stairs leading down to the basement bar.
Once we were seated next to the pool table, he leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the metal table in front of us. He sighed. “It’s about the winter ball. Kins, you can’t go as Cade’s date anymore. Dad’s put his foot down, and he’s arranged a date for Caiden. Some fucking shit about a huge business deal, and there’s no way he can get out of it.”
“What?” Kinslee and I exchanged glances.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. We both tried to talk him out of it, but he couldn’t be swayed. Z’s been dragged into it, too. Can’t fuck up their deal.” He deepened his voice, doing a scarily accurate impression of Arlo Cavendish. “This is our legacy, and your future. I’m depending on you to do the right thing.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Kinslee leaned back in her chair. “I may not be one of the elite, but I can try to work something out, if you want me to be there.”
“If you can, you know I’d love you there.”
“I’ll see what I can do. If I can’t make it, you know the Four have your back.” She nodded her head towards Weston, before standing up and swinging her bag onto her shoulder. “Don’t stress. I’ve got to go now, otherwise I won’t have time to eat before my next lecture.”
We waved her off, and I turned back to West, asking him the question that I didn’t want the answer to. “Who’s Caiden’s date? Please don’t tell me it’s Portia.”
The grimace that appeared on his face told me I wasn’t going to like his answer. “Jessa.”
Jessa De Witt. Hot jealousy raged through me at the memory of her sneering, triumphant face, watching me as Cade fondled her tits, right before he pulled me off Cassius and dragged me upstairs and… The jealousy melted away as I remembered his heated kisses, the way he’d relentlessly fucked me, bringing me to the most powerful orgasm of my life…
“Winter? Are you okay?” My eyes snapped to Weston’s, and I scrubbed my hand over my flushed face, trying to focus.
“I’m fine. I won’t lie and say that the thought of Cade with her makes me want to poke out my own eyeballs so I don’t have to see her, but I will suck it up and deal with it. I have no doubt that she’ll try to rub it in my face every chance she gets, but I’m hoping Cade—” I groaned. “Who am I kidding? It’s going to be fucking torture. Who’s Zayde going with?”
“Portia.”
I laughed. “I don’t know if I feel more sorry for him, or for her. I bet neither of them wanted to go together, did they?”
“Doubt it. We’ll stick together, anyway. It won’t be all bad.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“It’s a masquerade ball. Maybe you could go for a full-on blindfold, then you won’t have to look at the others.”
“Ha. I might just do that.”
He cocked his head at me. “If you’re in agreement, me and Cass came up with an idea. You know the whole thing with James?”
I nodded. “What about it?”
“I know we said you should stay away from him and let us handle the situation, but we’ve been discussing it, and we’re both in agreement. We thought that since you’re not going to the ball with Cade, if you try and stay away from him the whole night, play up the fact you’re not together, then that might get Granville to drop his guard. Since it looks like the whole purpose of that video was to drive you apart, if he thinks it’s worked, it could be a good opportunity to get some information out of him.”
“Hmm, that’s not a bad idea, actually.” I sat back, thinking. “So I’d be playing the angle of being grateful that I’m no longer with Cade since he’s an irrational, jealous asshole, and see if I can get him to say anything that might give us an idea why the video even happened in the first place?”
“Exactly! I knew you’d understand.” He grinned at me. “Cass won’t let you out of his sight, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Just see if you can get him to talk. To say anything at all.”
“I can do that. Or attempt to, at least. You’d better give Caiden a heads-up, though. I don’t want to actually make things any worse between us.”
“Already on it,” he assured me. He stood, scraping his chair back. “Come on. Let’s get on