The Price of Gold | Fortune's Fool #1

24 | words of warning

• [ w o r d s o f w a r n i n g ] •

♥ gabriel ♥

THE FAMILIAR HOURGLASS body swayed from side to side over zealously in an attempt to gain as much attention as possible. It sure did work for most of the male students attention was on her uh lower half.

"Most of them know that there isn't a chance they'd be able to get with one of us so go to Lexi instead in an attempt to make themself known to us. What they'll soon realise is that she's not one of us. She's just the whore of the Academy," Ashlei gushed into my ear after separating the upper portion of her blonde hair and pinning it back with a delicate silver encrusted clip. We were both in the same History class and had just escaped from a lesson led by Mr Parkton; he was the type that was so passionate about the subject that he forgot he were supposed to actually be teaching it.

I held back a scoff, watching as Lexi leaned towards a crowd of people who were eyeing up her body. I vaguely recognised one of the men in the group as the guy who started taking photographs of her at Talisa's party when she stripped down to lingerie. Lexi giggled loudly, fakely throwing her hair back as a tall guy with dark toffee skin wrapped his arm around her waist.

"Ash!" A voice called causing the two of us to pause on the Academy groups and look back. It was break time, a period which I'd recently noticed was a lot shorter than the fifteen minutes that they promised us. The crowd naturally parted into two making way for Prince, clad in a rich navy suit, to stroll towards us. When he caught sight of me, the corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk as he nodded in acknowledgement. "Gabriel."

His amber eyes glinted as he joined us, deliberately walking beside me so that he could nudge me. "You sure know how to stir shit up, don't you?"

I cocked my head towards him wondering if his tone was angry yet instead he looked as if he were holding back a snort of laughter. "What do you mean, man?" I asked as he laughed, tilted his head to the side as if he was pretending to think about something.

"Well, Logan wants to impale you numerous times and Talisa's absolutely heartbroken although I probably shouldn't have told you that because she said she'd behead me if you found out." Prince pulled a face of indifference as we both laughed. Half the time I couldn't tell if Talisa's threats were serious of not. "So yeah, I think that justifies a 'you've caused an absolute shit storm'."

Ashlei let out a pained cry, moving to dig her nails into Prince. The middle eastern man stepped away in time as if he had read her mind an hour ago, as I quickly dodged out of the way. Damn, those reflexes Gabe. "Prince! I was building up towards that!" I rolled my eyes sarcastically.

And here I though Ashlei was just being nice to me.

"Good to know that our entire conversation had a motive," I said to her as her pale skin flushed.

"Well, I mean everyone has a motive."

A laugh made its way out of my mouth as I looked back at Lexi, wondering what had happened at the scan. My view of her had definitely been skewed since Lou told me she'd slept with her father.

Ashlei was right.

Everyone sure did have a motive.

I wondered what hers was. Perhaps she'd been jealous of Louisa's status. That was likely considering she'd made that deal with Logan in an attempt to boost her reputation. I made a note to ask her about that.

A frown formed on my face. I needed to be more careful around Lexi. Could she have been the person who informed the police? I couldn't be too sure.

"Wow. That's actually the smartest thing you've said in, what? Three years?" Prince exclaimed in mock astonishment, once again dodging a pinch from Ashlei that she had attempted to disguise as a heartfelt pat. "Anyway, Gabriel prefers people who are more upfront like me."