“Well?” I asked Kingston as he strolled back out toward me.
Kingston shrugged, a perplexed look on his face.
“She said no,” he said with a wrinkle in his brow.
I frowned. “We needed her to come to this party if we want to find out the truth.”
I set things in motion for Katya to get a new friend. While I didn’t expect her to ever open up to me or King, I had high hopes for her confiding the truth in her new best friend - especially if she got wasted and lost her filter.
The whisper of guilt I felt when I set it up only made me more certain that I was doing the right thing. Katya was slowly wearing on my defenses, but this would but an unscalable wall between us. Once she found out the truth, and she’d be on a plane back to New York without hesitation. I needed her out of our lives for good.
“I know, but Katya just wasn’t interested in the party,” Kingston told me as he looked off into the distance. “There’s something off about her – she’s not like a normal girl.”
I set down my barbell and rolled my shoulders. If Katya was here as a con artist, she was doing a terrible job. She should have been all over King and I the moment that our parents were out of sight - just like every other girl we knew. However, she kept her distance and avoided us whenever possible. It seemed like she might be telling the truth about wanting to be left alone.
Katya also spent most of her days in the ballet studio. As much as I hated to admit it, she worked hard enough to be called a serious athlete. I’d never thought of ballerinas as athletes before, but Katya had strength and stamina to push her body for hours. She could do physical feats that I knew must have taken years of hard training.
Katya wasn’t sitting on her ass, spending my dad’s money, or working on reeling in a wealthy man. She was dedicating her life to a dying art that didn’t pay well, but would destroy her body in the long run. None of that fit the picture of Nina’s co-conspirator or protégé, but that may have been why Nina chose to use her.
“I know!” King said with a sudden snap of the fingers.
“Know what?” I asked with a sigh.
“What makes her so weird,” King said excitedly.
“The fact that she avoids us like we’re lepers?” I said drily. “I’ve noticed.”
King looked disappointed. “Yeah, but I was going to say it’s because she’s not impressed with the usual stuff. She doesn’t wear jewelry, and I’ve never even seen her glance at Dad’s ridiculously expensive watches or Nina’s diamonds. With most girls, you can see the calculation in their eyes as they add up the zeroes when they look at stuff like that.”
I looked pointedly at the Rolex on King’s wrist. “She might not know quality when she sees it.”
King laughed. “Face it, she doesn’t give a fuck about who we are. We’re just a random pair of assholes to her.”
“She wouldn’t be here if that were true,” I said darkly.
King grinned. “She’s only here because of Nina – I don’t think she’s down with whatever Nina has planned.”
“King,” I said as I grabbed his arm. “You can’t fall for her bullshit. She’s not a little lost lamb; she’s a wolf in disguise.”
Kingston looked at me doubtfully. “Bro-”
“I’m serious, Kingston,” I said as I held his gaze. “Stay away from her.”
King wrenched his arm out of my grasp. “You need to get a grip and admit what’s obvious to both of us.”
“Katya-”
“Katya could help us,” King interrupted. “You need to stop being such a dick just because she gets yours hard.”
I aimed a half-hearted punch at his arm, but he easily dodged me and laughed. “I never thought I’d see my big brother pushing a girl down in a sandbox because he liked her.”
“She threw sand in both of our faces, King.”
Kingston laughed out loud. “That’s what sisters do.” He gave me a sly look. “But you don’t see her as a sister, do you?”
I looked at him sharply. “You’re as bad as Dad. She isn’t a replacement for-”
Kingston’s face sobered. “Nothing is a replacement for what we lost. But bro, that doesn’t mean she can’t fit here with us.”
I sighed, but I didn’t bother to respond because it would just egg him on further. This minor setback would delay things by a day or two, but I would find out what Katya was up to. I glanced at King out of the corner of my eye. I needed to keep a close eye on him. He went through girls more often than he changed his shirt, but there was something different about how he looked at Katya. Somehow, she’d gotten to him the same way she’d gotten to my father.
I sighed when I realized I was softening toward Katya, too. She had a lot of nerve to come after us, and I could admit we deserved it a little. We tried to terrorize her, but she bounced right back and came at us. She could have gone to our father and made our lives hell, but instead she handled business on her own. The pranks she pulled had been a little childish, but I had to laugh at the cream cheese deodorant. It also showed that she didn’t have any real malice toward us if that was her idea of revenge. King was quick to forgive her once his hair was back to normal, and he was having fun
