you, could it?” Clive is vibrating with something I can only classify as the beginnings of a tantrum. “God, you’re arrogant. You can’t even fathom that you might’ve put a foot wrong. I’m sick of being the only person who isn’t in your thrall. Sick of people wetting themselves just to stand six feet from you. What did you do to deserve that? What makes you any better than the rest of us?”
“Nothing,” Nick says. “And I’m the first to admit that.”
“Obviously the huge emotional strain of being Nick’s friend didn’t keep you from enjoying the perks. Vacations, parties, free drinks.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If you hated him so much, why didn’t you just leave us all alone?”
“I’m not thick enough to give up my access,” Clive says snidely. “Besides, Nick’s not the only person whose father has expectations for his behavior, not that either of you gives a damn about what it’s like in my family.”
“I do give a damn. We were mates, Clive,” Nick says. His face looks very sad. “We were in it together.”
“No, you were in it. And the rest of us had to march along, and got nothing in return,” he says. “Nick wants to go out? Everyone stand around him. Nick needs to leave a bar drunk? Cut your night short and get him out. Nick wants a girl? Everyone stand aside, even if you’re already dating her. And I did. I kept quiet. I waited, and gave you chances to help me, but evidently my loyalty wasn’t worth a favor.”
“I didn’t realize you saw friendship as a transaction,” Nick says coldly.
“I’m a journalist,” Clive says. “And you knew that. You knew how I could have benefited from your help. But I didn’t matter to you, did I? You thought I was just another brainwashed Lyons foot soldier who didn’t have the bollocks to stand up for himself. But I do.”
“Not enough bollocks to do it out in the open, without a pen name,” I point out.
“What you’re doing isn’t journalism, Clive,” Nick says. “And you know that.”
“What I know is that you never took me seriously, and once you made that clear, I looked after myself. I bided my time. And eventually I landed on the gossip scoop of the century.” Clive looks proud of himself. “Britain’s Golden Boy, cuckolded by his own brother. I did the digging, I manipulated the sources, I got the story, all by myself. The Royal Flush is going to be bigger than Xandra Deane. And you’re at my mercy now.”
You are here at the mercy of Her Majesty and me. It is a coincidence that Clive echoed Richard, and only I know he’s done it, but the parallel it draws between the chilly, damaged Prince of Wales and the conniving, broken Clive Fitzwilliam is scary and enlightening to me.
And then it’s Lacey’s face I see. Everything Clive has said—about feeling overshadowed, overlooked, underestimated—are the things my sister has felt, to some degree, for the last couple of years. And I didn’t hear her, either, or else didn’t want to, until she was pushed to the brink.
At the anger on Nick’s face, Clive adds, “Oh, and don’t get any juvenile ideas about having your hired thugs lock me in a closet, or something. Joss has very specific instructions to follow if I don’t check in tonight.”
“I can’t believe you’ve dragged her into this, too,” I say.
“I didn’t have to drag her into anything. She hates you,” Clive says. “You shoved her right into my lap. Lacey, too, really. It’s the sad little rejects that make it the easiest.”
Clive has twisted into something unrecognizable. I can’t believe I ever thought he was handsome; he is so ugly to me now.
“You think you have all this power,” I tell him. “But you don’t. Because we won’t give it to you. I don’t care what you say about me. I am not informing on my own family.”
“But that’s the rub. If you don’t, they won’t be your family,” Clive points out. “You’re actually doing more harm than if you just worked with me. I could write such lovely things about you. Then maybe everyone would finally forget that you and that sister of yours are such social-climbing slappers.”
“You know, if I weren’t getting married tomorrow, I would punch you,” Nick says, flexing his left hand. “But Bex needs to be able to fit my ring on my finger.”
I step up. “Luckily, I’m right-handed,” I say. “You want