The Santiago Sisters Read Online Free Page A

hand on the bathroom doorknob and stopped, watching her hand, focusing on it, because when she thought of that time, of that secret, it stole her breath away and it was all she could do to keep standing.
    It wasn’t like that. I had no choice.
    Emily’s tirade shattered her thoughts.
‘I
hate you!’
    Simone tore open the door. ‘What the hell is this?’ she demanded.
    ‘Oh, perfect,’ sang Emily, who privately loved Simone getting involved because that meant she could access her favoured armoury: the ‘you’re-not-my-mother’ diatribe. ‘Now your little bitch on the side is coming to tell me off.’
    ‘Emily, no!’ objected Brian, who was sweating. ‘You mustn’t say that!’
    ‘Bloody well let me go to the party, Dad, or I’ll say a lot worse.’
    For a pretty girl, Emily Chilcott made an ugly mess of herself. Her permanent scowl erased the loveliness of her blue eyes, and her filthy mouth better belonged on a black-toothed hooker than an heiress to London’s greatest film dynasty. She was attractive, but her attitude made her a grim proposition. The same went for Lysander. Since their mother had left Brian for a female German show jumper named Trudi (a well-publicised scandal ten years ago), it had all gone tits up: all four tits up, if you thought of it that way. Brian’s
laissez-faire
attitude was one big long apology, and the kids took every advantage of it. When would he grow a ball-sack, for heaven’s sake?
    Simone met Emily’s glare and raised it several notches. She would not lose.
    ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, madam.’
    ‘Screw you,
Simone.
’
    ‘You shut that mouth right now or I’ll shut it for you!’
    ‘Oh yeah?’
    ‘With pleasure.’
    Brian stepped in. ‘Now, now, ladies …’
    ‘Lysander’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants,’ raged Emily. ‘He’s in his room this minute getting high off his nuts and neither of you two gives a shit.’
    ‘He’s doing
what
?’ Simone stormed into the hallway. Behind, Brian crooned, ‘OK, let’s everyone take it easy …’
    Simone headed for Lysander’s room and threw open the door. But the sight that met her eyes wasn’t of Lysander—handsome, dark, rangy Lysander, with a curl to his spoiled, upper-class lip—skinning a joint or bent over one of his elaborate bongs; it was Lysander, butt-naked, reclining against his pillows and receiving a dedicated blow job from a redhead. Simone’s lips parted in shock. She didn’t know where to look. Lysander was coming hard. His eyes met hers as he ejaculated into the redhead’s mouth. In the corridor, Emily giggled. ‘Oops,’ she trilled, ‘my mistake!’
    Post-climax, Lysander was unfazed. ‘All right … Mummy?’
    Lysander’s accent was so sharp you could skewer cubes of meat on it.
    ‘What on earth is going on?’ Simone rasped. The redhead jerked up, clocked their audience and flung herself off the bed. She grappled for her clothes, her breasts jiggling as she tried and failed to cover her modesty. From the front Simone saw she was older than Lysander—quite a bit older, in fact. Lysander lit a cigarette.
    Simone fought to keep her eyes off Lysander’s dying erection. He made no attempt to conceal it. It was huge. Why couldn’t Brian share
that
family trait?
    ‘You’re disgusting!’ Mortified, Simone turned on her heel. ‘Do not touch me, Brian!’ She flapped him off. ‘Whatever you do,
do not bloody touch me
!’
    Before she disappeared back inside the master suite, she heard Emily wheedle: ‘So, Daddy, can I
please
go to the party? See, I’m not as bad as ‘Sander …’
    And, predictably, depressingly, Brian’s castrated consent.
    ‘I just don’t understand why you can’t take control of them more!’
    In the back seat of a blacked-out Mercedes rushing through Piccadilly, Brian placed a hand on his wife’s knee. Simone resisted the urge to recoil against the window: after all, they soon had to put on a convincing show for the cameras.
    ‘I