Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
Fifteen Years Ago
1:39 a.m.
Grace
The bedroom was spectacular.
Like a place where Marie Antoinette would have slept. Lots of French provincial furniture.
Next to her, Sarah was disoriented and stumbling, barely able to keep her eyes open. Grabbing Sarah’s wrist, Grace pulled Sarah to the bed and helped her lie down.
“I’ll get you some water,” Grace mumbled, gawking as she glanced around the room.
She could get used to living in a place like this. One day, maybe she would. Of course, she’d probably have to find a way to pay for it herself. Or maybe Chris would do okay, moneywise, in his career and be able to buy her a huge house.
Grace certainly wasn’t going to marry into money. Yeah, it could happen, but rich people usually ended up with rich people. Like at WBU, the rich guys never gave a second thought to scholarship girls like her, unless they were gorgeous, like Sarah, who had been with her fair share of trust fund babies. But it was just sex. None of them was going to ask Sarah for her hand in marriage. With her lower middle-class upbringing, Sarah didn’t have the money, prominent family, or social status to interest a rich guy beyond the bedroom.
Staring at the art on the walls, Grace wondered how much she could pawn the paintings for. She wondered what other goodies might be hiding in the bureau drawers and the dresser. Might be lots of shit to steal in a room like this.
Grace wasn’t a thief, but since she enrolled in WBU, she’d developed a habit of taking things that didn’t belong to her. Like she was at a party and some rich girl was passed out in her own puke in the bathroom, left behind by her friends, and Grace removed the diamond tennis bracelet from the girl’s wrist because, frankly, she probably wouldn’t miss it, and if she did, she’d just buy herself another one, with even bigger diamonds.
And then there was the time, before she became roommates with Sarah and Mia, when she shared a dorm with an energy heiress, and she would swipe cash from the girl’s Hermes Birkin after she went to sleep. Grace would pluck two, three, and sometimes five hundred dollars from the Chanel wallet. And the bitch never even noticed. Never complained about missing money. Because when all you had was money, you never missed it. Once, someone left an expensive laptop in her European history class. She’d pawned it for a few hundred bucks.
Maybe, after she got the water for Sarah, she’d look around the bedroom for something to take. Or, maybe not. A place like this, a chalet, probably had hidden cameras everywhere.
She wasn’t going to get caught stealing.
Phil Richart was probably the kind of heartless bastard who would press charges and have her fat ass thrown in jail.