Story’s raspy voice drifted like the salt breeze. I put my head in my hands. Her voice taunted me, I couldn’t differentiate between now and then.
Liar.
She was a fucking liar.
“Grayson?”
I lifted my head, finding Jo and the other two staring at me.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll take my grandfather’s place, but I’ll need people on the board. Trusted individuals.” I eyed them.
They scoffed. “Us?” Giving shares to a bastard had never been done, not by my father, certainly not by my grandfather.
It was essentially recognizing them as a Crowne.
Wouldn’t that be poetic?
“You,” I said.
They shifted on their feet, brows creasing with vulnerability.
But it was gone in a second.
“Well.” Jo straightened her shoulders. “There’s a lot of what-ifs riding on this master plan. If this fails—”
“If this fails then none of the other unknowns matter, because if this fails, he thinks we’re owed a dynasty, and he’s determined to get one. Even if it means destroying the family he’s so determined to write in stone. But we have what they don’t see coming…”
We have something they don’t have. Something they don’t see coming. Something they can’t steal.
I sat back, Story’s ghost taking shape in the room again. Her determination the night she’d told me she was going to stay with West. Her stony resolve, like her stony eyes.
“What?”
I looked back at my siblings. “Trust.”
Sixty-Eight
STORY
We discussed the plan. The outrageous, insane, possibly suicidal plan. The one that hinged on blowing up our world.
On me telling the truth to the world.
I looked at the phone Gemma had loaned me. The first thing I’d done when Gemma gave it to me was text Grayson a message.
I still hadn’t heard back.
Now I looked at my account, at the hundreds of thousands of followers I’d accumulated, who had been listening to my veiled truths.
As the Horsemen did their thing behind closed doors, Gemma played fairy godmother. She’d bought the dresses without going to Crowne Hall, and I vaguely wondered if she’d gone back at all during this time.
“What are they doing?” Lottie asked, staring at the closed door the Horsemen disappeared behind.
“You don’t want to know.” Gemma fiddled with lace at my back. “Okay. Done.”
Lottie and I stared at each other, two mirror images that refused to obey one another. Matching diamond feathered masks and dresses.
“Do you think it’s going to be enough—my confession?” I bit my lip. “I deleted all the videos West had saved.”
Lottie pushed a curl behind her ear. “We have one video. The video of you and Grayson on my wedding night; my mother saved it…” She looked dark. “She saved it so I would have leverage on him in case my secret got out. It’s on her phone.”
Lottie’s baby started to cry, and she went to tend to him.
“What will we do with our babies?” Lottie asked, lifting him to her arms. “We can’t leave them here.”
Our eyes traveled to Gemma, our unlikely guardian angel.
“Oh no—oh, hell no.”
“I can’t exactly blend in with a baby on my tit.”
“Fine,” she gritted. “But we’re going to watch a shit ton of horror movies in the hopes that it messes them up internally, and then you have to deal with that, like…ten years later as punishment.”
“Oh, well…” Lottie sighed. “If I’m anything like my mother, I’ll just pretend all the bad things about my child don’t exist.”
Gemma went silent at that, brow furrowing. I wondered what it was about what Lottie had said to make her look so…thoughtful.
As if she knew I was thinking about her, she turned to me.
“A year ago, when my sister left with her dog, she came to me and we spent a night together drinking. I asked her if it was really worth losing everything for him. You know, my grandfather has been controlling our love lives since before I was born. Our aunt and uncle lost everything for love, and then her hopeless romantic ass went and left and lost it all too. I’ve been engaged since I was a teenager, but to me, it wasn’t so terrible. Horace and I have an agreement. He fucks who he wants and so do I, and we keep our pretty things.
“Now you’re here and Grayson was on the verge of doing the same thing…” She eyed me and I prepared for the iconic Gemma Crowne tongue-lashing. “But then for a moment, the little boy who used to play hide-and-seek with us when we were kids was back.”
I stared at her.
“Maybe we all died years ago and that house holds all our ghosts captive.”
“Gemma…” I trailed off, not sure what to say, how to offer comfort.
“What will happen to my grandfather after?” she asked.
Again, I was at a loss for words. I wasn’t entirely sure of Gemma’s relationship with her grandfather, so how did I tell her I wanted him dead?
Bleeding.
Burning in hell.
“I want him to rot in jail,” she said, voice hard. “Maybe that’s asking too much.”
I worked my mouth. “I know the servants keep evidence… But even still. It’s Beryl Crowne. He owns every small piece of law enforcement.”
I had one coin left. Maybe I would use it to try to lock up Beryl Crowne for good.
Her eyes blazed. “You have to try. We have to try—”
The door beyond us opened, and we both turned as the four Horsemen came out.
A tattoo.
The Crowne family crest was tattooed bright on Grim’s inner wrist. The Horsemen and the Crownes were now irrevocably tied together.
“Does this make us family now, Rich Girl? Should I call you sis?”’
She worked her jaw.
I didn’t even have a second to contemplate what that meant, or what else Gemma had given up.
Gemma stood off the wall. “Go save my brother.”
Everyone looked to me.
“You don’t have to do this, Story,” Lottie said softly.
“I’m tired of being a pawn,” I said. “I can’t keep being the girl behind the girl. I’ve spent so much time hiding. Hiding my body. My hopes. My dreams. My love.” I paused. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”
Everyone knew my name, and I was hiding more than ever. Hiding under fiction and fantasy.
I took a deep breath and turned the phone’s camera to face me. I’d always been stuck on what happened when the prince chose someone like me. But what happened if I decided I was worth choosing?
Before we faced the final dragon, I had my own to slay.
I would tell the truth.
The ugly.
Raw.
Jagged.
Truth.
Sixty-Nine
Dear world,
You don’t know my name, but you think you know me.
You called me Cinderella.
You called me slut.
You’ve read my letters for months and cheered me on, all the while tearing the real me down.