Vicious Prince (Royal Elite, #5)

by Rina Kent

Therapy didn’t work, so maybe this will. It’s a different type of therapy — the titillating kind.

I heard it wrong. I must’ve. It can’t be him.

When Cole mentioned this place, I almost didn’t believe him. Teal might appear like a goth with a tendency of calling out Satan in night-time rituals, but she’s Ethan’s good girl. After all, she wanted the engagement for his sake.

Since Cole’s family owns this business of debauchery, and he’s the one who accepted her application so soon, it didn’t take me long to not only become a member but to also have her as my first meal.

I snap a picture of her dazed, flushed state.

Teal here is ashamed of her orgasm — or rather the one who caused her pleasure.

“Then I guess Ethan can see what places his daughter frequents.

Earl Edric Astor wouldn’t approve of a daughter-in-law who likes to be treated like a slut.

she turns around, and as I warned her she would, she runs.

Usually, I’d have an episode if someone as much as tried to cage me. It brings back dark memories, thoughts, and smells, but at that moment? When he took all my will against the wall, I felt a strange sense of awareness.

He took that picture of me, and he’ll use it to threaten me to end the engagement and my damn plan.

I don’t even use Instagram — or any social media, for that matter — but the other day, I made an account. It has zero followers, is following one, and lacks any profile picture.

I went from throwing a party every other night, smoking my stash of weed, and fucking exotic girls to living like a priest. The partying part can be overcome.

Mum being here also means Dad is around, too, and that kind of sucks, especially since he’s been watching me more closely lately.

The only untouched things are Mom’s paintings, which she’s spent years collecting. She studied art before she had tremors and had to stop drawing altogether.

Claire is one of the few I’ve fucked more than once.

Since he witnessed that scene, Ron Astor the Second has become picky and refuses to get hard for anyone.

Is she having some sort of an attack? Now that I think about it, she’s always had these moments where she disappears to the middle of nowhere and no one can find her.

“You have a week to break off the engagement,”

Agnus has raised Knox and me as if we were his children. When we were eight, Knox and I were kidnapped by his brother, Reginald, though I wouldn’t actually call it kidnapping. Knox and I were running away from the brothel in which Mum worked.

We were starved and cold,

Reginald was this posh driver who offered us food if we met his mistress. Knox didn’t like it and said we shouldn’t go, but I took Reginald’s hand and we went into his car.

We had our food.

Then, Reginald’s mistress showed up — Dad’s dead wife, Abigail — and she was a spitting image of how Elsa looks now. She was kind and showered us then gave us new clothes.

What we didn’t know was that she was mentally ill and only fed children who looked like her dead son. The moment she found out I was a girl who had my hair cut short, she kind of flipped.

Knox and I were trapped in an underground basement for days or weeks, I still don’t remember. We barely ate, and she once cut our knees so we’d have the same injury as her son.

Then Dad showed up.

He saved us from his wife and was about to take us back to Mum, but Knox begged him not to.

It was the first time I’d spoken in weeks, and it was because of Agnus.

After all, he’s the one who took care of Knox and me during the years Dad spent in a coma.

He never acted as a father, either. He’s always been efficient at getting things done and that’s all. Over the years, the initial admiration has been developing.

did I mention he’s Dad’s trustee and right-hand man? He’s the one who managed Dad’s steel empire when he couldn’t. He’s the one who’s helping Dad snatch his place back in the business world now that he’s returned.

Agnus has zero tolerance for anything that could harm my father. He nearly turned against Elsa when she was proving to be a problem in Dad’s path to success.

That’s probably why the two of them don’t really get along.

He sent the picture he snapped of me in the club.

Xander is at rehab,

I tagged along with him and we’re now at his house, or rather his stepfather’s house, Sebastian Queens. The future prime minister of the United Kingdom and one of Dad’s allies. He likes to keep everyone who matters near – like Teal’s foster father, Ethan Steel.

Imagine if I didn’t tell you about how she acted in front of your secret admirer.” “Next time, when you tell me something, don’t do it when Aiden is around.”

After kissing Cole’s mother on the cheek and pissing her son off one last time, I leave their mansion.

The moment I step into the house, I feel it — the change in the air, the shift in the atmosphere.

Lars appears at the entrance and nods in the direction of Dad’s office.

I’m near the office when it opens, and two men emerge. One is my father, and the other is his younger brother, Uncle Eduard.

Unlike my father, Eduard is an energetic man in his late thirties. He works in the imports and exports branch of my father’s business. He’s basically

Father’s right-hand man, aside from being his most...

I stare between him and Dad, hoping one of them will explain his sudden return from the other side of the world. I thought he was responsible for the Australian branch and wouldn’t return anymore.

“I’m busy, so your uncle will take care of the London branch from now on.”

Mum rarely leaves her room, if ever, and whenever she does, it’s for the adjoining office she uses to answer emails and such. She doesn’t have friends to speak of either. Dad and I are her entire world, as she once said.

Human interaction has always been my weakness; that’s why I keep it to an absolute minimum.

It takes me a long time to connect to people — if I ever do

Charlotte is a victim in all this, and she doesn’t deserve what will happen at the end of the tale.