“Who are you?” Brittany Sr. snapped.
“None of your business.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re planning to tell Constantijin about what you think you heard---”
Wow. She was really taking that route? I cleared my throat. “I know exactly what I heard.”
Brittany suddenly pushed herself between her mother and me. Taking me by surprise when she suddenly yanked me by the hair, she snapped, “Listen, you little bitch. I’m going to ruin you if you ever speak one word about this.”
The doors opened, and its sound made me close my eyes in despair. Another surprise guest? The night just kept getting better and better. Not.
“Please release my guest, Brittany.” The familiar cultured voice made my eyes flare wide open.
It really was her – Marge Kastein, Constantijin’s mother.
When the other woman didn’t move, Marge’s voice turned into steel. “Brittany.”
Brittany released me with a curse. I curled my fingers into a fist. If I didn’t, I would be touching my scalp because it honestly hurt, and I didn’t want the blond bimbo and her mother to know that.
Brittany Sr. drew herself up stiffly. “I don’t appreciate you taking that tone to my daughter, Margaret.”
“And if I ever learn about you or your daughter mistreating my guest again, I’ll sue both of you for manhandling.”
The older woman’s face became suffused with such rage, everything suddenly became clear. These two had a history, and it wasn’t a good one.
Brittany Sr. screeched, “How dare you? If it wasn’t for Erik Kastein, you wouldn’t even have the right to speak with me, you whore!”
A pinkish film covered my vision. It was one thing to hear them backstab Marge – which I could honestly forgive since I sincerely believed that what you didn’t know didn’t matter a damn – but it was another thing entirely to insult someone I knew in front of me.
Marge didn’t even flinch, and for a moment I was filled with such awe for her. Marge’s face, still unlined by age, shone with the kind of beauty that was more than skin deep. And in her floor-length gown, with its long black lacy sleeves and white empire-cut body, she wasn’t the one who looked like a whore. It was the other woman, whose probably royalty-like lineage didn’t appear to have a good effect on her fashion taste. She was dressed as provocatively as her daughter, in a glittery strapless gown that boasted a fake tan and meaty thighs.
Pity underlined Marge’s voice when she spoke. “After all these years, you still feel bitter that he fell in love with me, don’t you?”
“Love?”
I winced at the shrill sound of the older woman’s voice.
“You flatter yourself. No, you turned his head around because of all your cheap little tricks in bed, and of course you’d be able to seduce him away from me. By the time you had a hundred men using your body, I was still a virgin---”
The pinkish vision turned into fuchsia, no matter how much I was inhaling and exhaling to stop rage from taking over my common sense.
“And you really had the gall to marry him, even though you know you’d make Erik a laughingstock, with everyone having had a taste of your always-hungry pu**y---”
Fuchsia deepened into crimson, and I clenched my hands together in an effort to control myself.
“---and worst of all for Erik, everyone knew that when you married him, you were knocked up with someone else’s child, a bastard who doesn’t know his place---”
Crimson transformed into the bloodiest shade of red.
I charged towards Brittany Sr.
“What the---”
“Yanna, no!”
Slap.
“You bitch!” Brittany howled behind me. And then she was clawing my back, pulling my hair to keep me off her mother, but I was already lifting my hand.
Slap.
The red marks on each cheek didn’t even satisfy me. “You make me sick, old hag!” Slap. “How can you say such terrible words when you’re the ugliest cougar I’ve ever seen?” Slap.
“Let go of my mother,” Brittany screeched.
Dimly, I heard Marge speaking in Dutch, her words fast and furious.
The doors swooshed open, and all four of us froze for a moment, our eyes swinging to its direction. I hoped it was Constantijin, but this just wasn’t my night at all. A rather large woman in a black-and-white flapper dress gawked.
Brittany was the first to recover. “I said let go of my mother!” She pulled on my gown so hard I heard a tearing sound.
I automatically let go of Brittany Sr., clutching my gown to my body before I found myself in my underwear. Of course, that allowed the older blond bimbo to take advantage and suddenly I had one woman trying to get me bald while the other one wanted me naked.
The large woman screamed, “Security!”
A siren started wailing out of nowhere, as if triggered by the word. More slapping occurred after that, but this time it was me taking a dose of my own medicine. Brittany got to claw my face, but I got to jab her in the eye. And Brittany Sr. did manage to rip my gown off, but I sort of popped something of hers, and the next thing I knew silicone gel had exploded on three of us.
Then there were the police, the walk of shame – it was all a blur after that, and I couldn’t remember much of it. All I knew then was that Constantijin was nowhere to be found.
Lesson #3
There is no chastity belt
that your billionaire cannot make you unlock.
“Yanna?” It took a while before I realized someone had called my name. I was locked with the blond bimbos in a prison cell, wearing an inmate uniform because my gown – Daria’s actually – was beyond hopeless to repair.
But it wasn’t that bad, not really. It could have been a lot worse. We could have been, like, arrested by sexual maniacs with a badge. Or we could have been thrown into a cell occupied by, like, convicted lesbian ra**sts.
Compared to all the horrifying thoughts that had crowded my mind during the ride, reality was a lot more pleasant. In fact, the police station appeared to be one of the newest in the city – a fairly small one, with the other two cells still empty. The lady officer even offered us coffee as we waited for someone to bail us out and have the paperwork done on who was going to sue whom for God knew what.
All in all, I counted myself lucky. If there had been a real-life hardcore criminal standing even ten feet away from me in this prison, I would have freaked out.
Like what Brittany was doing – or had been doing since we were taken here. Ten minutes ago.