10. Grayson

What the hell set her off this time? I can’t wait for this all to be over so I can cut this toxicity out of my life. If I’d known sooner that I was going to meet the love of my life, I would’ve walked away from my old life a long time ago and just lived my best life away from all this drama.

Its getting to the point where I hate the constant interruptions because the very sound of these people’s voices fills me with anger. I thought this would be easy, and it has been to a certain point, but now I find that they’re just getting in the way of my happiness. Each second I have to take away from my life to deal with their bullshit is a drain.

I guess I’m salty because I miss my girl. That always puts me on edge until I see her again. I didn’t know it was possible to miss a person this much. I can barely sleep when she’s not there, and now we go to bed at night with our webcams on, watching each other until one of us falls asleep.

It’s the only way either of us can function in the morning since we’ve been forced to stay apart to carry out this farce. Some days I just wanna say screw it. The truth is, I no longer care, not as much as I used to. But then I remember the stories she tells about her time with Lacey and her mother, and my anger is revived. It’s a vicious cycle, that’s for sure, and sometimes, like now, I have to fight to carry on because the balance has shifted.

I can’t grab her at the last minute and go somewhere and just sit and talk and look at each other for hours, not unless we go out of town where we don’t stand the chance of running into someone either of us knows. I was sitting here thinking about that and reminiscing about the good old days when Lacey called, screaming and crying so loudly that I couldn’t understand a word she said.

I guess she was expecting me to drop everything and run to her side, but when I told her I had to finish what I was doing here, she freaked out even more until I just hung up on her. I’ve lost all respect for the girl I used to call my friend. This is someone I thought would be in my life for the rest of it; now, I can’t wait to see the back of her.

I’m eternally grateful, though, that she burned that bridge down to the ground because if she hadn’t, I might really have ended up marrying her, and there would’ve been no chance for Lily and me. That thought gives me nightmares and wakes me up in a cold sweat some nights.

Even after the first cheating debacle, I had been willing to forgive her and go back to being friends; now she’s lucky I don’t strangle her each time we meet. I don’t even hate her; I just wish she’d drop off the face of the earth and stop wasting my damn time.

But since I know that won’t happen, I just keep adding more and more shit to her punishment because she keeps getting worst and doing more heinous shit. Her latest thing is bitching to me about Lily, not knowing how close she comes to getting her throat slit.

I want to tell her so badly that she’s not even worthy to call my girl’s name or walk in her shadow, but I have to bite craters in my tongue to keep myself from giving my own shit away too soon.

And this is the woman my own parents want to saddle me with. At least now I know why they’re so lax when it comes to this stuff, and it’s not just that they’re awful parents; they’re just awful people, period.

My phone rang, and I was about to mute it until I saw that my baby was calling. That’s her name in my phone. And I’ve even grown so bold as to have one of our sunsets from the weekend’s trip as my screen saver.

Not that anyonecan get into my phone, but you never know. Now that we were coming down to the nitty gritty, I found myself being extra cautious. “Hey, sweetheart, what’s up?”

“I think I may have made more work for you.”

“How so?” See, I was already smiling, and I didn’t even know what the little minx had done.

“Well, let’s just say I just left my Dad’s house. I went to show off my ring and maybe start another world war.”

“So that’s why Lacey called me screaming. Thanks a lot.”

“Not to worry, I have just the ring for her.”

“You do, huh!”

“Uh-huh, but she’s going to be the one to choose it, so say nothing. You two haven’t discussed rings yet, have you?”

“She brought it up, yes, but I told her I’d get to it this weekend after she looks for something she wants. You did tell me to do that, didn’t you?”

“I did, yes. I’m just making sure you followed instructions.”

“I wouldn’t dare not. You scare me when you get like this.”

“I bet not. Of the two of us, I think I’m the lesser evil.”

“We’ll see.”

We fooled around for five minutes before I had to get back to what I was doing. I was here well after closing because once I get started on something, I can’t let it go.

I knew she was going to cause trouble, but I didn’t know exactly what she was up to. She’s a lot more in your face than I am. I prefer doing things behind the scenes and watching the fallout. I get a lot more satisfaction that way than, say, hitting someone. That gratification only lasts but for so long.

But if I systematically break you down from every angle, that’s hard to come back from. Since we were already at the wedding planning stage, there was really no time to waste. A year might seem like a lot of time, but it’s not.

At least when Lacey mentioned planning the wedding in two years, and I told her I didn’t want to wait that long, she took that to mean that I was in a rush to marry her. Anything that helps with my agenda is welcome. It also helps that she’s so full of herself she can’t see the truth staring her in the face.

Its been more than five years since I’ve been alone in a room with her, that long since I’ve taken her out anywhere with just us. The few times I was strong-armed into doing something with her, I always turned it into a family affair in deference to Lily’s feelings, though she always claimed she understood that it was all part of the act.

I always do my utmost to treat her the way I’d want to be treated if the tables were turned, which isn’t always easy, but it is always the choice I make, damn the consequences. She hides it well but I know she’s scarred by what had been done to her.

I know, too, that she can’t help but be part of the competition her sister has going on with her. I can’t let her lose even a little bit of face, so when she goes rogue and does shit like this on her own, I have to back her play at all costs.

I knew when she showed off her ring that Lacey was going to be up my ass, but since I have no intentions of buying her shit, that was going to be a problem. Lily came up with the idea of telling her I wanted to get it made to her specifications, so I don’t know what’s supposed to happen now or where she planned to get this ring that she says she’s going to get Lacey, but I trust her.

She knows the plan from point A to point B, and we never go off script unless each one knows what’s going on. At least she knows most of it. Some things I have kept from her because I don’t want her to get any splashback if things go south.

But she’s pretty much up for anything short of breaking the law, though I’m not too sure about that either. She has a strong sense of justice and a bit of the vigilante in her.

That’s why I think she was made for me, which is about the craziest thing when you think about it. Sometimes, I wonder about the odds of the two of us meeting the way we did after years of being in close proximity and never knowing the other exists.

It’s almost as if fate meant for us to be together, not only in love but joined forces against the same enemy. I realize, though, when it’s all said and done, that I’m not a nice person. I might’ve been once, but that died a long time ago.

I’ve lived with vengeance for so long that it has become a part of me without me realizing it. Lily is the only softness left in my life. And yet, no one around me knows. My parents haven’t noticed. They have no idea of the tiger they’ve been raising right under their noses. A tiger that’s about to strike and strike hard.

I sometimes scare myself with how coldly calculating I’d become and have had to warn myself a time or two not to cross the line into outright evil.

My only hope is that Lily doesn’t think I went too far when the curtain goes down on the final act.

* * *

LILY

* * *

Sun Tzu was right;it pays to know your enemy. I knew that once Janice saw that ring on my finger it’ll blind her to reason. After the ring thing, I made sure to call Dad every day for the next couple of days, always around dinner time and spent more time talking to him at the office than I have in the last five years combined.

He didn’t seem to notice anything wrong, and I’m sure he thought that the past was forgotten now that I was getting married. How he could think that when I still refuse to introduce him to my fiancé is anyone’s guess.

I have him eating out of my hand and longing for the scraps from my table just as I’d done as a young child who’d been abandoned by her father. I guess he’s forgotten his part in all that as time went by.

In his mind, he’d like to blame Janice for all of it, but I have a very long memory, and the only reason I’ve taken it easy on him all these years is because he’s my grandparents’ son.

Every once in a while, Grayson would ask me if I was sure I wanted to be a part of what he was doing or if I was sure I didn’t mind that he was going after my father and it’s all I could do to hide my ferocious glee at the thought of him being taken down.

Honestly, I think he’s being too easy on them, but he’s a kind soul. Me, not so much. You see, the difference between Grayson and I is that he found out what my father and Lacey were really like when he was a teen.

I had a whole lifetime to learn that lesson, so I have way more grievances against those two, and they were never able to pull the wool over my eyes the way they did with him for so many years. He’s still a bit disillusioned, I think, and who can blame him after what his own parents had put him through?

Anyway, I knew that once the seeds were planted, Janice wouldn’t be able to help herself. It’s true that my grandparents were gone for the weekend, but what I didn’t tell Dad is that I’d convinced them to add new security cameras around the property.

For the longest time, Grandpa had resisted because their property was so well protected by high walls and a gate that they didn’t need what he calls new fandangle nonsense. He, for some reason, believed that people could spy on him through the cameras, but I’d worn him down and then warned him not to tell anyone that he was having them installed for safety reasons.

I think he suspected that I was up to something, and that’s why he gave in, but I’m not too sure. Mom keeps asking why I’m being sneaky, and I tell her that I’m not, but I certainly am.

Poor Grayson, he can’t wait for the wedding day to get here, and I’m busy enjoying the leadup. In fact, I have somewhere I need to be in about half an hour. Today was Lacey’s day with her girls.

She usually meets them at this little bistro in town that’s all the rage and has a waiting list a mile long. She always reserves the best table so she can be on full display. I reserved that table after she did and had her moved elsewhere, so when she shows up, that will be her first surprise.

You see, she uses my grandparents’ name to open doors, and since we don’t air our dirty laundry, not many people know the truth. Although we share the same last name since her mother insisted Dad change it after they got married since he wasn’t even on the birth certificate, hers isn’t hyphenated like mine. That hyphen is what trumps her every time.

The Sinclair name carries a lot of weight around these parts, but Lily Devon-Sinclair is a double threat. I know it and I bet everyone in that place does as well. They would if they had any business acumen. My maternal family are no slouches when it comes to wealth and prestige.

It helps that I made my grandparents take me there for lunch so the staff could see the granddaughter that was with them, even made sure it was known that I was their only granddaughter. I did that purposely because I knew that Lacey had been putting on airs and using our family name to get her way.

When the manager came smiling over to our table at lunch that day, she had been well-coached on what to say. You see, she doesn’t like Lacey because she talks down to their staff and makes everyone feel like shit, which I suspected before I approached the young black manager with my idea.

She greeted my grandparents by telling them about their granddaughter, who came there often with her friends. Gran was very offended and pointed me out as her only granddaughter.

The manager apologized, but as per our agreement, that little tidbit would be shared among the staff before long, and they’d know not to give my darling little sister preferential treatment any longer. In fact, after today, she’d be lucky if she ever got another reservation there.

This is so much fun. While she’s planning her fake wedding, I’ll be busy planning her demise. I have all the time in the world because if I know the women in my family, I wouldn’t get anywhere near the wedding planning. I’d be lucky if I got to choose my own dress.