Page 2 of King of Wrath
She’s had a bunch of work done and she hates that I don’t put more effort into my appearance. “It’s not fair,” she snorts now. “You shouldn’t look that good when you don’t try at all.”
I shrug as I walk past her heading for the car. “Who are we meeting tonight?”
“Renee and Justine,” she answers, falling in step next to me. “Casandra isn’t coming.”
“How come?”
Jess rolls her eyes. “Didn’t you hear? Mason Kincaid got married.”
I’m trying to keep up. “Okay?”
“Casandra was holding a torch for the King of Vegas,” Jess whispers. “She’s too depressed to go out.”
I shake my head. Casandra didn’t really know Mason Kincaid, she’d only seen him from afar, met him at a few charity events that are a part of the façade we all wear. But her lack of a real relationship didn’t stop her from talking about him constantly. “Really? Married?”
“That’s right. Daddy says that’s why the Kincaids are calling in so many debts. They want to protect Mason’s new bride. Isn’t it romantic?”
I barely keep from rolling my eyes. “Did you mean psychotic?”
“What’s wrong with a man protecting the woman he loves?”
“Potato, potahto,” I mutter, sure Jess won’t understand. To protect her, the new Queen of Vegas, they are going to hurt a whole bunch of people. Jess is seeing herself as the protected woman but we’re about to be the bugs the Kincaids squash. I’m sure of it.
“You know the Kincaid who is really hot,” she sighs, as the car pulls up, ignoring the last comment. “The uncle. Jake.”
“Isn’t he old?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
“Sophisticated,” she holds up a finger. “The patriarch.”
“So really entrenched in being a crazy criminal?” I flip my hair over my shoulder as the car stops next to us, the driver getting out to open the door for us to climb in the back seat.
Jess goes first, sliding across the leather bench seat. I climb in after, my movements slower, as I sit next to my sister. “I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“I know.” Jess would love to marry into one of the other families that make up Vegas’s underworld. She doesn’t seem to have a problem with the crime. All she cares about, as far as I can tell, is the lifestyle.
Then again, I’m sensitive on the topic of this lifestyle.
But I need one ally, so I don’t say anymore as the car starts down the drive. And I don’t want to hurt her either. I wish I could be more content sometimes. More trusting. Maybe I would have been if I hadn’t learned the truth and my father hadn’t turned on me in the cruelest way possible.
Silence settles for a few minutes, but my sister is never quiet for long. “You know that Russian, Mickael, that I met last week?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got another date,” she whispers so the driver doesn’t hear.
“How do you do it?” I ask, my eyes growing wide. “How do you get out of the house?” Because, honestly, I really want to know. This is precisely what I need Jess’s help for. She is so much better at skirting around the rules than I am.
She leans in really close, whispering in my ear. “One of the guards lets me out when the cameras are turned away.”
“How?” I mouth, meaning, how do you get him to do it?
She knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I blow him on the regular,” she answers so softly I barely hear her. Which is why she starts pressing her tongue against her cheek, pushing the skin out to mimic a blowjob. It’s on the side of her face the driver can’t see, but my gaze still darts to him.
Our father, if you want to call him that, has a strict no-dating policy for both me and Jess. Though, he’s way more casual with her than he is with me.
Everyone thinks it’s because she’s older. Or because I’m considered the beauty. And his favorite. But I know the truth.
One night when my father was fall-down drunk, he told me that he’s made some arranged match for me. Barbaric.