of the corner of their eyes. They didn’t ask what happened—they wouldn’t. He was old-school, after all.
“And was that your Koenigsegg wrapped in fucking pink glitter?” Kennedy asked. Blaire and Kennedy moved closer together, forming a glittery, haute couture wall.
“Yeah,” he said. “Lost a bet.”
As my friends talked to Geoff about simple, plastic things like covering a four-million-dollar car in glitter, I took the opportunity to slip away.
No one was outside, the sky still too black and swollen.
Wet wind whipped my hair, and the lingering storm made the tea lights sway on their strings.
My mother always insisted on using real candles in imported French votives, which meant the fire had long since been snuffed.
All that remained were shadows with edges that shivered like some virile, organic thing.
I walked until waves crashed on the sand. Water kissed the tips of my satin flats before sliding back to the sea. I lit a cigarette, staring at the black void.
With his back to me, he ripped off his soaking black shirt. The Reaper’s emblem, inky and black, shining from the salty ocean water, rippled across his shoulder blades and dripped down his muscles.
A horse.
A skull.
A scythe.
A warning to me—a warning to anyone who saw it. You don’t see a Horseman’s emblem and live to tell the tale.
He spun, eyes ravenous.
I rubbed my temples. Not now. Not this memory. Salty sea drenched the ends of my dress, staining the pink silk.
The first and last time I ever kissed Grim was a night like this, the night I tried to kill myself.
He dragged me from the ocean, and I woke to him giving me CPR.
Water dripped from his inky-black hair, down his full lips.
There was a look in his eyes that didn’t make sense.
We didn’t know each other. We’d met once—barely.
He didn’t take me to the hospital or call for help. He fucked me. On the wet sand. Moments after ripping me from the waves. With the cold ocean dragging at our ankles, salt stinging cuts on my skin.
I would never forget the wildness in his eyes. The fever in his touch. He fucked me like he was mad—like he wanted to heal me, so he could then steal back the life he breathed into me.
I think people might say it was wrong, because I was vulnerable. Weak. That wasn’t wrong but…it wasn’t right either. He didn’t heal me. I didn’t suddenly walk away all happy and shit, like his perfect dick had healed my broken soul.
Maybe that was why it happened. Why he’d shown up with the tattoo. Why my soul became so twisted in his. Because he did breathe life into me, for a few hours on that beach.
I still didn’t know why or how he’d found me that night. Why he wouldn’t let go…what he wanted. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe he loved me or even liked me.
My cigarette whispered fingerlings of smoke into the air. I watched it tango with the clouds in the sky when I heard the muted brush of sand beneath shoes. I turned around, expecting one of the girls, and instead met a man. He was just under six feet, with snow-white hair.
I had no second to react before he wrapped his hands around my throat. My cigarette fell burning to the sand.
I held his wrists, my mouth parting, and soon all thoughts faded as his thumbs pressed deeper into my throat. My body relaxed.
This wasn’t a bad day to die.
My mom might find my body, and I’d give her some trauma. That thought would have made me laugh if my throat wasn’t being crushed.
Suddenly he stopped choking me, eyes wide and frozen. A wet, surprised-sounding gurgle slipped from his lips, followed by a cough of blood. I closed my eyes against the wet spray.
Ew.
His whole body went slack, and he fell to the ground.
In his place a shadow of a person stood, knife in hand.
Dripping blood.
Grim.