Page 111 of Faking Cinderella
“Like I said. He set me up.”
Her hand lands on my thigh. “Do you have proof?”
I grimace. “We didn’t make it far enough in our mutual lawsuits against each other to force document production.”
She winces. “Court’s never fun.”
“It is not,” I agree. “Especially on the tail end of being told I no longer belonged at the firm my mother founded. Where she would’ve wanted me to have the option on my own to stay or go. It was a family firm. I was family. Except not to him. Add in that that’s the night I got home and found Felice packing up to leave me. Week before our wedding. Said I was making her choose, so she was choosing him. Life’s kinda sucked.”
Margot’s grip tightens on my thigh. “Had she—had sheparticipatedin planning the wedding?”
“Fuck knows every opinion I had about it was wrong, so yeah. Yeah, she participated. Planned the whole thing when she clearly didn’t want me.”
She stares at me with wide eyes. “You have very bad taste in women.”
I snort out a laugh.
Fucking worst moments of my life, and this woman has me cracking up about it. Cracking up and wanting her to inch her hand higher on my thigh.
“You know I think you’re sexy as hell?” I say to her.
She grins. “Like I said, terrible taste.”
“Why’d your ex dump you?” I need a distraction before I kiss her.
“He gave me the line that since his father had been sent to prison, he didn’t want the dirt on his family’s name to sully mine, but really, he couldn’t handle filling his father’s shoes at his family’s company and also having a relationship with me.”
“He couldn’t do both?”
“In all fairness, his business situation and mine were vastly different. My father’s unlikely to go to prison, and his father had run their company to the brink of bankruptcy. I’m sure you’ve seen the articles.”
Is she serious? “And now you’re being fair.”
Her eyes crinkle as her smile widens, making me hope they never fix this lift. “Now, yes. Then, no. Then, I was furious and hurt, but my parents cut my sister off about two weeks later, and suddenly the world looked very different.”
“Seriously? You got over being dumped because your sister was hurt?”
“It was eye-opening to realize how much I’ve always been rewarded by my parents for not being her, and how much she’s been punished for not being me. I sometimes wonder if they timed destroying her to take the attention off of my ended engagement. They could’ve…handled what they thought was a problem…without putting her in the position they did, but they chose to actively hurt her the worst way possible. Suddenly noone in our social circles was talking anymore about how Oliver called off the wedding. It was more fun for them to talk about how terribly Daph must’ve fucked up and how funny it was that she was suddenly broke with nowhere to live and no functional skills about how to survive in the world without security and household managers and assistants.”
My respect for this woman is growing exponentially, helped by the clear offense she feels on her sister’s behalf. “Hence you want no collateral damage.”
“Exactly. So. Would you like me to take care of your stepfather, or do you want to be involved?”
I look her straight in those pretty blue eyes, and I say the thing I’ve wanted to say for over a year.
The thing I can’t take back once it’s out.
The thing I might regret later, but the thing that makes me feel like I have a voice again. “I want him to know it was me.”
She smiles, but it’s not a friendly smile.
It’s a wicked smile.
A wicked smile, with her eyes going dark and her lips parting and her gaze dipping to my lips, like she’s turned on by revenge.
Revenge is no basis for a solid relationship, that voice in my head whispers.
Fuck a relationship though.
