TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 455

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<CHAPTER 378 HOMICIDALLY STILL

CHAPTER 378: HOMICIDALLY STILL

EMBER’S POV

And my stomach drops, because there is no Mr Aster. But Merrilyn Aster does not drop her cover. Merrilyn Aster laughs.

It comes out of me sharp and bright and just this side of unhinged, the laugh of a woman who has never once in her gilded life been told no.

And I reach into my clutch and pull out the gold-cased phone Queenie bought for exactly this, and I hold it out to the pit boss like I’m doing him an enormous favour.

“You want to speak to Daddy?” I say sweetly. “By all means. Let’s call Daddy.” I’m already dialling, already smiling, already too loud. “I do hope you’ll tell him precisely where his money’s going tonight. Tell him about the floor. Tell him about the men. Tell him I said the words engine grease into a telephone. Maybe this is the one that finally gives him the heart attack he keeps threatening me with – he’s been promising to disinherit me since I was nineteen, and honestly, at this point-”

The line connects.

“Merrilyn.” Nathaniel’s voice, but this time, it’s pitched older, richer, drowning in exhausted contempt, the voice of a man who has bailed his catastrophe of a daughter out of a hundred rooms exactly like this one. “Where are you? What have you done? Which continent is it this

time?”

“Daddy.” I turn the phone slightly toward the pit boss, beaming, radiant with spite. “There’s a darling little man here who’d like to confirm I can afford my own vices. Would you tell him?”

A long, weary, monied sigh comes down the line.

“Put him on. And Merrilyn – whatever it is you’re about to charge to the account, I do not want the itemised receipt. I have a board meeting. I cannot look at the word ‘wet’ on a statement again.”

The pit boss takes the phone, warily, and Nathaniel-as-Daddy proceeds to bury him in an avalanche of aristocratic condescension – account numbers, a bank whose name makes the pit boss’s eyebrows climb, a bored litany of yes she’s my daughter, yes we are old money, yes the money’s real, yes she’s always like this, no I will not be paying for damages this time, she’s a grown woman, put her back on – and I stand there examining my nails while my fiancé’s beta impersonates my imaginary billionaire father into a rogue casino telephone, and it takes everything I have not to laugh.

CHAPTER 378 HOMICIDALLY STILL

The pit boss hands the phone back, looking faintly traumatised.

She’s cleared for the upper floors.”

“Wonderful,” says Daddy. “Merrilyn. Try not to marry any of them.”

Click.

“He worries,” I tell the pit boss, tucking the phone away, sweeping past the rope. “It’s the money. It does things to a man.”

The black doors are at the top of the next stair, and Cassian pauses with a hand on them, and there’s a showman’s relish in his voice now.

“And now. The reason you came.”

He opens them.

And I nearly break character and die on the spot.

Because it’s a showroom. A showroom of men.

A long, warm-lit gallery, and lined along both sides are perhaps a dozen of them, shirtless, oiled, arranged like merchandise in a very expensive shop.

Big ones. Lean ones. Scarred ones. Inked head to foot. One who is looking at me like he genuinely might bite, and might mean it kindly.

And little cards. There are little cards, like a wine list, a small placard beside each man describing his particular speciality in a cramped, elegant hand, and I do not read them.

I will not read them, because if I read a single one of those cards I will lose my composure and possibly my life.

“Our finest,” Cassian purrs. “Curated precisely to your specifications. Feral. Packless. Rough of hand, dark of history. Take your time, my lady. Inspect the merchandise. Whichever suits your appetite is yours for the evening – and your man, naturally-” a smooth glance at Knox -may watch.”

And behind me, I feel Knox go absolutely, homicidally still.

And something wicked and warm and delighted uncurls in my chest, because oh.

Oh, this is going to be the best night of my entire life, and he is going to hate it, and I am going to savour it.