“FUCKING FINALLY,” I SAID, FLINGING the door to Trent’s red Range Rover open before climbing in. It was a nice rental, considering he was only here for the holidays from Chicago. I tossed my Ray Ban Wayfarers aside and shot him a look.
“Fucking finally? I got here twenty minutes before you landed.” Trent threw his vehicle into drive.
He looked like crap. Well, by Trent standards anyway. The fucker was easy on the eyes. With mocha skin, a rugby-player build, and other shitty qualities that made women cream their panties, he was probably the best-looking guy among the four partners of FHH. Only now he had red-rimmed eyes, a three-day stubble, and he needed a haircut. Yesterday.
“I was actually referring to my father dropping dead,” I said, twisting to the backseat and retrieving my black leather Armani messenger bag.
I was also referring to the fact that I’d gone through travel hell. Everything went to shit the minute I got the phone call about my dad’s death. I was in such a hurry to catch a flight, I forgot my charger. My phone died and there were no available flights to San Diego or LA for hours upon hours. Finally, by the time I landed, I’d been able to buy another charger and called Trent to pick me up.
I pulled my phone out and checked for calls and messages from Eli Cole. There weren’t any. Just two missed calls from Emilia. She could wait. First, I needed to know when we were going to read the will. No point in contacting her until I knew how soon she needed to fly her ass to Todos Santos. It was crucial she be here on stand-by, ready to spring my trap on Jo. The raging erection I had every time I thought about Emilia had nothing to do with it.
“Can you focus for one fucking minute on anything other than your goddamn inheritance?” Trent said.
He was still pissy about knocking up that stripper chick. I rolled my eyes. “Right. How is Valenciana?” Valenciana was the stripper. And, sadly, that wasn’t her stage name.
“She’s okay, we’ve decided to…that’s not what I meant! What I meant is, you should be sad about your dad passing away.”
We were heading into a traffic jam out of San Diego and toward Todos Santos. I wondered if Jo was going to be home and if so, if it was too early to kick her out.
“Trust me when I say he earned my hatred fair and square.”
“This seems a little out of nowhere. You never spoke one bad word about him before.”
I fought another eye roll. “What am I, a fucking fifteen-year-old girl? Which reminds me, where is that fucker, Dean?”
“At his parents, of course. It’s Christmas Eve, and if I were you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped by to say hello. And fuck you very much for hiring his ex-girlfriend. Now what the hell is that all about, Vic?”
“I needed a PA,” I gritted out. It had been ten years. They were together for a semester and a half. It drove me crazy that Dean made it out to be what it clearly wasn’t.
“She was his first and last serious girlfriend,” Trent accused.
“And she was mine,” I said flatly, shoving a blunt between my lips and lighting it in his car.
The windows were rolled up—it was winter, after all—and zero fucks were given on my part. It was Trent’s fault for butting into my business.
Trent tapped the steering wheel. “Goddamn you. Give me a hit.” I passed him the blunt.
He inhaled before returning it to me. “You keep saying she was yours”—smoke poured from his mouth—“but did you ever tell her that? All you did was talk shit about the girl and bully her every time she came near you.”
“Excuse me, but have you grown a vagina since you found out about becoming a father? What is this crazy talk about feelings?” I exhaled smoke from my nostrils. “When’s Jaime landing?”
My best friend was flying in from London for my father’s funeral.
“Christmas Day. He’ll leave Mel and Daria at home.”
I nodded. I knew he would.
“Think you can shut up about my PA and focus on trying not to fuck your way into another mess till then?” I scowled at him.
Trent shook his head and hit the accelerator, swerving onto the shoulder of the road. He breezed up the side of the congested highway, his jaw tight. “Fuck you, Vicious.”
“Honey, I’m home!” I announced when I walked into my father’s cold mansion. Soon to be mine. Soon to be no one’s after I burned it down.
Okay, fine. Technically, I was probably going to use a wrecking ball. After that, I planned to use the land to build a nice library named after my mom, Marie Collins. Not Spencer. His last name was unworthy of her.
No one answered my greeting, so I climbed upstairs to my old room and pulled out my drawers, packing up before I said goodbye to this goddamn place. Most of the shit in my old room was football related.
I wasn’t a very sentimental person. I found letters I’d received from dewy-eyed teenage fangirls, an eight-year-old blunt I’d forgotten to smoke, and Emilia’s chewed pencils. They were at the bottom of my bottom drawer. I was about to throw them into the trashcan beside my old bed when I decided, why waste them?
They were fucking pencils, I reasoned with myself. They didn’t have an expiration date.
As I packed, I got a phone call from my father’s attorney. I’d been chasing his ass along with trying to reach Eli since I’d gotten the call about Dad dying. Goddamn holidays and people who had real families. Dad took his last breath alone. Only Slade was there to tend to him. The other nurse was celebrating Christmas Eve with his family. Jo was spending the holiday with a so-called friend in Hawaii.
She wasn’t there for him, like he wasn’t there for my mom.
I wondered if Jo had ever loved him. Really loved him. I knew nothing about relationships, but something told me the answer was no. Something told me that my mother was murdered not because of a great love but because of pure greed.
“Hello?” I pressed my phone to my ear.
Mr. Viteri, my dad’s attorney, was a man of few words. “The day after the funeral,” he said.
It didn’t seem too long a wait.
“Who else are you sending a copy to?” I asked. Not that it mattered. Wills were public records.
“You, Josephine, and your dad’s brother, Alistair.”
Alistair was irrelevant. He was sixty and lived an ordinary life on a ranch in a small town in Texas. If anything, I was planning to split the funds with him, though I knew he didn’t care about money. Lucky bastard. But now I knew for certain Jo was in the will.
“Can you send my copy to Eli Cole? His house, not his office?” I asked.
I heard his Sharpie as he scribbled down the address. “I’m sorry for your loss, Baron,” he finally said, because that was what was expected to say.
“Thank you, that means a lot,” I said, for the exact same reason.
I finished packing, took my stuff and my sorry ass to The Vineyard, the nearest five-star hotel, ordered room service, and got drunk on whatever was in the mini bar.
I was eager to see Jo’s face when I confronted her about knowing everything she and Daryl did. When I forced her to give up every single penny my father left her.
I was eager to have Emilia by my side again. Catering to me. Assisting me. Fucking with me.
Rubbing my hands together at the very idea of what was to come, it dawned on me that the idea of flying my PA to Todos Santos was just a little more exciting than seeing Jo’s face crumbling with agony as I laid the new laws of life in her fucking face and stripped her of the money she wrongfully claimed to be hers.
I picked up the phone and called my PA.
To say I got no response would be an understatement.
She didn’t take my calls and didn’t answer my text messages either. Not on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or the day after. I dialed, I hit send, and each time my phone sat there silent, I wanted to smash something. Although, to be completely fair, my messages were less than welcoming.
What the fuck happened to your phone? Answer me.
He dropped dead. I need you to come here. Call me back.
I wonder how blasé you’ll be when I bend you over and fuck the rudeness out of you for not answering your boss for three days in a row.
It felt ridiculous. The sitting. The waiting. The craving.
That needed to change. I needed a distraction from this woman.
And I knew just how to change it.
“Just leave it outside,” I yelled to room service from inside my suite.
It couldn’t be anyone else, because the only person I’d invited to my hotel—Georgia, my high school casual fuck—was already inside the room. She was also pissing me the fuck off with her annoying, whiny voice. The years hadn’t been good to her. Sure, she worked out and was always wrapped in the latest designer number, but everything about her was self-involved, plastic, and overdone.
I needed to throw her out before she made a move on me. Ridiculous, considering I’d asked her here so I could fuck her and the aching memory of Emilia from my system.
So, I’d called one of my old flings to distract myself until I had the will in my hands? So what.
Georgia was sitting on the sofa across from my chair, still babbling about something that happened at Todos Santos’s country club five years ago. I wasn’t listening—I lit up a blunt.
“…and I was shocked, Vic, so shocked. I mean, it was one thing that she didn’t want to donate to my charity, but to shamelessly accuse me of founding a whole organization just so Dad would look better during his senate campaign—”
“Why did you break into Emilia LeBlanc’s locker that day?” I cut her off suddenly, smoke fanning out of my flared nostrils.
I was physically unable to hear any more of the boring shit she was feeding me. Downstairs, in the hotel bar, where we’d had a drink, I’d convinced myself that I didn’t mind her annoying voice and annoying facial expressions and annoying self. Alas, I was wrong. I minded all of these things. A lot.
“Emilia LeBlanc?” Georgia twirled a strand of her hair with her finger, blinking at me. Her mascara was too thick and obvious. It didn’t really help my disinterested cock.
“Yeah. Don’t pretend like you don’t remember her.” I blew smoke to the ceiling and twisted my wrist to check my Rolex.
“I do remember her. I’m just surprised you do.” She arched an eyebrow.
I stared at her, expressionless, rubbing my thumb on my temple with the same hand that held the blunt. “She found her calculus book in my bag, remember?”
Georgia huffed. “Because you took it from me and threatened you’d ruin my life if I ever did it again!”
“You had it coming, sweetheart. You acted like a little brat,” I countered without even blinking.
There was another knock at the door. Who the fuck hired this kind of idiot? Why couldn’t they just leave the food outside?
“Get the fuck out of here and take my dinner with you!” I shouted. I wasn’t hungry anymore. And I definitely didn’t want her to stay and dine with me. But what I really didn’t want was to touch her. It wasn’t unusual for me to throw out a perfectly good one-night stand if I wasn’t in the mood. But it was definitely the first time I got annoyed to the point that I wanted the woman out of my life for good.
“Vic, what is this?” Georgia smiled uneasily, shooting up from the sofa and striding over to me.
I took another hit from my joint and watched her. She placed her ass in my lap, and I shook my head slowly, my eyes dead. “Move your ass, pronto, Georgia. Off.”
Another knock on the door, and this time it was a brutal blow to the wood. I got up to answer, and she scrambled to her feet just in time. I didn’t care if she landed on the floor.
She grabbed my free hand and squeezed it. “I was a little wild. So what? We all were. That was adolescence. We grew out of that phase.”
“I don’t want to see you again,” I told her, setting the joint in the soap dish I’d appropriated from the bathroom. “You were a nasty bitch to her, and I suspect you’re still a nasty bitch to whoever was unlucky enough to stay in this goddamn town. This was a mistake. I want you to leave.”
I marched to the door with balled fists at my sides. If this was another hotel staff member whining in my ear that this was a no-smoking room, I was going to make them bleed. I swung the door open, ready to bark at the person in front of me. Then I froze.
“Welcome to California, motherfucker.” Dean pushed me back into the room and walked in like he owned the place.
Dean was slightly taller, slightly bigger, slightly handsomer than me. His light brown hair was cut short and preppy these days, and his style was a little more elegant than mine. He loved full suits in eccentric colors, just like the Joker. He also loved pissing me off, just like everyone else in my life.
“Hey, Georgie. What’s up?” He winked at her.
“I was just leaving.” Georgia collected her purse from the round table where I’d sat just moments ago and shouldered past us, making a beeline for the door.
I watched her bony, annoying ass disappear into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
Dean was inside, making himself comfortable, pouring himself a glass of something alcoholic from the mini bar and whistling with a smile on his face. “I’d ask you if you want something, but I’m afraid you’ll think I care.”
I pressed my shoulder to the wall and watched him, my hands tucked in my pockets, waiting for him to get to the point. “That’s it? Not even ‘sorry that your dad passed away’?” I mocked.
Dean turned to face me, tossed back a full glass of whiskey, then pointed it at me. “You’re forgetting you had endless meetings with my dad at his office. You think I didn’t do the math? I know the drill, Vic. You hate your father. You hate Josephine. You hate the whole world. Came here for the money and the estate, didn’t you?”
Wrong, asshole. I came here for revenge.
Dean refilled his empty glass. “Where’s our little friend, Millie LeBlanc?”
“Where she belongs. In New York at the penthouse. In my bed,” I lied. “Well, technically your bed.” I tucked the half-smoked blunt between my lips and lit it casually. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll reimburse you for the mattress and frame, which we broke, by the way.”
He didn’t look surprised. Why would he be? He knew I wanted her. Wanted her body. Wanted her virginity. Wanted it all. He took it from me, and it was a dick move. That was common knowledge. Trent and Jaime still gave him shit about it when we got drunk. And let’s not forget that if Dean and Emilia were truly meant to be together, Emilia wouldn’t have been so fast to pull the breakup trigger every time I blinked her way.
Truth was she didn’t want him. She wanted me.
“She was mine,” Dean said gruffly, downing his second glass of whiskey.
Jesus. I threw my head back and laughed. There was no way he actually believed that, right? “Come on. Don’t lie to yourself.”
Dean slid his eyes over my face, contemplating his next move. He wanted to get to me. To hurt me without punching my face and making a mess. I didn’t say a word. Didn’t move. On some level, I did deserve to be punched in the face for this. Just like he deserved it when we were in high school. It was my time to take a hit for my betrayal.
Finally, he opened his mouth, a sly smile playing on his face. “Does she know you’re a heartless bastard?”
I shrugged. “She went to school with me for a year.”
He downed a third glass, and I hoped he wasn’t going to pass the fuck out on the carpet. I actually wanted to keep my relationship with his father intact.
“Did she ask about me?”
“No. Why would she? Did you ever try to find her?”
“She told me not to.” Dean’s eyebrows collapsed into a frown.
“Yeah, well, thanks for keeping her entertained until I came along,” I said, waving him off.
I just wanted the conversation to be over with. He was going to beat me up, obviously. And I was going to take it, because I deserved it. We were just wasting time. But Dean didn’t make a move toward me. Not yet. Just when I thought he was going to pass out on the bed, he turned around again and chuckled.
“Wait, do I not get a ‘thank you’ for breaking her in for you?”
Fuck it. He was asking for it.
I was the first to swing a fist at him. I slammed my knuckles into his nose, and this time I hoped his doctor wouldn’t be able to fix his pretty face. He grabbed me by my shirt and flung me across the room. I flew backward, crashing into the TV mounted on the wall. Dean tackled me, planting his shoulder in my stomach, pressing against me until I heard the screen crack behind us. I groaned and threw a jab to his jaw, but held myself back from doing more.
I fucking deserved it.
And I knew it was going to hurt.
He poured punches to my face, and I took them all. Then he hurled me on the floor and hammered my ribs with his pointy shoe. Again, he was no Daryl. He was a friend, and I’d fucked up. I’d certainly given him a piece of my mind and my fist when he was the one chasing Emilia.
Writhing on the carpeted floor with him, I bit my lip to stop a moan of pain. Everything throbbed. But hey, I had this shit coming.
“You really fucked my ex-girlfriend?” he roared from on top of me, his voice laced with fury and disbelief.
It was easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. I knew that all too well.
He was hurt. So was I when I’d found out they’d started dating.
Truth was, he was a dick for going out with her then, and I was a dick for doing her now. But she wasn’t his obsession. His vice. His fucking Achilles heel.
“I did. If I were you, I’d squeeze in a few more punches before you go because I’m not going to stop fucking her. I’m going to own her.”
He kicked me again, and I managed not to curl into myself. I knew it was the last time because he was bleeding from his nose and needed to stop the stream and reposition it before it got swollen. Scarlet blood dotted the beige carpet, and I knew I was going to have to pay for this crap.
“Get up,” he ordered.
I braced myself on the edge of the bed, scrambling to my feet.
Dean smiled, smoothing his bloodied shirt. “You look good,” he remarked.
I knew I probably had two black eyes and a cracked rib. I nodded. “So do you. Fucking terrific. Anything else?”
“Yeah, actually.” He leaned against the desk where my laptop sat and gave me the same victorious expression I’d mastered over the years. “I’m interested to know, how the hell do you think this is going to play out? Your next stop is Los Angeles, and I’m moving back to New York. But hey, man, don’t worry. I’ll take care of her in my office.” He thumped his chest and winked.
My body shook with rage, but I reminded myself that he was just taunting me for being an asshole to him. Still, this had to stop. “Just get the fuck out before I do something that will cost us millions and years of meetings in stuffy courtrooms. Go.”
He didn’t budge. He didn’t look amused anymore either. I sucked in a breath.
“Fire her, Vicious. I don’t want her in my branch, and I don’t want her in yours either. This girl fucked off with another guy when we were kids and didn’t even bother to return my calls.”
No she didn’t. She left because I made her leave.
“Not happening,” I said, even though I had no idea what to do. She wasn’t coming to Los Angeles, that much was clear, and Dean would never let her continue working at the office in New York. I didn’t know how I was going to keep her. I just knew I fucking had to.
“Yes, it is,” Dean responded calmly, his nose still bleeding all over the carpet. Goddammit. “The girl screwed me over.”
“She didn’t,” I finally roared. I threw my arms in the air, using what little control I still had in me not to go at him again. I spotted my lit blunt burning a hole in the bloody carpet behind Dean. He noticed where my eyes landed and crushed it with his designer Monk Straps.
“She didn’t screw your life over. I did,” I repeated less heatedly. “I sent her off with twenty thousand dollars. In exchange, she promised she’d tell you she ran away with someone else, specifically stressing that she didn’t want to hear from you ever again.”
“Why would she listen to you?” He crossed his arms over his chest, skeptical, his brows arched.
“Because I threatened her. I told her I’d fire her parents. Her sister Rosie is constantly on meds. They needed the money.”
Silence fell between us, heavy and loud.
“You’re such a sick psycho,” he mumbled.
I said nothing because it was an observation, not a question.
“It doesn’t change shit, though, Vicious.” Dean finally moved to the door, and when we stood side by side, me squeezing the handle and him on the threshold, our eyes met. “You’re saying goodbye to Millie and firing her, or I’ll make sure you’re kicked off the board. Good night.”
