The Rivals - Vi Keeland Page 0,4

for a meeting with the hotel’s attorney because the representative of the family that now owns the other part of the hotel sent me on a wild goose chase.”

“And this is the family of the man who fifty years ago was boinking the woman who owned the hotel, at the same time your grandfather was boinking her?”

I laughed. “Yes.” While it was a bit more complicated than that, Scarlett wasn’t wrong. Fifty years ago my grandfather, August Sterling, opened a hotel with his two best friends—Oliver Lockwood and Grace Copeland. The story goes that my grandfather fell in love with Grace, and they became engaged to wed on New Year’s Eve. The day of the wedding, Grace stood at the altar and told my grandfather she couldn’t marry him, confessing she was also in love with Oliver Lockwood. She loved both men, and refused to marry either, because marriage was an act of dedicating your heart to one man, and hers was not available for only one.

The men fought over her for years, but ultimately, neither could steal half of her heart away from the other, and the three eventually went their separate ways. My grandfather and Oliver Lockwood became bitter rivals, spending their lives building hotel empires and trying to best each other, while Grace concentrated her efforts on building one luxury hotel, rather than a chain. All three were enormously successful in their own right. The Sterling and Lockwood families grew into the two biggest hotel owners in the United States. And though Grace only ever owned one hotel, the first that the three of them had started together, The Countess, with its sprawling views of Central Park, grew to become one of the most valuable single hotels in the world. It rivaled the Four Seasons and The Plaza.

Three weeks ago, when Grace died after a long battle with cancer, my family was shocked to find out she’d left forty-nine percent of The Countess to my grandfather and forty-nine percent to Oliver Lockwood. The other two percent went to a charity, one that was currently auctioning off their new ownership to the highest-bidding family—which would in turn give one of us a very important fifty-one percent controlling interest.

Grace Copeland had never married, and I saw her final act as a beautiful Greek tragedy—though, I guess to outsiders it seemed crazy to leave a hotel worth hundreds of millions of dollars to two men you hadn’t spoken to in fifty years.

“Your family is nuts,” Scarlett said. “You know that, right?”

I laughed. “I absolutely do.”

We talked for a little while about her last date and where she was thinking of going for holiday, and then she sighed.

“I actually called to tell you some news. Where are you right now?”

“In a hotel. Or rather in The Countess, the hotel my family now owns part of. Why?”

“Is there alcohol in your room?”

My brows knitted. “I’m sure there is. But I’m not in my room; I’m at the bar downstairs. Why?”

“Because you’re going to need it after I tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

“It’s about Liam.”

Liam was my ex. A playwright from West London. We’d broken up a month ago. Even though I knew it was for the best, it still caused an ache in my chest to hear his name.

“What about him?”

“I saw him today.”

“Okay…”

“With his tongue down Marielle’s throat.”

“Marielle? Marielle who?”

“Pretty certain we both know only one.”

You’ve got to be joking. “You mean my cousin Marielle?”

“The one and only. Such a twat.”

I felt bile rise in my throat. How could she? We’d grown pretty close while I lived in London.

“That’s not the worst part.”

“What’s worse?”

“I asked a mutual friend how long they’ve been shagging, and she told me close to six months.”

I felt like I might be physically sick. Three or four months ago, when things had started to go south with Liam, I’d found a red Burberry trench coat in the back seat of his car. He’d said it was his sister’s. At the time, I didn’t have reason to suspect anything. But Marielle definitely had a red trench.

I must’ve been quiet for a while.

“Are you still there?” Scarlett asked.

I blew out a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I’m sorry, love. I thought you should know so you aren’t nice to that slag.”

I’d been meaning to call my cousin, too. Now I was glad I’d gotten so busy.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“You know I always have your back.”

I smiled sadly. “I do know that. Thanks, Scarlett.”

“But I have some good news, too.”

I