Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,161
a loose strand of my hair that hangs down by my face. “I already told you that.”
Just fun.
Nothing serious.
The bell rings and I shove away from him to grab my bag.
“I have to go.”
Ezra threads his fingers with mine when I try to step away, his eyes shimmering with humor.
“You can’t run far. I know you want this.”
Yanking my hand from his, I duck my head and leave the bathroom without answering.
Because how can I answer?
Especially when he’s not wrong.
CHAPTER TWO
Emily
A knock at my door barely grabs my attention. It’s a gentle rap of knuckles that does little to breach the ground-shaking thump of bass in my room, a quick tap that I wouldn’t have heard if I wasn’t standing next to the door when it happens.
Blowing out a heavy breath because I can’t find the shoes I want in the pile haphazardly tossed on one side of my closet, I slam my hand on the knob of the door, twist and yank it open.
My mother’s blue-green eyes stare back at me, her face so pale I swear I can trace the line of small veins beneath her skin. I get my coloring from her. My red hair, alabaster complexion, and turquoise gaze, but beyond that, we’re nothing alike.
She’s meek and mild, never stepping out of line, while I have a fiery temper that nobody guesses about until I’m angry enough for it to explode.
Like now.
I have places to be and I’m already late. Plus, my mother never comes into the children’s wing except to check on my eight-year-old brother, and even then, it’s only for a few minutes until she leaves him with the nannies again to go wait hand and foot on my father.
“What?”
She winces at the snap in my voice but then regains her composure, her hands fluttering like butterflies, her lips stretching into a thin line.
“I need to talk to you about a rumor spreading among the families.”
Damn it...
I open the door wider to let her through.
Turning my back to her to keep searching for the silver sandals that will match my white Grecian style dress perfectly, I groan to hear the volume on my stereo lower and the faint squeak of mattress springs when she sits on the side of my bed.
“I don’t think I need to remind you that you’re promised to Mason Strom.”
Bile shoots up my throat to soak the back of my tongue. Not because Mason isn’t beautiful. The opposite happens to be true. He’s too beautiful to be fair.
All of the Inferno is, really, and I have to wonder about the odds that nine boys who grew up together could all have such fortunate genetics.
It’s not Mason himself that makes me sick, it’s the idea that I have no choice in the matter when it comes to who I’ll marry. I’m not even entirely sure why the marriage is so important to my family and his.
The Stroms are old money. Wealthier than even Gabriel and Tanner’s families. But they’re not as powerful. Not the center of it all when it comes to the social circle I was born into. I often think that my father believes combining this family with the Stroms will somehow center more influence for him and knock Warbucks off the top.
I feel like an object more than a human being every time I’m gently reminded to whom I belong.
Not that Mason wants me either.
Being forced together has only made us hate each other.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask, relief dripping down my shoulders when I finally spot my shoes poking out from under the bed. Snatching them, I sit down to pull them on.
“There are whispers that you’ve been acting inappropriately with the Cross twins.”
My head wrenches her direction. “Where did you hear that?”
She’s not wrong. I messed around with Ezra for a few days, but after running away from him in the bathroom at school, I’ve dodged him. That boy is the most decadent of desserts, one who can be sliced open only for poison to leak out of the center.
How much I want him can’t matter. I’m not dumb enough to lap the poison up just to die on the inside when it’s over.
Ezra kept pursuing me over the next few days after that incident, but then school let out for the weekend and when he returned, his knuckles were busted and his face bruised.
Both Damon and Ezra looked like they’d fought an entire biker gang, their tempers so easily triggered