Page 144 of Twisted Truth

She nods. “Yes, but there is a potential wedding clause. That’s the board’s goal, is it not?”

“Yes, but it’s not a stipulation. It’s an added bonus.”

“And your wedding would be televised? A global spectacle?”

“It’s what would be expected, yes.”

“Good god,”she whispers under her breath.

At last, the waitress brings our food, cutting off all wedding conversation. Thank the lord.

“Is there anything else I can get you, Mr. Langford?” the waitress asks me in a breathy voice when she finishes handingout our dishes. She has her tits pressed out and she gives me a sultry smile.

I look to Ella and Maya. “Anything else you need, ladies?” They both shake their heads.

“No, thank you,” I say dismissively and start on my dinner.

“What about you, Mr. Langford?” the waitress asks, now turning to Sterling. “Anything else I can get you?”

I want to jump in and make his life hell, telling her he very much needs her help, just to get back at him. But I want the waitress gone more than I want to fuck with Sterling. I don’t need her piss-poor and obvious flirting attempts to upset Ella. Bethany is enough of a problem—but I can’t just dismiss her.

“No, thank you,” Sterling says, matching my same dismissive tone.

“You’re sure?” she croons.

“Certain,” he snaps, leaving no room for interpretation, and she nods and walks away a bit despondent. If there’s something we mastered young, it was how to push women away. We were all preyed upon young. We were just teen boys when grown women started throwing themselves at us because of our last name. I could have lost my virginity at fourteen to a woman twice my age if I’d wanted to. And I was tempted to many times throughout my teens. Luckily, my parents kept us on a tight leash and kept our guards on the highest threat levels that if they allowed that, they would be prosecuted for enabling statutory rape. As such, I was the respectable age of seventeen before I lost my virginity to a schoolgirl in my grade. And now that I look back, I realize how that was practically a miracle.

I have spent the majority of my life dodging women’s advances. I loved it when I was young, but somewhere along the way, it’s grown tiresome. I know that when women see me, they see money. They see my name. They see my power. I know I’m attractive, so they see that too, but they don’t seeme.AndI’m now at an age where that matters. I want to be seen for who I am as a person, not who I am in status.

I give Ella’s knee a squeeze before letting go to start on my dinner.

“The hussies these days,” Aunt Bethany says, sipping her wine. “As if a Langford man would stoop to the level of a waitress.”

Maya’s mouth pops open, but she closes it quickly. Sterling and I both cringe.

“I see nothing wrong with dating a waitress,” Sterling says to Aunt Bethany. “Honest work is honest work.”

Aunt Bethany clucks. “You can’t date a waitress. That’s like dating the help.”

“We’re in a new century. Those old rules no longer apply,” I say.

“The world has gone soft. And it’s a mess and a shame. In my day, we kept to our own kind of people, and the waitstaff was not included in that. Sometimes men would dally with the help for a bit of a distraction, for some roguish behavior. Men will be men, as you two well know. But they would neverdatethem, or be seen with them in public. The scandal it would have caused.”

Sterling and I both take deep breaths. We love our family, but the older generations on both sides can be difficult at best.

“While classism is still very much alive and well in our world, we don’t personally subscribe to it,” Sterling says.

“We’ve both dallied plenty, but never while we were in another relationship,” I say. “I refuse to have a wife at home and a mistress on the side. That’s a recipe for disaster and a lifetime of unhappiness.”

Ella looks at me with appreciative, raised brows. Maya is surveying everything quietly.

“Men like the Langfords can’t be expected to be whollymonogamous,” Aunt Bethany says, waving her hand dismissively. “Those with that kind of power and wealth never are.”

“Our father has been faithful to our mother,” I snap.

“He is an exception, dear. And Catherine was the greatest beauty of her time.Andher mother and I were ruthless in her grooming. We molded Catherine into the perfect, model wife for a powerful man. She had royals from several countries seeking her hand. Your father is intelligent enough to understand that he had won the heart of Europe’s most eligible young woman.”

Yes, we’d heard snippets from our mother of her formative years and her upper class “grooming.” Her mother’s and aunt’s methods would absolutely be deemed abusive by today’s standards.