by L.J. Shen
“Dean was in New York until about two weeks ago, then I took over. I’m not sure when we’re switching back, but when it happens, I’ll go back to LA. Trent is in Chicago, and Jaime is in London.”
“You switch branches often?”
He shrugged. “’Bout twice a year.”
“Sounds confusing. And pretty dumb,” I mumbled.
“Well, I appreciate the insight, especially from someone who’s been serving beer for a living.”
Silence fell and I looked away, taking in the polished women and suited men around me. As far as I was concerned, the conversation had ended the second he’d decided to act like a jerk again.
“We don’t usually switch places for more than a week,” Vicious gritted out of nowhere. “Special circumstances kept me in New York.”
It was his version of an apology, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I only shrugged.
“How long have you been supporting your sister?” His eyes skimmed down my body. Regret swallowed the sarcasm and edge in his voice. He wasn’t used to being nice to people. To being civilized, really. Though, he seemed to be trying.
I licked my lips, refusing to make eye contact. “Too long,” I admitted. “Is Jaime still with…?” I trailed off when I realized it was none of my business.
Vicious’s best friend had dated our Lit teacher, Ms. Greene, while we were seniors. Their affair blew up shortly before we graduated, making waves in Todos Santos, and a tsunami in our high school. Then he took off with her after the school year ended.
Vicious huffed, and even though my eyes were still closed, I knew he nodded yes. “They’re married. They have a baby girl, Daria. Took after her mom, thank fuck.”
That made me smile. “How is he doing?” I asked, knowing it was territory Vicious would feel comfortable with.
“Jaime has assumed the role of the responsible adult out of the four us. When Trent, Dean, and I get out of line, he talks some sense into our asses.”
His candor made me turn my head toward him. “You were always good together, the four of you.”
A dark smirk found his lips, and he shrugged tiredly. “Until you came along.”
It didn’t sound like a jab. He said it more matter-of-factly. I wanted to ask him so many questions—Why me? What was the fixation with me to begin with? Why did you care that I dated Dean? Vicious was a god among men to the girls of All Saints High. Good looking, rich, and a jock. I should never have been on his radar. Dean was more easygoing, playful. I could see why he’d wanted to date someone like me. But Vicious…he’d hated me.
I let out a sigh of relief when they announced our flight was boarding. We got on the plane before everyone else. We were scheduled to land in San Diego, a short half-hour drive from Todos Santos, and would arrive by early evening with the time change. But after explaining everything to Rosie and packing up the apartment, exhaustion found me, lulling me into the kind of sleepiness you can’t fight. And anyway, staying awake and dealing with Vicious wasn’t an option that I found particularly appealing. The minute I landed in my first-class seat, I nuzzled into the headrest and closed my eyes.
Shortly after we took off, I peeked over at him for a few seconds. His gaze was on his laptop. His eyes remained there, but I knew he sensed me watching him.
“Thank you for giving Rosie a place to stay,” I whispered.
His jaw ticked, but he didn’t lift his gaze from the legal document he was working on.
“Go to sleep, Help.”
And so I did.
THERE WERE TWO THINGS I never told anyone about myself.
Number one: I had insomnia. Ever since I was about thirteen.
When I was twenty-two, I saw a shrink to try and fix it. He said past events were responsible for the fact I couldn’t sleep to save my fucking life and suggested we meet two times a week. That lasted one month.
Since then, lack of sleep had become a part of my everyday existence. I’d run on zero sleep for a few nights in a row, then pass out for a day or two to make up for it. I’d even learned to control the cycle of frustration. When I left the office late at night, instead of tossing and turning in bed like a junkie craving his fix, I went straight to a twenty-four-hour gym and worked out. Then I’d go back to my empty apartment and read the latest thriller—whatever bestseller crap everyone was talking about—or an autobiography of a public figure I didn’t completely hate.
Sometimes I’d invite a woman over. Sometimes we’d fuck. Hell, sometimes we’d even talk. I wasn’t against talking to the women I shared a bed with. But I never went out of my way to get them there in the first place.
I had rules, and I didn’t break them.
No dinners. No dates. No visiting them at their place. Absolutely no fucking pillow talk.
Things were my way or the highway.
If they wanted me, they knew where to find me. In the morning, I’d get dressed and show up to work, freshly shaved and looking rested. I knew that the pass-out stage would eventually arrive, but I’d become better at sensing when. It didn’t make my life easier, but it made the sleepless nights bearable.
Number two: contrary to popular assumptions, I was capable of love.
Sentimental, banal shit? Yeah. But deep down, I knew the truth. I wasn’t a monster or a psychopath, or a fucked-up sociopath like my stepmother. I loved. I loved all the fucking time. I loved my friends and I loved the Raiders. I loved practicing law and shaking hands on lucrative deals. I loved traveling and working out and fucking.
Fuck, I loved fucking.
I glanced over at Help. It wasn’t easy to ignore her sleeping beside me. So close. Her face stirred the kind of chaos in me I once had tried to tame by doing shit like Defy. Her lips begged me to take them in more ways than one. Her body too. But I couldn’t. Not unless it was on my fucking terms.
I tried to work on the pharmaceutical merger deal. I tried to work and saw her shivering in her seat while she slept, goose bumps dotting the delicate flesh of her neck and collarbone.
Tearing my gaze back to the screen, I tried to work again.
But I kept stealing glances.
And I kept trying to cool down the temperature my blood boiled to every time I was near her.
I ended up pulling a blanket over her body. I watched her sleep for forty minutes. Forty fucking minutes. This was bending the rules. What was worse—I wanted to break them all. With her.
I tried reasoning with my cock. There was no guarantee Help would get into bed with me. You could take the girl out of the church in Virginia, but you couldn’t take the church out of the girl. Despite her years in New York, I suspected she still wasn’t a heavy Tinder user who bed-hopped her way to her next broken heart.
Plus, she seemed to hate me just as much as I hated her.
And last but not least—I knew I was about to plunge headfirst into some dirty, nasty shit with my family.
I couldn’t afford a distraction. All I wanted was to get the help I needed from her, maybe screw her a few times, and cut her loose.
Make it stop.
We landed at sunset, slicing through sky the color of purple with a gold undertone, just like her hair. The bite of a promising new adventure filled my nostrils when I finally got out of the airport, armed with the girl I’d driven out of this place ten years ago.
Cliff, my family driver, was leaning against the black Limo, waiting for us at the curb of San Diego International’s baggage claim. He rushed to snatch her duffle—I’d overnighted my luggage straight to Todos Santos—and flung it into the trunk of the limo, firing off pleasantries I didn’t bother acknowledging. Emilia followed behind me, her eyes darting everywhere, drinking in the view she hadn’t seen in so long.
I knew she’d visited her parents a few years ago when I was already in LA, but that was the extent of it as far as I was aware.
The drive to my father’s mansion ticked by silently and gave me time to think and regulate my heartbeats. Cliff kept his mouth shut, probably remembering I was not
my chatterbox stepmother. I didn’t bother to raise the privacy glass. Help squinted at the side window, pretending I wasn’t there next to her.
This weekend was important to me. It was the weekend when I would finally tell my father about my plans.
Help didn’t mention the blanket, and I didn’t mention how my brain almost fucking detonated when I caught myself doing it. Such a small gesture. Such a huge impact on my mood.
At the eight-car garage behind the house, Cliff pulled her duffel from the trunk.
“I better head to see my parents.” She jerked her thumb toward the servants’ apartment. “I haven’t been here in a while.” The accusation in her voice suggested I was to blame for that. “I hope my mother’s not in your kitchen. Or am I allowed inside now?”
Another accusation. Hey. I wasn’t the one who’d made them live in the servants’ apartment. Truthfully, I would have offered them a place inside the house, considering it was empty. It was Josephine who was a fucking haughty snob, but no one would’ve believed me. Jo’s mask was solid.
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Tonight. I have an urgent meeting with my lawyer, and I need you to take notes.” She wasn’t going there to take notes. Originally, I’d hoped to talk her through my plans for her on the plane, but she’d fallen asleep.
I sometimes forgot that other people slept. An average person would spend twenty-five years of their lifetime asleep. Not me. I was fucking wide-awake.
I was tempted to wake her up on the plane, but she’d looked so out of it, I was sure she wouldn’t understand half the crap I had to tell her anyway. And all of it was important.
At any rate, my justification for the trip seemed to pacify Help, and she shot me a polite smile.
She was starting to get comfortable around me. I pitied her.
“I’ll have dinner with my folks and see you later then.”
She clutched her duffel to her chest and ambled down the pavement leading to her former home beside the garage, while I headed for the iron double-doors at the front of the cold mansion where I’d once lived. Before I turned the corner, I twisted my head back toward her.
She was standing outside the door to her parents’ quarters. When it opened, she jumped into her mother’s open arms, knotting her legs around her thick midsection and letting out a happy squeak. Her dad clapped and laughed. Soon, the three of them were half-crying, half-laughing with joy.
When I pushed my front doors open, no one was there. Nobody waited for me. But that was hardly news.
My stepmother was probably already back in Cabo with her friends. Thank fuck. And my father was probably upstairs in his bed, marching his slow way to death after his third heart attack in the last five years.
But this time, his cold, vicious heart was going to lose the battle.
Death. Such a mundane thing. Everybody died. Well, eventually. But almost everyone fought against it. Sadly, for my father, he had silent enemies who prowled in the dark.
One of them was his son.
He was so hot on getting rid of my mother—so relieved when she finally died—that he forgot his time would come too. And it did, with a little push from Mother Nature.
Karma was working extra hard with this piece of work. Dad had been in great shape for a sixty-eight-year-old. He ate well, played tennis and golf, and had even cut back on the cigars.
But the work of saints is done through others.
It was time for everyone to get what they deserved for the death of Marie Spencer.
Daryl Ryler was long since dead.
Baron Spencer Sr. would soon be dead, too.
And Josephine Ryler Spencer would have nothing to live for. Nothing.
“Dad?” I called out, rooted to the foyer floor. He didn’t answer. I knew he wouldn’t. His third heart attack had left him weaker than ever. That was after the stroke he’d had between heart attack two and the most recent one.
Now, he was wheeled by two nurses everywhere and was barely able to communicate anymore. He was lucid, but his speech was gone. His ability to move his limbs had vanished too. My father could barely lift a finger to point at what he wanted or needed.
He once thought of my disabled mother as a burden, a liability that marred his balance sheet…now he’d become a liability to Josephine.
What goes around, comes around.
I dropped my suitcase in the middle of the vast, dark entrance hall—the curtains were always drawn in my house—and climbed up the stairs. “I’m coming for you, Dad.”
This was the last time I was going to speak to him.
The last time I would pretend to give a shit.
When I got to his room, he wasn’t there. My father hardly ever ventured out of his bedroom when home. His male nurses sometimes took him to the library, and if I didn’t find him there, with Josh or Slade, then he was probably at the hospital. Again.
I went down to the library, and sure enough, it was empty. I stood in front of the oak desk and swiped my palm across it. Once upon a time, this had been my mother’s favorite room. We used to spend so much time here together. We would sprawl on opposite ends of the sofa, reading silently and occasionally glancing at each other, exchanging grins. I was only six when the tradition began.
Sharing the silence. Our love for everything written.
Even after the car accident, when she became a quadriplegic, we still did this. Only she didn’t sit on the sofa anymore. But I’d humor her, reading Little Women and Wuthering Heights for her aloud. Needless to say, they weren’t my style. But that smile…her smile was definitely worth the hassle.
When she died, Jo and Dad abandoned the room. But then Daryl Ryler, Jo’s twin brother, started using it for a whole other reason.
Beating me.
I knew I should hate this room after everything Daryl had put me through in here, but it always drew me back. Because my mother’s nurturing smile, a balm to my starving soul, was what I thought about when I entered the library.
Not the way Jo locked me inside while Daryl smacked me with his ringed hand until my chest was cut and bruised. Not how she lied about what happened when he whipped me with his belt until my legs were covered with welts and blood.
Head bowed, I now stared at my hands pressed against the desk. This was a position I knew too well. It’s how I’d stood when they punished me.
My palms shook against the wood, and I knew what it meant. I was going to crash soon, the sleep I found so elusive demanding its due. But first, I needed to get Help to assist me with my plans concerning the will, and I also needed to break the news to Dean about her before he found out about it from his dad.
I fished my cell out of my dress pants and dialed his number, tossing the phone on the desk after putting the call on speaker. Dean answered after the third ring.
“You sent me Sue!” he greeted, his voice filled with frustration.
I leaned back. “What’s the matter? I got the vibe that you were banging her. Thought you’d be happy.”
“As a matter of fact, yeah, I am banging her. Which is why she wasn’t thrilled when she walked in on me feasting on someone else’s pussy on your office desk.”
I scowled. Things like this made me feel less guilty about breaking up him and Help. Did she really need to be with a shitty guy like Dean? Like Trent? Like me? We were all cut from the same self-entitled cloth.
I rolled my lip between my fingers, fighting the twitch in my jaw. “You offered her a non-standard contract without consulting me. What the hell went through your head, you dickbag?”
“Not much, but I can tell you what went on under my belt when I did it.”
I actually heard the smirk on his lips.
I sighed, shaking my head. “I’m calling you out on this next time we have our monthly meeting.”
“I’m so scared I’m practically pissing my pants here.” Dean snorted, still unaffected. “So who’s helping you in New York? You fired the mouthy
she-devil who worked here. I saw her packing up her stuff yesterday.”
Tiffany, my previous PA, was a bitch to work with. Not to me, of course, but everyone else at the office hated her. Almost as much as they detested me. And that said a lot.
“I found another PA.”
“I bet you did.” He laughed. “Let me guess. Old and experienced, gray hair, pictures of her grandchildren everywhere on her desk?”
I heard the echo of a bathroom, a zipper rolling down, and him pissing. Fucking typical Dean.
“Actually, my new PA is Emilia LeBlanc,” I said, waiting for his reaction.
But there wasn’t any.
I didn’t want to play his game. I didn’t. But after twenty seconds of complete silence, I had to say something, anything, so I did.
“Hello?”
The line went dead. He’d hung up on me.
Sonovabitch.
I CHANGED INTO SOMETHING NICER and treated my parents to a restaurant at the marina for dinner. We ordered a bottle of wine, which I could easily afford with my new paycheck, and appetizers as well as entrees. They filled me in on their lives, which, surprisingly, they claimed were a lot quieter and nicer now. Baron Senior was being cared for mainly by his nurses—he was much sicker than I’d realized. And Josephine Spencer was rarely at the mansion and often away traveling.
The restaurant was on a boat called La Belle and was a little fancy for my liking. They picked the place. I would have never chosen it. Everyone in town knew Vicious and his friends had set fire to La Belle during our senior year, but no one knew why.
The food was good and the tablecloths were the kind of white you see in Tide commercials. I couldn’t complain. I had food and wine in my belly and a smile on my face.
Dinner was just a distraction, though. The reason I was here was him.
And he was dangerous.
“You working with Baron Junior now?” Mama smiled in a meaningful way I didn’t like. Her body was fleshy after years of being overworked and filled with home-cooked, fat-laden Southern food she would’ve never served to her employers, but beneath it all, she was beautiful. “Tell us about it.”
