The Captain’s Daughter. I needed to take the book with me. It had belonged to my dad, and who knew what these two would do to it? It was the only thing I had left of his.

The classics were all kept in Darren’s office library, because Pam believed “the staff” could get their hands on them and sell them to the highest bidder. Stupid, considering she was the staff not too long ago. No matter. I knew that there was no chance in hell Darren was in his office. He had a monitor that showed all the cameras recording around the house, streaming live. He would have seen me by now and tried to explain himself.

Debating myself for a fraction of a second, I decided, screw it. My dad was more important than Darren, Pam, and their bullshit. I headed back into the house, this time to Darren’s office.

The problem, I realized seconds after I opened the door, was that you always feel sorry for yourself until you realized things could get much worse. They say it’s better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie. I wanted to drown in lies after I opened that door and saw him.

Darren.

Or, what was left of him.

I gripped the door handle, struggling for breath. I’d wondered so many times over the past twenty-four hours what it would feel like coming face-to-face with him, but I never thought it would be like this.

He was lying facedown on the floor, blood running like a river around him. At first, I was too shocked to react. I simply stood there, quivering like a leaf in fall. There was a Glock still clutched between his fingers. The scene looked fresh. And real. And tragic.

I picked up my phone and called nine-one-one. I delivered the news flatly, giving them all the details that they needed. They told me to remove myself from the room and not to touch anything. I went downstairs, swallowed down two Kit Kats (mainly so I could function, I had very little appetite), and downed a bottle of water. I sat in the living room, my foot bouncing, wondering where the hell was Pam. I thought about calling Roman and Gail, but knew I needed to see this one through by myself. Gail was already doing too much for me, and calling Roman was inviting trouble.

He’d screwed me over so badly, the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about him frustrated me to no end.

The police arrived at the scene six minutes later: two detectives and a harem of badged staff. I was pretty much out of it, so I couldn’t really distinguish who was who.

“I just want to leave here. I’m not his real daughter. We had a fight last time we spoke.” Didn’t they tell you in movies not to say anything without a lawyer? I wished I had someone as savvy as Bane to sit by my side and talk me through this.

The truth disturbed me to no end. While I was shocked by Darren’s death, I wasn’t saddened by it. I felt no sympathy for the man who had ruined my future, not once but twice. Who had taken something so precious from me, and didn’t even have the guts to admit it.

The cops deemed it a classic suicide from the beginning due to his position and the angle in which he’d been shot. There was even a suicide note—because, of course, Darren always had to do things right and proper.

I’M DONE.

They took my statement of what happened and then Pam came in and started screaming. At this point, she had established herself as background noise, so I treated her as such and ignored her completely. A detective who looked like the human version of Peter Griffin from Family Guy asked me if I needed a ride anywhere, adding that it might not be the best idea to drive after what I’d seen, but I told him that I was okay, because I was, even though I wished I hadn’t been.

I wished I could feel sadness and compassion. I wished I hadn’t prayed it had happened sooner, before Darren had ruined my life.

When I got to Gail’s, I told her what had happened. She looked at me like I was a freak, her eyes wide and haunted.

“You must think that I’m the biggest jinx ever,” I said. But Gail shook her head quickly.

“No. I think you had some really shitty things happen to you, and that they’re coming to an end, sooner than you think. Good things are ahead of you, Jesse. You just need to look.”

IT APPEARS THAT A BROKEN heart smells like rotten junk food and stale vodka. I know, because I bathed in that rancid scent for a pretty long while.

Gidget, Beck, and Hale tried to visit me a few times over the next few days. I slammed the door in their faces, when I even bothered to scrape my ass off the couch. After the third full day of my acting like an emo kid who’d just heard Fall Out Boy had broken up, they resorted to leaving me food outside my door. They would give it one knock and yell something along the lines of, “Wake up, asshole, and don’t forget to wash it down with water.”