Velvet Cruelty
Velvet Cruelty
Eve Dangerfield
For my Zias.
Blood is blood.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
About Midnight Dynasty
About Eve Dangerfield
Copyright
Prologue
Adriano Rossi
A girl barely old enough to be called a woman is sitting on a bench two hundred feet below me. She’s laughing, a cutesy box of cupcakes on her knees. I adjust my lens scope and her face comes into focus. Green eyes, pale skin, and a wide, soft mouth with lips as red as blood—a color I’ve seen more of than most. She picks up a cupcake and holds it away from herself, as though afraid to taste it. Knowing her stepmother, she probably is.
Parker says something and she laughs, her long ebony black hair catching the light. People stare as they walk past, their mouths falling open. The girl’s always been pretty but since she turned eighteen, no one can take their eyes off her. I move my scope half an inch to the left and find Parker. Clean-shaven with a hint of baby fat around the cheeks and chin. He looks younger than thirty-eight. And soft. The kind of guy you’d size up if you were looking to jump someone at a train station.
My finger brushes the rifle trigger. One squeeze, the whisper-jerk of a bullet, and he’d be gone. But a quick death is better than Zachery Parker deserves.
He can’t take his eyes off the girl either. From forty stories away I can tell he wants to grab her hair and pull her mouth onto his cock. He won’t, though. Two benches away, not bothering to look like anything but muscle, are her bodyguards. Kurt Cooper and Theodore Murphy. Their Rugers are in full view at their sides as they chat and eye up female joggers. I could be killing John F Kennedy behind them, and they wouldn’t notice. They’re there to stop Parker from grabbing teenage tits and that’s all.
I’ll see Cooper and Murphy soon. Show them exactly how bad they are at their jobs.
The girl stops laughing and brings the pink cupcake to her lips. Her small tongue flicks at the frosting and Parker almost nuts in his jeans.
She’s not teasing him. She’s just fucking clueless. A doe-eyed little girl. Never been on a date. Never had a friend sleep over. Her mom dresses her in shirts that puritanical grandmas wouldn’t be caught dead in. Whenever anyone talks to her, those big green eyes glaze over. Bobby says she’s pretending to be clueless, Doc and I think she’s the real deal. If she had a different last name, she’d have flunked out of high school. But when you know you’ll be married before you can buy beer, why bother learning?
Parker moves to wipe the pink frosting from her nose and the girl glances at her bodyguards. They snap to attention and Parker’s hands fall to his sides. He’s smiling, but it’s fixed. Irritable. He doesn’t like being told what to do, but rules are rules, and no one touches January Whitehall. He’s lucky to sit next to her. When the girl graduated from Trinity Grammar, she received her diploma offstage. She’s danced at the New York Ballet Academy since she was nine, but no one’s ever seen her perform. A kid once tried to film her riding a horse at Kensington Stables and Murphy hit him so hard, he got a concussion.
Parker’s spent millions gaining the stepmother’s loyalty and that bitch has made sure no one’s so much as brushed up against the girl’s side. She’s as pure as snow and in four weeks she’ll say ‘I do’ and belong to Parker forever.
Or so he thinks.
Parker’s security team is almost invisible. Two guys in the skyscraper across the road. Two more in a Buick idling by the curb. A sniper on top of St. George’s Episcopal Church. If I shot Parker this morning, I’d have to execute five men in under a minute to get away. Not impossible, but messy. I shift my position, easing the ache in my spine as the girl finishes her cupcake. She sucks leftover frosting from her fingertips and a throb runs down my cock. There’s a body begging for corruption under those ugly clothes. It’d be fun to tear her out of them. She’d cover herself with her hands, but that’d only make it hotter, her tits jiggling as tears ran down her face. I’d feed her Orchard, so she’d be wet and writhing, whatever her prissy little mind told her. I’d pin her to the floor, shove her thighs wide with my knees, and press into her pussy. I’d watch her virgin blood smear up and down my shaft as I fucked her. She’d fight me the whole way, her little fists pounding against my back as I broke her open.
The perfect Whitehall princess, ruined by a dirty lowlife like me.
But that’s not the plan. Whatever Morelli decides to do with the girl, she doesn’t really matter. Parker matters. Making him regret the day his father slimed into his whore of a mother matters.
There’s a chance I’ll fuck January Whitehall, but it’s more likely I’ll kill her. Kill her, cut out her heart, and feed it to Parker. And it won’t be personal. As Parker taught us a long time ago, sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chapter One
January Whitehall
It’s my wedding day.
I’ve thought it a hundred times since I woke up, but it still doesn’t feel real. Maybe it never will. Maybe I’ll float from the cathedral to the reception to my new married life without having to do anything at all.
Anita’s brush sweeps lightly across my closed eyes. “Okay, January. Open.”
I look at myself in the special dressing room mirror and see my eyelids are now peachy pink. “What a beautiful color!”
“Well, you’re a beautiful bride.”
Anita’s trying to sound happy but the skin between her eyebrows is pinched. She’s done my stepmom’s makeup for years. I’m sure it’s strange that the first time she’s doing mine, it’s for my wedding. I wish I could talk openly. If I could, I’d tell Anita that what’s happening isn’t so strange, that arranged marriages are still common in other places. But I’m not allowed to talk openly. My marriage is family business and Anita isn’t family.
I watch as she puts away the eye brush and selects a pot of shimmering powder from the dozens lining her flat leather satchel. “Highlighter,” she explains. “Let’s make those cheekbones pop.”
My sister, Margot, shakes her empty glass at me. “JJ, have some champagne…”
She’s been drinking since we arrived in the suite to get our hair done. That was five hours ago. I take her glass and put it on my side table. “Maybe you should have a Coke?”
“Maybe you should have a drink?”
“I’m only eighteen.”
“Yeah, and you’re getting married. You can have one glass of fucking champagne.”
I look around, praying no one heard her curse. “Margot, please chill?”
She sticks her tongue out at me but doesn’t say anything else. Margot is braver than I am—and tipsy—but she knows about family business too.
She yawns, stretching her arms over her head, and her platinum bangle tumbles down her wrist. She catches me looking. “As soon as the wedding’s over, I’m selling it.”
Anita moves in front of me, blocking Margot from view, and I’m glad I don’t have to answer. The bracelets are Mr. Parker’s gift to my bridesmaids. Around the hotel suite, identical bangles are sparkling on the wrists of my cousins Sadie and Penelope and my school friends Giuseppina, Darcy, and Quinn. All of them are getting their makeup done, sipping champagne, and having a far better time than Margot.
When Anita is done highlighting my cheeks, she moves back to my eyelids and applies black winged liner and false lashes. “You sit like a statue, January.”
I look at my hands. “Thanks. It’s probably because of ballet.”
“Half the girls I work with wriggle more than you. You should be a model.”
I smile. I’m sure Anita is just being nice but the idea of me being a model is crazier than me going to the moon. I get overwhelmed when two people speak to me at once. I can’t imagine going down a runway with hundreds of cameras flashing in my face.
Kurt, my bodyguard, barks out a laugh that makes everyone in the room jump. “… I said, ‘Go fuck yourself, Hardaker!’”
Theodore, my other bodyguard, slaps his thigh. “Fucking asshole. You should have done it again.”
The two of them are tucked away in the corner of the suite, a bottle of Glenfiddich on the clear coffee table in front of them. I’m sure mom wouldn’t like them drinking on the job, but in a few hours, they won’t be my bodyguards anymore.
Margot bends her head toward me. “At least after today, you won’t have to deal with those chucklefucks.”
“Shhh!” I say, suppressing a smile. Kurt and Theodore are nice, but they’re also loud and kind of rude. It’ll be good not to worry about what they’re saying to the girls at ballet anymore. A clock on the wall chimes, announcing midday. There’s less than an hour until the ceremony. My nerves sizzle like strip steak.
“Nervous?” Margot asks.
“A little. But I bet Mr… I mean Zachery, is nervous too.”
Margot scowls. “First of all, who cares? Second of all, you still call him ‘Mr. Parker?’”
“Sometimes! He’s intimidating, I guess.”
“Bullshit. It’s because your nanny calls him ‘Mr. Parker.’”
My body temperature ticks up a notch. “Margot, for the millionth time, Zia Teresa isn’t my nanny.”
“No, she’s mom’s housekeeper.”
I look over my shoulder. Mentioning mom always makes me feel like she’s going to show up and scream at someone. Probably me. But the room is as friendly and mom-free as ever. “Zia Teresa is my friend,” I tell Margot. “And she’s yours too. Do you remember how she helped out when you threw up on mom’s chintz lounge?”
Margot clicks her fingers at her makeup artist, Helen. “Hi? Yeah, can you bring me more champagne?”
Helen purses her lips, but she puts down her eyelash curler and leaves. I wince. It isn’t like Margot to be rude, but she’s scared, and I have no idea how to help her. If Zia was here, she’d know how to calm Margot down. She knows how to do everything. I wanted her to come to the wedding, but mom refused. “What would people think, having a servant at a formal celebration?”
But Zia—Auntie—Teresa isn’t just a servant. She was my father’s housekeeper when he was young and when my real mom died giving birth to me, Zia Teresa bottle-fed me and read me stories, and sang to me in Italian. She’s tiny, less than five feet tall with a beautiful, wrinkled apple face and the sharpest, funniest tongue in the world. She smells like DNKY’s Be Delicious and Pond cream and Newport menthols, even though I always ask her to stop smoking. For her not to be here today… It’s just wrong.
Anita pats my shoulder. “Okay, baby girl, almost done. We just need setting spray.”
I close my eyes and Anita blasts me with so much wet mist, I’m surprised I’m not dripping. I imagine being sealed in a cocoon, a clear plastic barrier so that when Mr. Parker kisses me at the altar, he won’t really be kissing me. But when I open my eyes, I’m not in a cocoon. I’m just me, but shiny.
Beside me, Margot sips her fresh glass of champagne, her face gleaming with the same setting spray. She looks fierce and gorgeous. I reach out and touch her arm. “You look beautiful, M. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Margot sighs. “I wish daddy were here. If he were, this wouldn’t be happening.”
I fight to keep the smile on my face. “I wish daddy were here too, but I’m happy to be marrying Mr. Parker.”
“You have no fucking clue. This isn’t fair.”
I return my gaze to my mirror. “Margot, when Zia Teresa was fourteen, her dad pulled her out of school and sent her to work for our grandma. He took three-quarters of her paycheck until she got married and then her husband took her whole paycheck.”
“So?”
I straighten in my makeup chair. “So, I’m sorry today is hard for you but I have to get married.”
“God, January… whatever.” Margot fumbles with her purse and pulls out her neon green vape. Mom would go crazy if she knew Margot vaped but if there’s something risky that she hasn’t specifically banned, Margot wants to do it. As she blows out a dragon-like puff of smoke, Fabrizia from Abbagliante Bridal glides through the door in a silver power suit. “Good afternoon, ladies! Prepare to be amazed!”
A team of assistants carries in dresses, each carefully sealed in opaque protectors.
Giuseppina squeals. “Oh my God, it’s time! January’s getting married!”
It takes five assistants to bring in my wedding gown. One on each corner and an extra at the end. I have no idea how much the dress costs, but from the assistants’ terrified expressions, a lot.
“Up, January,” Fabrizia calls. “To the dressing area.”
She ushers me behind a small curtain where I take off my satin robe. Mr. Parker chose my wedding lingerie and two days ago, I was taken to a salon where every hair below my neck was waxed away. I’m still getting used to the bareness, but it does make the underwear, a short white corset and skimpy panties, look nicer. I try to imagine Mr. Parker seeing me half naked like this and my stomach turns over.
One of Fabrizia’s assistants lifts a pair of kitten heels from a shoe box and hands them to me. I slide the patent leather onto my feet and grow an inch taller. Originally, Fabrizia wanted me in high heels, but mom freaked. “Do you want my daughter to tower over her fiancé?”
My dress is hung on a wooden frame beside me, and the assistants stand around it whispering nervously like it might come to life and run away. Fabrizia unzips the opaque sleeve and I see a stretch of white lace and pearls. My stomach contracts. “It’s gorgeous.”
“Hmm.” Fabrizia stares at me in the mirror. “So, the princess is still marrying the goblin?”
Unlike everyone else, Fabrizia doesn’t hide her disapproval of Mr. Parker. Probably because she’s even scarier than my mom.
“I’m very excited to get married.”
Fabrizia makes a ‘pffeew’ noise. “Dutiful, bella, but you’ll need to give a better performance in bed tonight.”
My cheeks burn under all Anita’s makeup. I know there’s a chance I might not be a virgin tomorrow, but I’ve never even been kissed before. Surely Mr. Parker won’t take things that far. Maybe we’ll get to the bridal suite at the Ritz Carlton and just talk and hold hands?