Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Twenty-Five
Phoebe
TWO YEARS AGO
THE JOB THAT SHALL NEVER BE NAMED
Manhattan, New York
“Who proposes to someone in two months?” The rhetorical question leaves my lips as rose petals flutter from my palm. I scatter them across the floor of a penthouse suite in a snazzy five-star hotel.
Rocky stages the bar, popping a champagne bottle and dumping the contents down the drain. His gaze swings to me. “In this case, someone disgusting who gets off on deflowering women.”
I am a virgin.
At least that’s what my fiancé believes. Patrick Alistair. The twenty-five-year-old senator’s son swiped right on my profile sixty days ago.
All kinds of dating apps exist online, but people only ever really hear about the mainstream ones. But there are dating apps for every kind of flavor, and it just so happens that the My Valentine app is for virgins. Its business model states how it helps unite two heterosexual individuals who are abstaining until marriage.
It took me an hour on the app to recognize that it’s a hotbed for wealthy men to find girls, offering them money and trips. Some called themselves sugar daddies. I didn’t mind the ones that were up front about being sugar daddies. It was the Patrick Alistairs that left a sour taste in my mouth.
He claimed to be a virgin.
I knew he wasn’t.
He made me visit a doctor to have her confirm my hymen was intact. We had to rent an office space, convert it into a women’s clinic. Addison Tinrock pretended to be a doctor, and she kicked out Patrick when he tried to stay in the room during the procedure. Once he was gone, Addison rolled her eyes like he disgusted her, too, and we shared a look like we were glad he was going to be fleeced.
It’s been an eventful two months. I’ve dodged most kisses and physical forms of affection, which Patrick has accepted as a sign of my purity and demure demeanor. It’s only reeled him in more.
He’s gross in a different way than handsy dirtbags at bars. His face writhes in revulsion when he sees a girl wearing a sundress in public. If he catches sight of even the slightest PDA, he calls her a whore. His judgment toward women has made me burn up and seethe, and I’m elated this job is cycling to an end. So he can finally get a nice kick to the balls.
Rocky finishes staging the bar with emptied glasses and spilled liquor. I toss the last of the petals on the king-sized bed.
There is one final task before completing the job, and it’s staring me in the face.
Rocky crosses the room, seizing my gaze. We haven’t talked about the last thing our parents told us before we left for the hotel.
Everett, Addison, and my mom gathered us together at a safe location in Brooklyn. The fancy brownstone they were renting was a part of their lavish New York lives, and my mom was playing the role of my sweet-hearted, fashionable aunt this time.
I wished Hailey was doing this job with us. I hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks since she was in Staten Island getting new passports from Carter for the next job.
“They have to be convincing,” Everett said to my mom and Addison, tension high in the living room. A fireplace crackled, and no one was seated. We were all on our feet, and Rocky gripped the mantel like he was forcing himself not to implode.
“We will be,” I assured, not totally understanding why they thought we’d fail to pull the rope.
My mom slipped me a kind smile. “I have no doubt, bug. We’re just trying to figure out what the mark will believe.”
Everett shifted his weight with slight ire. “This is called Your Lover Is Cheating—not Your Lover Might Be Cheating. If he walks in on his fiancée kissing another man, you think he’s the type to be sold that easily?” Everett looked between his wife and my mom. “Because I don’t think he’ll accept it.”
“They’ll be under bedsheets,” my mom volleyed, her arms weaving over her baby-blue chiffon Vera Wang dress, complete with an elegant halter neckline. “His imagination will fill in the blanks.”
Addison looked vexed and upset as she pushed her cat-eye Balmain frames up the bridge of her celestial nose. “He’s right, Bethy.” She spoke to my mom. “He wanted in the room to see her hymen.”
I touched my burning temple, roasting as they discussed my freaking hymen in front of Rocky and his dad. I cast a quick glance to Rocky, and his tightened jaw could’ve cut glass. He wasn’t staring at me, though.
“He’s a pig,” Addison snipped. “A pig who wanted proof of her virginity. He’ll want the clearest proof that it’s been taken.”
“I could go back to the fake doctor,” I offered. “You could tell him my . . .” I was on fire. “. . . that I’m no longer a virgin.”