Prestige by Toni Reeb

Author:Toni Reeb [Reeb, Toni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798989127016
Published: 2023-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

twenty-one

Bonnie was tipsy before the party started. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but after what happened with Marcus in the closet, she needed a couple in her to get through the rest of the day.

She and Marcus rarely fought. Most of the time, if Bonnie ever disagreed with him, he would tell her why she was wrong and he was right and shut down the conversation right after.

This fight was a time bomb waiting to go off, except it blew up in Bonnie’s face. She saw true darkness in Marcus’s eyes for the first time. It was the kind of darkness you drove through in the middle of the night feeling hopeless that daylight would never come.

She always thought of herself as being a good judge of character. It was one of the first things Vivica taught her. But teaching was different from protecting. Vivica taught her to spot the posers, thieves, and scum, but Bonnie only knew to distance herself from them. Vivica never told her what to do if they got too close.

She put on her best smile and made conversation with anyone who came up to her. There were a few occasions when a male friend of Marcus’s would try to be “friendly.” Bonnie quickly realized they only wanted a close-up view of her chest. If she had a choice, she would’ve worn a modest bathing suit, considering the people they were around. But Marcus picked this one out specifically, and it showed a lot more than Bonnie was comfortable with. The top squeezed her chest together so tightly that she feared breathing would snap it apart. She kept the cover-up around herself most of the night to keep the leers to a minimum, but also to hide the nasty purple bruises beginning to form on her upper arms.

Mina’s catering staff were excellent. They quickly replaced her drink with another and sneaked her a couple of extra pigs in blankets. At one point, Bonnie met Mina’s eyes from across the pool, but Mina broke contact first. It would probably be best to avoid her for the rest of the night, and Bonnie was quite good at that. She’d been ducking and dodging Artemis successfully so far. Whenever Artemis entered the same room as her, she left to find someone else to mingle with. But then Artemis would follow minutes later. Bonnie knew she was doing it on purpose, even if it was her job to take photos of the party. There were times when Artemis pointed the camera in her direction, but Bonnie pretended not to notice it. Being in Artemis’s rule of thirds brought back too many memories that she tried to burn away with one or two sneaky glasses of whisky.

She couldn’t avoid the conversation forever, but now wasn’t the time. Not with so many eyes everywhere. Artemis had to know this.

“Oh, Bonnie, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Candice walked up to her wearing the skimpiest hot pink bathing suit she’d ever seen. If Bonnie didn’t hate her so much, she’d admit that she looked good.

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