“What is it?” I asked, holding back a sigh. “Am I under house arrest? Are you taking away my allowance? Or maybe denying me dinner?” Those were her usual go-tos. None of them explained the growing smiles on my siblings’ faces.
“We’ve assigned you a new guard. This is not like the others you’ve ditched. This man is not there to protect you, this man is to watch your every movement and keep our reputation safe.”
My gut dropped. The Crowne Guard was filled with sycophants who had their noses far up my siblings’ and mom’s assholes. I didn’t have one friend on it. I did have one enemy, but surely they wouldn’t choose him. My mother had always hated Theo, and she’d practically rejoiced when he left. She would never choose him to guard me twenty-four seven.
“So what?” I asked. “He’s going to follow me around?”
Mother nodded. “Twenty-four seven.”
“A male guard?” I nearly gasped. “But surely not at night.”
“Twenty-four seven,” she repeated. “We’ve redone your en suite into a room.”
“That’s not proper,” I stammered. “Rumors will spread. People will think things.” People already thought them. I’d been branded a slut since Rosey, our boarding school, years ago.
Screw the fact I was still almost a virgin, right?
Mom tossed magazine after magazine at my feet. The one where they’d caught me getting out of a limo with my legs—and no panties. The one where I was topless on the yacht, making out with an Oscar winner. The one where I was lip-locked with Hollywood’s it girl and guy.
I said almost.
“Rumors?” She arched a brow, then continued unperturbed. “This will be the least scandalous thing you’ve done. Believe me when I say he was not my first choice,” my mother said, almost bitterly. “Despite my objections, your grandfather is resolute.”
Now I was even more confused. Who had been chosen to watch me? What man could have my mother so bitter, yet be in such good graces with my grandfather?
“Grayson is on the cover of more tabloids than me,” I tried desperately. I don’t know why I even bothered. The bar was always placed on the floor for Gray.
My gaze kept drifting back to the door, beyond my sibling peanut gallery. Had I seen him? I didn’t know anyone else who somehow both stood out of, and blended into, the shadows.
“Abigail!” my mother snapped, and I quickly looked at her. Only I could make my mother snap. I took perverse satisfaction in that; it was the only attention she afforded me, after all. “Did you hear a word I said?”
“Doubt it,” Grayson said. “She’s still standing.”
I glared at my brother in the doorway. My siblings and I were so close in age. Gray was just a year older than me at twenty-two, and Gemma the eldest at almost twenty-three, yet we couldn’t be further apart. Both he and my sister watched me, twisted smiles on their faces. Watching our mom torture me was one of their favorite forms of amusement.
“Grayson isn’t going to marry the son of a man whose company your grandfather has been courting for over three years.”
Everything came to a crashing halt.
I wish I’d heard her wrong, but I knew I hadn’t. I’d known this day was coming for as long as I could remember. You don’t get to be me and not have this day. My sister’s day had come in boarding school. My brother’s would come soon as well. I darted my eyes between my siblings and back to my mother, a sinking feeling growing.
“You’re marrying me off?” I took a step back. “When? To who? Have I even met him?”
My mom waved her hand as if what I’d said was trivial. “Before the end of the summer.”
“This summer?” At my distressed face, behind our mother’s back, Gemma pushed out her bottom lip, pretending to pout for me.
“Fuck off, Gemma,” I said.
Gemma clutched her heart. “Mother, do you see how she speaks to me?” Behind our mother’s back she mouthed fuck you and gave me the bird.
“Enough,” my mother said without heat. “This shouldn’t be news to you, Abigail. Your grandfather has been working on this trade for years.”
“Yes, but—” I started, only to be cut off.
“We can’t afford your little…dalliances…ruining it.”
Gemma laughed. “That’s a nice way to look at them.”
“But—”
“We’re done talking about this, Abigail,” Mom said. “Why don’t you try following your sister’s example for once? She handles her engagement with grace.”
“And if I say no?” I tested.
My mother sipped her tea, my question not worth a response. Since Father’s death years ago, Crowne Industries had been untenable. Never mind what happened to our family—our father had been the glue holding an already dysfunctional unit together—the company was always the most important.
On the surface, we were billionaires who had it all. Beneath that veneer, we were barely sustained by my ruthless grandfather Beryl Crowne and my narcissistic mother, Tansy. We stayed afloat, because we did what they said.
Whatever they said—anything so we didn’t lose the crown, or Crowne, I should say.
I knew what would happen if I disobeyed. I’d end up like my uncle, the cautionary tale in our family for what happened when you disobeyed: penniless and excommunicated.
Over mother’s back, Gray blew me a kiss.
I ground my teeth. “I won’t disappoint you, Mother.”
Mom didn’t even bother hiding her incredulous laugh. Without another word, she went back to her book. Our conversation was over.
Maybe if I was someone else, I would’ve told Mom to screw off. It didn’t go over my head that she hadn’t even bothered to tell me whom I was marrying.
I wish I didn’t want my mother’s approval, but it was the one thing I wanted most in the world, and there were days I would do anything to get it. On those days, I tended to disappoint her most.
I watched her a moment longer, playing the conversation I wished would happen in my head.
I’m sorry, Mom.
That’s okay, because I love you, Abigail. No matter what you do, I will always love you.
After I’d stood there too long, Mother waved a hand for me to go.
I stopped just before the huge portrait of my father, Charles Crowne. He’d had a hard, square jaw and arresting reddish-brown eyes, and in certain lights, they looked purple. His eyes were the only thing I received from him, the only hint I might be a Crowne. He’d been gone for so long this was how I remembered him, in paintings and pictures.
“God, that was so much more satisfying than I imagined,” Gemma said to my back. “I think I came.”
“Oh, eat a dick, Gemma.”
“I would, Abby, but you’ve already gotten to them all. You’re the Pac-Man of dicks.”
It doesn’t count if it happens in Crowne Hall.
I spun around and raised my hand to throw one of my heels at Gemma’s head, but my hand froze midair, captive in someone’s grasp. When I looked over my shoulder, my knees buckled, and I nearly fell.
Theo.
Theo held me up by my wrist, unperturbed by the sudden weakness in my legs. I had questions…a lot of questions. Almost five years had passed since I’d last seen him in person. I’d seen pictures of him, but only in tabloids, and always in the back behind my grandfather, out of focused or cropped. Grandpa rarely visited our town of Crowne Point—and even more rarely so our home, Crowne Hall—which meant I never saw Theo.