My Dark Prince: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Dark Prince Road)

I woke up ready for battle.

Armed with my memories – all my memories – I knew I couldn’t stay in this gilded cage for long. Not because Oliver would kick me out. That asswipe still thought I knew nothing. Nor because I needed to work, since my next project wouldn’t come until mid-July.

But rather, if I didn’t get out of here, I might kill my fiancé with my bare hands. No finesse. No sophisticated revenge. None of the torture I’d envisioned yesterday before the shower yoga incident.

I couldn’t wait to throw the truth in Oliver’s face and watch him squirm. It would have to wait until after the fancy dinner with his friends tonight.

Dallas. Farrow. Hettie.

All of them betrayed me. Lied in my face and pretended to be close with me.

Did they pity me? Thought it was hilarious that I lived with the man who once broke my heart and deserted me? No. I shut the thought down fast. If the girls agreed with Oliver’s actions, they wouldn’t have taken me to Baylor to jog my memory.

I’d spare them from my revenge.

I did, however, intend to see just how far they would take lying to me. At dinner tonight. Where I planned on forcing everyone on this forsaken street to fess up to their crimes.

Anticipation sizzled beneath my skin.

I rolled onto my hip, noting Oliver’s empty side of the bed and his phone still charging on the nightstand. Mine buzzed on the pillow beside me.

Seb vB: Next time you snoop through my rowing gear, return it how you found it.

Seb. The damn grump. He must’ve known, too. I couldn’t hold it against him, though. He had no intention of interacting with me. I’d barged into his domain. Not the other way around.

I typed out a text and hesitated, pressing send anyway. I trusted Seb to keep our conversations to himself, especially since he didn’t want Oliver to find out I knew about his condition.

Briar Auer: I know the truth.

Seb vB: What are you gonna do?

No apology. No acknowledgement of his role in the lie. Nothing. It was so very Seb – the old Seb – that I almost smiled.

Briar Auer: I’m going to torch this place down.

Seb vB: With me in it, please.

I frowned, ninety-nine percent sure he meant it literally.

After my nasty break up with Oliver, it killed me that Ollie had gotten Seb in the divorce. I’d always considered him my baby brother. My cruel, foul-mouthed baby brother, but a brother, nonetheless.

All my texts to Seb had gone unsent. He’d blocked me. At the time, I assumed it was out of loyalty to his brother, but now I knew he’d simply shut the entire world out.

Which reminded me.

Revenge.

I sauntered into my walk-in wardrobe – the one thing other than Geezer and Trio that I would miss from this house – and chose the skimpiest bikini I owned. If Ollie thought he had blue balls yesterday, he had another thing coming for him.

It took all of twenty minutes to locate Oliver sipping coffee amidst the garden. He’d found a peaceful spot with a view of both the lake and the blue roses.

I settled in front of the open window before him, deciding to do my morning yoga in his direct line of sight. He glanced up from his laptop, doing a doubletake when he caught my outfit. I sank into downward dog, expecting to give him a hard-on that would hopefully result in necrosis.

After my morning workout, I strolled into the kitchen in a pair of Daisy Dukes and my bright red bikini top. Goosebumps scattered across my arms, but torturing Oliver took unprecedented priority. The latter desperately tried to concentrate on the spreadsheet before him.

“Sleep well?” I sing-songed.

“Sure. You?” He took a sip of his macchiato, already returning his attention to his laptop.

In hindsight, I should’ve seen the obvious signs.

The meat. The plane. The way he glued himself to work whenever he babysat me. Oliver wanted as little to do with me as possible until I got my memory back, but I refused to make it easy for him. Not because he’d lied to me about our engagement, making a total fool out of me. But because I remembered what he did to me. Every. Cruel. Thing.

The way he took my virginity and ditched me. That walk of shame down the cobbled Parisian road, mostly naked, with just a thin hotel robe strapped around my shoulders. The stares, the whispers, the refusal to let me into boutiques. The hot tears that followed.

Ollie’s sudden silence in the aftermath. No calls, texts, or emails. None of the gifts he used to send me on his travels. I’d showed up at this very home, in front of these very iron-wrought gates, only to be rejected. Again.

Then, those Instagram exchanges. So public, almost like he’d wanted to rub it in my face that he’d cheated on me.

And most of all, I remembered how this continent never quite felt big enough for both of us after what happened. I chose to live in Los Angeles because it was the furthest place in America from Maryland, short of Alaska and Hawaii.

Still, I saw his face. All the time. In gossip magazines, and social columns, and even congressional hearings. Oliver was everywhere, no matter how hard I tried to erase him from my life.

This time, he would be the one trapped. Unable to get rid of me.

“It was a little hot.” I scrunched the cups of my bikini top until the triangles barely covered my nipples, determined to give him a taste of his own medicine. “I think I’m going to sleep naked tonight if you don’t mind.”

Oliver choked on his coffee, spraying half of it on the screen of his expensive device. He grabbed a napkin and dabbed the corners of his lips. “Are you allergic to clothes now?”

“Now?” I peered up at him beneath a curtain of lashes, blinking innocently. “I’m a proud nudist, Oliver. It’s a way of life for me. I remember that very clearly. I never walk around the house with clothes. They make me feel …”

He groaned. “Sane?”

“Confined.”

“Either your tits will be confined, or I will be – when I murder everyone who looks at you naked.”

“You really shouldn’t be so jealous. I remember most of my college days, and I slept with a lot of guys. At least two hundred, by my count.”

“Didn’t you have a long-term boyfriend?”

“Grant. Grant Dwyer.” I sighed, pretending to be deep in thought. “Now he was a true gentleman. Not like the other guy.”

“The other guy?”

“Vance Smith.” I scrunched my nose, conjuring a fake memory. “We met at a gas station.”

“Where every reputable first encounter takes place.”

“About three weeks later, I dumped him because he demanded that I get rid of my vibrator collection.”

“He what?” Oliver seemed more horrified than I did, granted I knew this was pure fiction. “That’s like firing his sous chef for helping him cook.”

“Meanwhile, Grant was a dreamboat. A total revolutionary. He agreed to an open relationship.”

“An open relationship,” Oliver deadpanned.

“Yes,” I lied. “I must’ve slept with hundreds of men in the three years we dated. He even watched a few times. Too bad he needed to move to a remote village across the world to save baby seals from oil spills. Grant is an environmentalist, too.”

“You were in an open relationship with an environmentalist, who abandoned his degree to save baby seals from oil.”

“Yes. Isn’t he a dreamboat?”

“He’s something,” Ollie muttered into his mug.

I advanced toward his precious coffee machine, a sophisticated model that must have cost five figures. Stretching onto my tiptoes, I reached for a mug in the overhead cabinet. My breasts swayed with the movement.

Oliver twisted around, visibly flustered. “Do you want me to make you coffee?”

“It’s okay, I’ve got this. You sit and rest.”

“Careful. Mom got that custom-made for me in Italy. It’s the only machine of its kind and irreplaceable. The manufacturer shut down years ago.”

I waved him off. “You’re such a worrywart.”

He turned back to his laptop. I grabbed one of the valves in the coffee machine and twisted it the wrong way, purposefully unscrewing it. It fell off with a clank.

“Oh, shoot.” I tsked, slapping my thigh. “I broke the coffee machine. You don’t mind, do you?”

If he looked closer, he’d realize that it would take ten seconds to screw the valve back on, but he didn’t. Smoke practically oozed from Ollie’s ears. He remained rigid, facing his laptop, probably because he didn’t want to yell at me.

He cleared his throat, his spine ramrod straight. “It’s fine.”

I drifted to the industrial walk-in fridge, retrieved a cold brew, and plopped beside him, sending my best winning smile his way. He frowned at his screen. I was a thorn in his side. Little did he know, I was about to make him bleed.

“So.” I slurped the coffee loud, a major pet peeve of his since we were kids. “I was thinking … for our wedding …”

He ground his teeth through the obnoxious slurps, forcing himself to look up at me. “Yes?”

“Dallas mentioned you hosted her wedding here.”

“I did,” he drew out the words, his apprehension obvious.

“She sent me a binder of your emails printed out. The ones you sent her with suggestions for the wedding.”

I left out the part where we’d giggled on the plane about how ridiculous most of them were and collectively agreed that Oliver needed to step up his trolling game. I, on the other hand, needed no help in this domain.

Ollie closed his laptop, choosing his next words carefully. “Those were a joke.”

“Were they? I found some great ideas in the binder.” I conjured the eight-inch binder and plopped it on the table. It rattled the entire frame with its weight. “Plus, Dal said you seemed enthusiastic about them, so I thought I’d incorporate as much as I can into the wedding.”

“Dal?” he echoed, watching me flip mindlessly through the pages.

“Yeah. Her nickname, silly. I’m not gonna call my best friend by her government name. I just … I don’t …” I shrugged. “I feel so blessed to be in a relationship with you.”

“You do?”

“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. You would never let me down. Never lie to me. Never abandon me like my parents and Cooper did. You put me first, always.” I stared right into his eyes, watching him flinch with each word I speared him with. “I love you, Oliver.”

He said nothing.

What could he, when he was absolutely none of these traits?

I sighed, stopping on a page I’d bookmarked. “I don’t want to be a bridezilla and make the wedding all about what I want, so I’d rather simply take your suggestions and run with them. Not that I even remember what I want anyway. This solves that problem.”

“Yeah. Totally.” He seemed lost in thought, still caught on my earlier description of him.

I leaned over the table and snapped him out of it with a hard kiss to his cheek. “It’s like you were thinking ahead of time when you compiled this.”

“What I was thinking was that I’d fuck with Romeo and Dal, since neither particularly wanted to marry one another at that point in time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re obviously in love. Who would marry someone for any other reason than love?” I paused and forced eye contact, arching a brow. “You love me, right?”

He averted his eyes. “Of course.”

“What do you love most about me?”

“Your creativity. Perhaps you could apply that creativity to plan a wedding from scratch.” He reached for the binder, trying to pry it from my fingers. “You don’t need this.”

I swatted his hand away. “Don’t be ridiculous. You already put in all this work. It would be a shame for it to go to waste.”

“No, really.” For the first time, he seemed genuinely panicked, probably remembering all his foul suggestions. “It’s no problem.”

“I want us to perform the ‘Love is an Open Door’ duet.” I paused. “You know, the song from Frozen.”

His brows shot up. “You want us to sing a Frozen song?”

“Yes.”

“At our wedding?”

I nodded. “It’s a good duet. You’re no Santino Fontana, but I already signed us up for some singing lessons. She’s a reputable coach. Broadway actors swear by her. Her waitlist is wild, but I pulled some strings.”

“Shoot.” His eyebrows would be glued to the ceiling at this rate. “I don’t think I can swing it. Busy time at work.”

“Don’t worry about your work. I already contacted your assistant and asked him to block the appropriate times for our sessions.” I waved him off and snatched his macchiato, only to make a face and spit my sip back into his cup. With an exaggerated grimace, I pushed it back to him. “Oopsie. Just remembered I don’t like macchiatos. I’m making such good progress, aren’t I?”

“Astounding.” He stared into his backwashed coffee before flicking his eyes back up to me. “Wait.” Ollie frowned. “Didn’t Princess Anna not even marry that dude at the end of the duet?”

“Correct.” I paused, surprised. “How do you know? Do you have nieces and nephews?”

“Uh, no.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his high cheekbones a little flushed. “How would I not know? It’s general knowledge.”

“For a middle-aged man without kids and young relatives?” I narrowed my eyes. “Hardly.”

“First – I’m not middle-aged. Second – fine. Frozen on Ice was fucking hot, okay? What’s not to like? Two hot sisters in a cat fight, ice skaters with great asses, and snacks.” He gestured to himself. “I am only human.”

“My favorite human,” I corrected him. “I know you didn’t specify what musical number you wanted to perform in the binder, but I feel like the song suits us so much, ya know? And don’t worry, I marked down several suggestions we can follow to a tee.”

“We really don’t need to.”

“Where is it?” Brows furrowed, I flipped the pages and snapped when I found the right one. “Here. Matching tattoos. That is such a romantic idea, Oliver. I’m thinking a full-blown portrait of each other’s faces in color. I know you only added black-and-white to your lookbook, but our love is so full of color that it would be a shame to dull it.”

A greenish tinge eclipsed his cheeks. “How about we pin that tattoo idea? We can start with the Frozen du—”

I cut him off. “When is our wedding, anyway?”

“We haven’t set a date yet.” He added under his breath, “And thank God for that.”

“I think it should be super soon. Like, this-month soon,” I said with conviction. “No point in waiting. Neither of us are spring chickens anymore. I want to start making babies right away.”

“You should probably get your memory back first.” He coughed into his fist. “I mean, you haven’t even chosen a dress.”

“Oh, but I have.” I slapped my palms over the dining table, sending a vintage cigar box careening across the surface.

He stopped it from hurling to the floor with heroic instincts, set it next to him, and pinned me with the reluctant gaze of an exhausted parent entertaining his toddler during a sugar rush from Hell.

Oliver laced his fingers together and studied me. “When did you have time to find a dress?”

“On the jet to Baylor. The girls and I watched the Barbie movie.”

He rolled his tongue over his inner cheek, folding his arms over his chest. “Uh-huh.”

I pointed between us. “We look so much like Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling …”

“Excuse me, but Ryan Gosling fucking wishes he had my jawline.”

“All the same.” I shrugged. “Anyway, she wore this gorgeous pink mini dress—”

“Mini dress.”

“… and I just thought to myself it would look so adorable on the altar. Especially if you wear a matching Ken outfit.”

“I’m not wearing a matching Ken outfit.”

I gasped. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to salvage however little I can of my pride after that Frozen duet.”

Perhaps I’d laid this on too thick. Oversold my brand of unhinged. I needed to make my acting more believable if I wanted to draw out his torture.

“Ollie. These are your ideas. What’s the problem? Or is it me? Do you not want to marry me?” I cupped my mouth and started to tear up, mentally thanking an Oscar-winning client for teaching me the trick to crying on cue. “I thought you loved me.”

Two maids in uniform strode into the kitchen carrying groceries, spotted me crying like a baby, and pivoted, speed-walking away to avoid the scene. Oliver looked between them and me, losing his patience.

“Fine,” he snapped, balling his fists. “I’ll wear a stupid Ken costume. Christ.”

“Stupid? It’s designer. Dal gave us the hook up. The suit is spun with real gold threads and studded with red diamonds. They cost almost twelve mil apiece.”

His eyes almost bulged out of their sockets.

If Ollie hadn’t ruined my life, I’d feel sorry for him right now.

“Thanks for being a team player.” I stopped crying and wailing all at once. “Wanna know what else I have in store for us?”

He just stared at me with eyes that said his soul had been sucked dry, and an early death couldn’t come too soon. I took this as a sign to continue.

“Dal mentioned that you love sexual innuendos, so I want our wedding cake toppers to be of us 69-ing.”

He pushed the bases of his palms into his eye sockets, massaging them. “I also love polo. That does not mean I want to ride down the aisle on a horse.”

“Why not?” I perked up. “It’s a great idea.”

He just stared at me. I knew the wedding was hypothetical. His annoyance, however, was very real.

“Actually,” I continued. “I saw it on page 8, section 7, part A. You’re really organized, by the way. To honor the spirit of your organization, I marked my favorites with color coordinated sticky notes. The reds are a pass. The yellows are a maybe. The greens are a must.”

We both glanced at the leather clunker currently in my death grip. There had to be hundreds of green sticky notes sticking out of the binder.

At his silence, I kept going. “The only reason I didn’t bring up the horseback riding is because I didn’t remember if you could still ride at the skill level required to navigate narrow aisles.”

“Maybe we could take a class for that, too,” he deadpanned.

“I don’t think we can fit in another.” I frowned before replacing it with a giddy bounce. “Oh. I saw your idea for the goodie bags. It’s brilliant.”

“You’ll have to jog my memory.”

“You advised Romeo to gift guests stock in his company, but since it’s our wedding, we can gift guests stock in the Grand Regent.”

“Right. Because champagne and Advil are too basic.”

“Exactly. Your ideas are genius. I won’t take credit for them. This next one, however, is all mine.” I hugged the binder to my chest. “Wait until you hear who I want to perform after the ceremony.”

Oliver patted the table for his cigar box and popped it open, tugging out a thick Cuban and flicking up his Zippo to light it.

I pulled my brows together, feigning concern. “Is everything okay?”

“Never been better. Why?”

“Because you lit your cigar the other way around.”

He spluttered out a cough, rotated the cigar, and lit it again.

“Anyway …” I rubbed my hands together. “Ready for the crown jewel?”

“Yes, darling.” Oliver puffed on his cigar, squinting at me. “I’m not sure how you could possibly top all these wonderful ideas, but I’m all ears.”

I had a feeling he was fantasizing about how to kill me a hundred different ways.

“The wedding will take place in …” I drum-rolled on the table, careful to scratch the wood with my cheap rings. “Nauru.”

I flung my arms wide with a smile.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Nauru?”

“Yes. I’ve never been. Have you?”

“No,” he said, “since the smallest island country in the Pacific Ocean requires a visitor’s visa, and there are only ten embassies in the entire world that grant them.”

“Unattainable things are so much more desirable, aren’t they?” I parked my chin over my fist, fixing dream-struck eyes on him. “I’m sure you taught me that.”

“Briar, you can only fly there through Brisbane, and a flight leaves once a week. Singular. It’s impossible to transport guests there.”

“You can’t spell impossible without the word possible.”

“You also can’t spell manslaughter without laughter.” He white knuckled his cigar so hard, it split down the middle. Crumbs of tobacco peppered the table. “What’s your point?”

“I think we can make it happen,” I said with confidence. “You once told me you could do anything you set your mind to.”

I didn’t understand why he was so flustered. It wasn’t like the wedding would ever take place.

“A friend of mine went to Nauru. Riggs Bates. He’s a Nat Geo photographer.” Oliver dunked his broken cigar in his spit-filled macchiato. “He said once he landed there, he had to hitchhike his way to his hotel.”

“What’s the problem? We’ll move in large groups. We’ll be safe.”

“The place doesn’t have any mass public transportation.”

“Amazing, right? They consume zero cubic feet of natural gas per capita. So environmentally conscious.” I shifted to the edge of my seat, practically vibrating. “I’m getting too excited about it.”

Oliver rolled his cigar from one side of the mug to the other, simply staring at me without saying a word. I think I’d gotten on his last nerve.

Good.

Time for the finale.

“The wedding will take place exactly a month from now, so mark your calendar.” I knocked my fist over his table. “Can you be a doll and send out the invitations?”

I stood up, rounded the table, and gathered his cheeks in my hands, squishing them like an annoying aunt.

Once I released him, he groaned. “On it. Who do you want to invite?”

“Oh, anyone you think I’d like to see there. You know I don’t have my memory anymore.”

With that, I started my way out of the kitchen. I had a lot of things to destroy and relatively little time to do it.

I also needed to pack.

“Hey, where are you going?” he called after me.

“To clean up your wardrobe.” I didn’t bother turning to face him. “I thought I saw a few old things in there you can give away to charity.”

He knew what was coming. I planned on emptying his entire closet.

I thought I heard Oliver moan that karma was a bitch before I ducked into the hall.noveldrama

Yes, she is, hubs.

But I’m even worse.