A Reputation For Revenge(11)

Before Josie was born.

It was an old grief, one she’d always lived with. If Josie had never been conceived, her mother wouldn’t have put off chemotherapy treatments for the sake of her unborn child. Or died a month after Josie’s birth, causing her father to go off the deep end, quitting his job as a math teacher and taking his seven-year-old poker-playing prodigy daughter Bree down the Alaskan coast to fleece tourists. Josie blinked back tears.

If she had never been born...

Her parents and Bree might still be happy and safe in a snug little suburban home.

Squaring her shoulders, she shook the thought away. Tucking the photo album back into her bag, she looked at her own bleak reflection, then grabbed her frayed toothbrush, drenched it in minty toothpaste and cleaned her teeth with a vengeance.

A moment later, she stepped into the steaming hot water of the huge marble shower. The rush of water felt good against her skin, like a massage against the tired muscles of her back and shoulders, washing all the dust and grime and grief away. Using some exotic orange-scented shampoo with Arabic writing—where on earth had Kasimir gotten that?—Josie washed her long brown hair thoroughly. Then she washed it again, just to be sure.

It was going to be all right, she repeated to herself. It would all be all right.

Soon, her sister would be safe.

Soon, her sister would be home.

And once Bree was free from Vladimir Xendzov’s clutches, maybe Josie would finally have the guts to tell her what she felt in her heart, but had never been brave enough to say.

As much as she loved and appreciated all that Bree had sacrificed for her over the past ten years, Josie was no longer a child. She was twenty-two. She wanted to learn how to drive. To get a job on her own. To be allowed to go to bars, to date. She wanted the freedom to make mistakes, without Bree as an anxious mother hen, constantly standing over her shoulder.

She wanted to grow up.

Turning off the water, she got out of the shower. The large bathroom was steamy, the mirrors opaque with white fog. She wondered how long she’d been in the water. She didn’t wear a watch because she hated to watch the passage of time, which seemed to go far too slowly when she was working, and rushed by at breakneck speed when she was not. Why, she’d often wondered, couldn’t time rush by at work, and then slip into delicious slowness when she was at home, lasting and lasting, like sunlight on a summer’s day?

Wrapping a plush white towel around her body, over skin that was scrubbed clean with orange soap and pink with heat, she looked at the sartorial choices offered by her backpack. Let’s see. Which was better: a wool cardigan or a bikini top?

With a grumpy sigh, she looked back at the dirty, wrinkled T-shirt, jeans and white cotton panties and bra crumpled on the shining white tile of the bathroom floor. She’d worn those clothes for two days straight. The thought of putting them back over her clean skin was dreadful. But she had no other option.

Or did she...?

Her eyes fell upon something hanging on the back of the bathroom door that she hadn’t noticed before. A white shift dress. Going towards it, she saw a note attached to the hanger.





Every bride needs a wedding dress. Join me at the rooftop pool when you’re awake.





She smiled down at the hard black angles of his handwriting. She’d thought she hadn’t wanted a dress, that she wanted to keep their wedding as dull and unromantic as possible. But now...how had he known the small gesture would mean so much?

Then she saw the dress’s tag. Chanel. Holy cow. Maybe the gesture wasn’t so small. For a moment, she was afraid to touch the fabric. Then she stroked the lace softly with her fingertips. It felt like a whisper. Like a dream.

Maybe everything really was going to be all right.

Josie exhaled, blinking back tears. She’d taken a huge gamble, using her last paycheck to come back to Honolulu, trusting Kasimir to help her. But it had paid off. For the first time in her life, she’d done something right.

It was a strangely intoxicating feeling.

Josie had always been the one who ruined things, not the one who saved them. She’d learned from a young age that the only way to make up for all the pain she’d caused everyone was just to take a book and go read quietly and invisibly in a corner, making as little trouble or fuss as possible.

But this time...

She tried to imagine her sister’s face when Josie burst in with Prince Kasimir and saved her. Wouldn’t Bree be surprised that her baby sister had done something important, something difficult, all by herself? Josie, her usually unflappable sister would blurt out, how did you do this? You’re such a genius!