Undeniable: Reverse Harem Story #3 Read online

  Undeniable

  Reverse Harem Story #3

  Rebecca Royce

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  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Undeniable (Reverse Harem Story #3)

  Copyright @ 2018 by Rebecca Royce

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947672-61-1

  Cover art by Amy Prutsman

  Content Editing: Heather Long

  Copy and Proofreading Editing: Jennifer at Bookends Editing

  Formatting: Ripley Proserpina

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rebecca Royce

  www.rebeccaroyce.com

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to Rachel Feuerstein with my deepest thanks for her help, her brainstorming, her expertise, and for her sense of humor.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  Foreword

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you so much for picking up Undeniable (Reverse Harem Story #3). I am so happy you’ve chosen to join me on this journey with Giovanna, Maven, Chance, and Banyan. If you are picking up this series for the first time, I am going to stop you right here. Do not read this book first. This is the last book in the series. Reverse Harem Story (that I affectionately call in my head Giovanna’s Love Story) is a serial. Now, while most serials are short (maybe 10,000 words each) this one is not. These books are a serial where every installment is a full length novel. That doesn’t, however, change the nature of the serial. I am going to pick up right where we left off and not spend much time backtracking. Therefore, I am going to do what authors are never supposed to do and tell you not to read this book if you haven’t read Unconventional and Unexpected, the first two books in the series.

  Now, if you have read them, then I thank you so very much, and I am excited you are back and ready to read more of this story to see how it ends. I loved writing these characters, and I adore how they seem to be touching all of your hearts.

  With love,

  RR

  Foreword

  Author’s Note:

  As I have made note of in the first two books, I have made every effort to make sure that every educational and fraternal organization mentioned in these pages don’t exist in real life. But in the event that I have somehow stepped into a real life organization, please note that everything I am writing about within these pages is fictional. I am in no way representing a real place or real decisions by anyone who may have been or is affiliated with them. I do not mean in any circumstances to infringe on any copyright or intellectual property or reputation of any real life place.

  In addition, there are places in this book that the characters are going that I have never personally been. I have made every effort to illustrate the place to the best of my effort with the help of real life accounts and/or online representations. I may have made mistakes or for the sake of storytelling altered something to fit my needs. I hope to have many more years ahead of me to travel and look forward to seeing these locations with my own eyes. I thank you in advance for your indulgence to an author’s retelling of real life locations.

  This is just fiction, y’all.

  Rebecca Royce

  Chapter 1

  Pain

  A contraction hit me hard and I writhed. A lot of people were talking to me all at once. I looked up, forcing my eyes to open and my brain to work. I was officially going to give birth on the floor of my apartment. This was for sure going to make the local news, and we’d once again be thrust into the spotlight that we avoided these days like the plague.

  Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it. The little lady in my womb was coming out whether I wanted her to or not, and I’d waited too long to go to the hospital. My only defense was the endless conversations I’d had with the doctor about just how long first babies usually took to come out. This wasn’t at all going as planned.

  But then nothing ever did.

  I cried out again and a strong hand took mine, squeezing. I stared at it as I pushed, despite my huge desire to get in a cab and go do this in a hospital instead. His hand was covered in purple paint. That was somehow perfect. To my left, that love spoke to the doctor. He was steady, but then he always was. I’d only ever seen him lose his cool once. Somewhere in the house, another door slammed and someone shouted my name. Frantic.

  I pushed again, shouting to the heavens. So many things had brought us to this moment. We probably shouldn’t have been here at all. Everyone told us we were crazy.

  But then not one of us had ever really been any good at being told what to do.

  The paramedics were talking to me again. I pushed. And I remembered.

  * * *

  I looked out the window at the boats going by. Port Blair was quite different from anywhere else I’d ever stayed with my parents, mostly because we were holed up inside, negotiating with the Indian government and not in the field, wet, dirty, or talking to native peoples. Well, the truth was my parents needed to negotiate with the Indian government, but Harvard was negotiating with them on their behalf.

  I sat around drinking tea, taking walks, being almost completely ignored by my parents for the embarrassment I truly must have been, and wishing, despite the beauty of the place, that I was almost anywhere else in the world. I amended that thought. I wished I was where Maven, Chance, and Banyan were.

  A light rain drizzled outside and in the other room my mother yelled into her cell phone. “No change. None. They opened it up to us and then took it away.” She paused. “Do you think I’d be here if they hadn’t said yes the first time? No, the Sentinels are off limits, and I’m entirely wasting my time. Now I’m stuck with Giovanna here, too.”

  So she did know I was here? Well, that was something. There was nothing in the world like being stuck with me I supposed. Their daughter. Who they had demanded leave her life and join them here to begin with. I got to my feet. A year ago I would have kept quiet. Now I was three weeks away from where I wanted to be and with whom I wanted to be with. I was over this nonsense.

  I looked down at my phone. If it wasn’t for Chance’s generosity, I wouldn’t have it. My parents had forgotten to pay the bill. I’d questioned my father about that on the long trip over here, and I’d gotten a very distant, sort of a shrug coupled with a remark about them having a lot going on. Yes, I understood. But I was one of those things they had going on, that sort of came with the decision to have me twenty years earlier. Almost
twenty-one years if I was being accurate. I had a month left until I was of legal drinking age in the United States.

  The good news was that I didn’t have to be here for that time.

  I didn’t have any messages from my guys and that wasn’t surprising. Although it was one-thirty in the afternoon here, it was four a.m. there. They did tend to conk out sometime between two and three a.m. That would change for Maven soon when he started law school. If he wasn’t up studying, he’d be in bed earlier. I sighed. They all had lives going on, and I had nothing except this.

  A pain pinged my stomach. That had been happening on and off. I really had to figure out what I was eating that bothered me. I had loads of experience eating in foreign countries, and generally speaking, I had a stomach of steel. But something was off. I touched the spot where it hurt. The pain had been moving. I sincerely hoped I didn’t have some sort of parasite roaming my body.

  No, I had to not let my anxious hypochondria take hold of my mind. The last thing I needed right now was to curl up in a ball and start thinking about dying. That didn’t help and I’d managed not to do that even when I was broke and alone. Three weeks with my parents couldn’t bring it back.

  I had stomach pain. Lots of people did. It was probably stress.

  I rubbed the spot by my navel as nausea hit me. Yes, this was food related. What had I eaten? Had years in America screwed up my digestive system?

  I sighed. I’d deal with this later.

  My mother walked into the room, took one look at me, and put her hands on her hips. “I thought you’d be doing your online classes.”

  “Why would you have thought that?” I actually knew the answer to this question, but if she was going to be stuck with me, then I was going to be someone who was worthy of the wording she’d used to describe me. I had a temper. I didn’t have to suppress it for her comfort.

  “Because I signed you up and told you to do them.” She blinked rapidly, a surefire sign we were about to start yelling at each other if I didn’t passively apologize. My stomach hurt. I was really not in the mood for playing docile.

  I stared at my mother. She had never been a gorgeous woman. I’d always thought she was but now I couldn’t see it anymore. Maybe my belief in physical attractiveness was because I’d been young, seeing her through kid eyes. All children believed, for a time, that their mothers were beautiful. Well, I didn’t know if it was all. Maybe I’d go with most. Internally, I sighed. I was back to spending too much time surrounded by people who questioned every word I chose to use or think.

  I needed to stay present. My mother’s hair was a mousy brown that fell to her shoulders. It might have been beautiful if she’d cared about maintaining it, but beyond the grays that danced through the center, giving her more of a salt and pepper look these days, I wasn’t sure she brushed it if she wasn’t in front of a classroom.

  She’d probably say that she didn’t care for effort that wasn’t of the intellectual, but I thought it was lazy. There were things—and people—you had to remember to do and care for even when you were thinking deep thoughts. I looked like her in the sense that our faces were similarly shaped. I had her cheekbones, and my eyes were slightly sunken, another genetic trait I’d picked up from her. Otherwise, I was pretty much my father’s family come to play on the outside. My mother and I shared freckles. That was it.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m not a dog. I’m not going to obey just because you told me to do something, and truthfully, I’m not all certain it works that way with dogs, either. Maybe you should set up a study while you wait to see if India ever relents on a national policy they’ve shown almost no interest in relenting on.”

  She gasped. “You…” She pointed at me. “You have developed a bad attitude, young lady. And I know what it’s from.” My mother gestured wildly toward my hand. “It’s because of that phone. I should take it away from you.”

  I rolled my eyes. Yes, I knew that was childish. I couldn’t seem to control the inclination. “The phone caused my change in attitude? I didn’t know phones had that magical power. I’ll have to look it up sometime. Maybe the change, as you put it, comes from the fact that you basically forgot I existed and left me to starve. I thought you were dead. Maybe that’s it. And you can’t take my phone. It doesn’t belong to me.”

  “That’s right.” She wildly gestured all over the place. This was an incredible amount of emotion from her. Usually, I didn’t warrant this much of a show. Maybe it had more to do with India than with me. I was just getting the brunt of her frustration. “The phone belongs to that boy, and he’s giving it to you because you are fucking him.”

  That was a low blow, and it hit home, right where she intended it. This time entirely in my abdomen, which already hurt. “That’s right. You’re always so correct, Mother. Yes, he gave it to me because I am a prostitute, and he wants to be able to reach me any time he wants to fuck me. Even when I’m here in India. He’s the most generous client ever. In fact, when I get home I’ll be fucking not only him, but the entirety of the tristate area.”

  My father took this time to storm into the room. “Enough. Do you want every neighbor to hear you or just all of the graduate students next door?”

  “I don’t want any of them to hear me. I don’t know why you brought me here except to get me to stop contacting you, and frankly, I’m sick of being here. I can’t see why you want me here since you are stuck with me.”

  My mom at least had the good taste to slightly wince when I said that and didn’t interrupt while I continued.

  “I am going to go home. When the guys get up in the morning I’m going to ask them to buy me a ticket and bring me home.”

  My father shook his head. “We agreed on six weeks.”

  “Yes, well, I’m changing the terms. I can’t do this anymore.” I was tired, and I was too young to be this tired. My stomach pinched and another wave of nausea hit me. Was I going to actually throw up?

  “Giovanna.” My mother wasn’t shouting anymore. “What are you going to do when you get there? Live off of them until they’re done with you and then go find another polyamorous relationship to be in? Are you going to whore yourself out to all of New York City? All rich single gentlemen who might want to share a woman for a while until they’re tired of the risqué nature of it? Then you’ll be old and what? Living on the street?”

  Tears filled my eyes. “I had a job you know?” I’d actually never told them that. “It didn’t pay much, but they liked me and treated me well. I’m not you. I’m not smart like you are, but I’m creative and I’m… kind. Whatever happens to me, I can promise you I won’t beg at your doorstep. You can be the first to interfere with a civilization that an entire country wants to leave alone. I don’t want anything to do with that. I’ll make my way. You were done with me a long time ago. I won’t bother you again.”

  “Vonni,” my father called out as I left the room. “Come sit down. Let’s talk.”

  I was done with it. He’d never step up for me. She always ran the roost. It was time for me to be done with this.

  My stomach hurt badly as I walked back to my room, and I pushed aside the pain. I wanted to write for a while. The guys would be up in six hours, maybe seven. I’d be up for a while before they did whatever they were going to do that day, and then I could go to bed, knowing I wouldn’t have to stay here a minute longer than I had to.

  My parents didn’t know anything about this book and that was for the best. It could just be another thing they didn’t approve of. I started to type, but the words weren’t flowing, and I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Giving up after ten minutes, I checked email. Happiness flowed as my email loaded. Connie had written me a message. I read through her words and smiled. I’d needed to hear from her today.

  She and her sister Kay had lived their lives on their own terms. I had to remember that even though I might not be on a path that anyone else could foresee, it was my own. I was tired. I set aside the computer.

  Emotional out
bursts were as exhausting as physical exertion sometimes. I sent the guys a quick note through our group chat on the app we used to talk.

  Hey, guys. Long day. I need to come back. Can I borrow the money for a ticket from one of you? I’ll get a job when I get back and figure out things. I promise to not keep taking, taking, taking. I don’t feel well. My stomach hurts, and I am evidently a prostitute. Hugs. Miss you.

  I closed my eyes. They were probably all tucked in their beds at Chance’s Upper East Side home that he’d inherited from his grandmother. They were college graduates back living in their home city. I pushed away the dark thought that made me question if they had company in their beds. They wouldn’t do that to me. I trusted them. It was my self-esteem that made me think things like that. As far as I could tell, they hardly left the house because they all sat around texting me.

  After graduation, they’d gone to a bar and come home to text me.

  I got daily reports from them on everything—what they ate, what they thought, what movies they saw, and the basic no news on whether or not they’d found my college roommate who had turned out to be obsessed with me and a pyromaniac to boot. The police had no leads. How did a twenty-one year old woman just vanish? Had she also been secretly learning how to live off the grid?

  How did I understand people so little?

  I closed my eyes and tried to roll over. If I was going to get sick, I wished it would just happen already. With that thought, I drifted off, wishing I had one of the guys with me to hold me while I felt like hell run over.