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“She told me when she helped me to my room. It was part of the reason she told me to run.”
Lifting me off his lap, Gulliver drops me on the sofa beside him, then jumps to his feet and storms toward the door. All three guys jump up and race after him while I stare on in confusion.
“I’m going to fucking kill them,” Gulliver snarls.
“She’s fine, she’s here. You need to think about this,” Thorn says, his arms wrapped tightly around Gulliver from behind, restraining him while Kip and Davis block the door.
“Those fucking motherfuckers!” Gulliver angrily shouts, pulling at Thorn’s hold on him.
“I know. But you need to take care of your girl. She needs you more than you need to beat the shit out of her parents. You can’t protect her if you’re in jail,” Thorn coaxes while I silently watch, unsure what to say or do.
When Gulliver relaxes, the thick, tension-filled air in the room starts to dissipate. I can hear the guys murmuring, but their voices are too low for me to be able to hear what they’re saying.
Eventually, Thorn unfurls himself from around Gulliver, and all four move back to the couch. The moment he sits down, Gulliver drags me into his lap, and I don’t fight him, sensing that he needs me to be his lifeline right now, the way he’s been for me the last couple of days.
“Before your dad gets back, we need to go over the game plan for tomorrow,” Davis says, sounding more assertive than I’ve ever heard him before.
“I had my dad speak to Principal Smith and arrange for Izzy to be transferred into all the classes that one of us share with Penelope, and then into my classes for the couple of electives that Izzy takes that Penelope doesn’t,” Gulliver tells us, his voice low and gravelly.
“We go to school and come home as a group. We can either use my limo or drive together in one of our cars,” Thorn says. “But we stick together and make sure that Izzy is never on her own, just in case Penelope or your parents try anything at school.”
“I don’t need bodyguards,” I protest.
“After what you just told us, I’m considering hiring professional help to make sure none of your family get within a ten-mile radius of you. You’re with one of us at all times. I’m fucking serious, don’t test me on this one, Ghost,” Gulliver hisses, his voice full of steely determination.
“The NYT article drops today, so I think it’s fair to say that by lunchtime, anyone who’s anyone will have heard about your engagement. But on the off chance that anyone misses it, we have a mixture of parties and events every night that will keep you guys on everyone’s radar until your engagement party in three weeks’ time,” Kip reports, like he’s a soldier briefing us on a mission.
“Engagement party?” I squeak.
“Yep, the biggest, most lavish event to celebrate us.” I feel the rumble of his laughter a moment before the sound fills the air, and some of his tension starts to melt from him as he buries his face into my neck and nips at my throat.
“Thank you,” I say, twisting around to look at Gulliver first, then each of the guys in turn. “This could all be for nothing. My parents could just pay the school enough money to buy Penelope the grades she needs, but no matter what happens, thank you for helping me. Meeting you guys and being here has been both the worst and best thing to happen to me in a long while,” I confess with a watery smile.
“This isn’t the end, Izzy. Tomorrow is just the beginning, because if your parents could have been buying your sister easy A’s, then why have they been forcing you to take her tests for her?” Kip questions.
Furrowing my brow, I wonder if he’s right. Have they already tried to bribe the teachers to give my sister her 4.0?
Brushing the hair off my shoulder, Gulliver presses his lips to my skin and exhales. “Even if your sister manages to keep her perfect GPA, it’s not the end. We’ll find another way to make her fail. And if all we do by graduation is piss off your family, then it’s still a win. They don’t have you anymore, Ghost. They lost their secret weapon, and they lost me, their first pick in the husband draft. You’re the one with my ring on your finger, and if nothing else, then you can sit back smug in the knowledge that you managed to get what they couldn’t,” Gulliver says, his gaze blazing with an emotion that I’m not sure I fully understand. There’s a hint of the calculated anger he showed me when he blackmailed me into playing along with his games, but I can also see the heated intensity he gives me when he’s thinking about fucking me.
“Do you know what the other stipulations are in the will?” Davis asks, bringing me back to the present.
“I’ve never seen the actual list, but I overheard my parents and sister talking about them, so I think I know most of it. Penelope has to lead what my great-grandfather deemed as a successful and productive life. If she or I had been a boy, I’m sure the rules would be completely different,” I snark. “But as it stands, Penelope has to graduate from GAA with her 4.0; she has to be accepted to and graduate from an Ivy League school while still maintaining a perfect GPA. Then she has to marry one of the sons from the list of old money families he provided, obviously remain a virgin until she marries, and I think she has to produce an heir too.”
“Jesus, your great-grandfather was a control freak,” Thorn hisses, shaking his head, the disgust clear on his face.
Scoffing, I nod in agreement. “The worst thing is that my sister has to jump through all these hoops to get this money, and then she isn’t even allowed to run the companies she inherits. He expects her to be smart and well educated, then he wants her to relinquish control to her husband and become a very rich trophy wife.”
Gulliver’s fingers rub soothing circles across the back of my neck, one hand still wrapped around my waist and holding me on his lap. “So, the will and all its stipulations is really just your great-grandfather’s way of forcing an alliance between the Rhodeses and another wealthy dynasty?” he surmises.
I nod my head and sigh. “Yep, because the rich always want to be richer.”
“We need to change the subject, because I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for Penelope, and it’s fucking with my head,” Kip says with a mock shudder that makes me laugh.
“We don’t feel sympathy for the enemy,” Gulliver growls. “Everyone knows the plan…tomorrow, we let the light shine on our Little Ghost and hopefully watch Penelope be brought to her knees, but tonight it’s about us, so let’s drink and be fucking merry, because tomorrow it’s war.”
I lift my bottle, and the guys all follow suit. “To war.”
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