Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

“Sure.” Lottie smiled and turned back to her food.

I looked from her, to my mother, to Mrs. Du Lac…all wearing that smile as though it were armor. I didn’t want Lottie to become them, but Snitch was in the other room.

It’s nothing. I’ll learn to love Lottie like Snitch learned to hate me. And if I can’t, then I’ll fucking fake it. I won’t subject her to the same ruinous destiny as my mother.

STORY

* * *

I edged away from Mr. du Lac.

“You’re the girl everyone is making a fuss about,” he said.

He’d cornered me in the adjacent bar right as I was about to head up to Lottie’s room.

“Mr. du Lac…” I took a small step to the left, and so did he. “I need to go prepare Mrs. Crowne’s dress.”

“I like it when you keep your eyes down,” he snarled. “Maybe we should make the other girls do that.”

I stepped back, my back colliding with something hard. I heard a crash, a clatter, and wet seeped into my shirt. A bar.

I stopped trying to play nice and made a dash for the door, but he slammed his hands on either side, dark eyes on me.

“Your wife is in the other room.” My hands slipped on the now-wet surface, looking for purchase.

“And?”

Fear pounded in my chest. Do I fight him? And then what? These were the employers you hoped to never have. The kind who saw our submission as their right.

“Get your fucking hands off her.”

Relief and something else mixed in my chest at the voice. Westley du Lac had come, and he was not the white knight

I’d expected…or hoped for.

When Mr. du Lac didn’t immediately respond, West grabbed his father by the shoulder, pulling him off me.

Adrenaline pounded in my skull.

I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever seen West look like this. He was always so carefree, but now his square jaw was tilted up, showing a throbbing neck, eyes shadowed and hard—as if he was barely holding back.

“You know what they say about her,” his father said. “She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Mr. du Lac flung his hand out to me and I flinched, closing my eyes and bracing for the hit.

Moments later, a crash sounded.

Grayson had slammed Mr. du Lac into the wall.

“You okay, Snitch?” His voice was a low, deep growl.

“I had this covered, Crowne,” West said.

Grayson either didn’t care or didn’t hear. I could see the muscles in Grayson’s back clench through his tailored dark-gray suit. My heart thumped and thumped and thumped. At West…at Grayson looming so close, eyes murderous.

At being cared for…by both of them.

Mr. du Lac’s eyes narrowed. “There are rules—an order to things. Even we follow that. If she’s your mistress, you must—”