Chapter 19
NINETEEN
GEMMA
The conversation dulled when I entered, linen suits and bodies clad in floral turning.
I was used to being the center of attention, but I’d weathered enough scandal to know the difference between awe and bloodlust. They stared and whispered, lips hidden clandestinely beneath teacups.
Everyone was staring at me—because of course they were. Gemma Crowne—perfect Gemma Crowne, America’s Princess, the one who was always so good at showing how much better she was—brought a criminal to the tea party.
A sweet, floral smell wafted from the clusters of purple and blue wisteria dripping down the walls and ceiling. I stared out at the circular tearoom and let nothing on. Posing and smiling was as involuntary as breathing now, thanks to Tansy Crowne.
Lock laughed. “The fuck even is this, princess?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, looking over my shoulder.
Sure it was a tea party, but not really. It was where we came to show off how wonderful we were. How perfect we were. How much better we were than everyone around us.
I turned forward.
If you focused, you could see where the wisteria roots were digging into the wall, starting to uproot the plaster. What a perfect flower choice. Like everything in my world, it hid a destructive truth through a beautiful facade.
The familiar waltz of civility continued on outside of the ten-foot bubble Lock’s presence created. If my world was great at anything, it was at ignoring the elephant in the room.
But I saw the way they looked at me.
She’s losing it.
Oh, poor girl, probably never got over her ex dumping her.
I needed them to love me, but I hated them.
And that dichotomy was ripping me in two.
I didn’t know the shadowy beginnings of the Horsemen, how or why the boys I knew became Horsemen. There were all kinds of stories floating around Crowne Point, most of them tinged with supernatural horror.
Some people actually believed they sold their souls to the devil.
So a normal person would be scared.
A normal person wouldn’t elbow the Horseman at her back. “No one will talk to me with you lurking like a six-foot shadow.”
“So this is what you want, princess?” Lock asked. “To be sold to men who don’t deserve you?”
“Depends.” I spun to Lock. “Are you planning on scaring away every person who looks at me?”
“You can do better than these guys, princess. A fucking corpse could do better than these guys.”
I stifled my laugh in my teacup. Not a second later, I frowned.
What is this?
I stood on my tiptoes to glare into his eyes. “Why are you being nice to me?”
He bent down, black hair shadowing his icy-blue eyes, tugging the silver piercing in his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Princess,” Lock said. “You’ve got a visitor.”
I blinked as he leaned back against the wall, a slight smile on his lips.
I turned around, finding that one man had finally made his way to me: Nathan Cartwright. Nathan had gone to the same boarding school as me before I transferred to Crowne Point High, but a few years before, so we’d not really hung in the same circles.
Nathan was a boring social climber.
In any other scenario, I wouldn’t have given him a second look, but my mother’s glassy eyes were still stuck in my mind.
“Did I just see Gemma Crowne laugh?” he asked, eyeing Lock at my back.
“Uh…” I arched a brow. “I laugh.”
“You’re usually pretty uptight at these things.”
Was this motherfucker really trying to neg me?
I stayed silent, and Nathan continued. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure I’d see you here today, what with the news.” There was something tucked under his arm.
“News?” I asked, playing dumb.
The drink in Nathan’s hand shook as he stared at Lock at my back.
“Have you not seen?” Nathan pulled out a magazine from under his arm—the magazine.
There it is.
Even the Horsemen couldn’t deter the temptation to shove my shame in my face.
I eyed the glossy paper.
“What an interesting thing to bring to tea,” I said at last, then lifted my eyes to his slowly. “You must have been as bored as I am with the company.” Choke, bitch.
What the fuck am I doing here?
All my life I was prepared for one thing: to marry, and then my brother gave me a choice.
My mom seemed to think I could just show up and choose any one of these men, because that was what we did—we married.
I used to think that too. But I was starting to realize the problem.
Given the choice? Well, I wouldn’t choose to be with any of these fuckers. Nathan. Horace. They were all the same.
So where did that leave me?
Because I still wanted to be Gemma Crowne, I wanted it to mean something, and who was Gemma Crowne without her crown?
“You were always so out of reach in boarding school,” Nathan continued. “The top of the pack, the queen fucking bee. Not so much anymore, huh?”
I exhaled, preparing my perfect Gemma Crowne response, when a scream stopped me in my tracks.
It happened so fast, I didn’t register anything until it was already over. I heard the crack first. Saw how Nathan’s unctuous, smug smile collapsed in agony. Lock had reached over my shoulder, holding Nathan’s hand in a vise grip.
That was the crack.
That was why tears wobbled on his lids.
Lock had broken his fucking fingers.
Lock pulled Nathan close by his now broken hand—as if they were old friends. “Scream out again, die. Call the cops, die. Tell your friends, die. Do anything but leave through that fuckin’ ugly orange door, die. Nod so I know you’re listening.”
Nathan nodded, tears running down his face.
Lock laughed and released his hand.
My mouth dropped. Nathan’s middle three fingers were bent and crumpled at odd angles.
“Good boy.” Lock patted him on his shoulder. “Now go.”
Nathan shot me a wide-eyed look, cradling his broken fingers, and left.
I released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
“Are you fucking insane? Someone could have seen.” I looked around, heartbeat like a hummingbird flapping against my rib cage. Even though paparazzi weren’t allowed inside, that didn’t stop phones.
Lock leaned against the wall, rubbing his jaw, bored.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. “You can’t just…break the fucking fingers of a guy who talks to me. If you’re trying to destroy my life—”
Lock stepped to me so fast my tea sloshed over the side, staining the fine silk of my sleeves caramel. He towered over me, shadowing us.
“You really think everything is about you, huh?”
I scoffed. “If that wasn’t about me, then what the absolute fuck? Why are you here? Why did you break his fingers?”
Lock bent lower, neck craning with the effort. “Maybe I didn’t like the way he was talking to you.” His words were tainted with sarcasm, bitter and acerbic.
I rolled my eyes, and he leaned back on the wall. Arms folded, with one leg crossed over the other, crushing the purple wisteria at his back, he continued. “You’ve been cosplaying Reaper’s girl—”
I cut him off. “I have not.”
“If you want to pretend to be the Reaper’s girl,” he continued, undeterred, “you should know what it means to wear that title.”