Cruel Legacy (Cruel 3)

“Yeah, and look at how well that’s worked out for Lewis.”

Both girls fell silent at the argument they must have had over and over. My stomach pinched as the aftermath of what I’d done sank in more fully. He deserved it. But…they didn’t.

I frowned and was glad that Penn appeared then.

“Charlie, Etta,” Penn said with a nod. He cleared this throat as he turned back to me. “There’s been a, uh…development.”

“What development?” I asked. Nothing could go wrong tonight! Nothing!

And then I saw the “development” as Lewis Warren strode toward us on the arm of Addison Rowe.

“Brother,” Etta began, “what the fuck?”

I would have laughed if my blood wasn’t boiling at his uninvited presence at my event. But at least Etta had said the thing I wanted to say.

“Don’t hate him,” Addie said, holding up her hands. “I invited him. He was my plus-one.”

I would have burned through Rowe’s twin sister with death glares if I could. She’d done this on purpose. She’d hated that Lewis and I had been together. She’d tried to break us up. Then when all had gone wrong with us and he purposely hadn’t been invited, she’d brought him here to…what, flaunt him in front of me? I was way past Lewis Warren, but I was not past the bruises he’d left on my arm or the restraining order I’d never received. And seeing his pretty face standing there, as if everything was okay, nearly set me off.

“Look, Addie and I are…” Lewis began.

But I held my hand up. “Don’t want to know.”

“Nat,” he groaned, “I’m sorry.”

I glared harder. “Don’t call me that. And I don’t care.”

“I just…we need to talk.”

“We really don’t,” I warned him.

Penn stepped between us. “Now is not the time. If you want to talk, you can do it in a place she chooses and not as an ambush.”

Lewis deflated and tightened his grip on Addie’s hand. “Fine,” he agreed. “Then let’s figure out a time. We have a lot to discuss.”

I had nothing to say to him. And I was about to tell him to go shove it when there was a ripple of a disturbance in the crowd. I turned away from Lewis, leaving that problem for later, to figure out what was going on. And that was when I saw what had caused the commotion.

The devil herself had made her appearance.

Chapter 33

Katherine

All heads turned toward me.

Just as I’d planned, I stood out among the sea of bullshit fairy-tale attire in my signature blood red. I hadn’t been able to secure a designer for the event and had been horrified to have to dip down to a B-list design team, but the guy had pulled it off. My dress was silky to their frilly, sleek to their poofy, and sensual to their dreamy.

It was me. And I wasn’t going to stay away just because I was being pushed to the side. I was still Katherine Van Pelt. I was married to the heir to the Percy throne. Who needed friends or designers or a socialite status or, fuck…everything I’d had?

People feared me. That was clear in their expressions as I stepped into Trinity and proved that I would not fucking back down. That was all I needed.

A waitress offered me champagne, and I took the glass with a smile. When I turned it on the woman, I took a step back. My spine straightened in surprise.

“Melissa?”

She smirked at me. “Katherine.”

Then she walked away. As if I hadn’t just seen a ghost.

Melissa hadn’t lived on the Upper East Side for a half-dozen years. After her modeling career had gone up in flames. I shuddered. So bizarre.

I shook off the strangeness of that interaction and moved into the crowd. I was determined to find Camden and prove that nothing could bother me. But as I passed another group of girls, I had to do a double take at the trio dancing. Kassidy, Margaret, and Kayla. They’d been inseparable when we were coordinating the debutante ball in high school. The committee had deemed them unfit after a sex scandal spread. I’d been made president and run the thing myself. What the hell were they doing here?

With slightly more haste, I hurried past them and took a rather large gulp of my champagne to steady me.

“Everything all right?” a girl asked, touching my elbow.

“Fine,” I spat and nearly jumped when I saw who it was. “Lydia? Lydia…Hamilton?”

“That’s right. Surprised you remember,” she said, grinning at the woman next to her that I recognized immediately as the designer Trihn.

She hadn’t accepted my invitation to design for me either.

“You’re…Trihn. Dating Damon Stone.”

Trihn nodded and held out her left hand. “Married actually.”

My eyes flicked back to Lydia. Something didn’t sit right. Lydia had gone to our prep school freshman year on scholarship. She’d been a weird, artsy type. We’d laughed her out of the school, and she’d transferred elsewhere sophomore year.