“Let go of her, Trent. Find a good woman who can take care of your kid. Literally every single woman in the continent with eyes and ovaries is a willing candidate. You’re the whole package,” she said.

Catching the blunt between my teeth, I slid her matching white thong down her thighs and shoved three fingers into her at once, working my way up to her G-spot and rubbing it lazily. She didn’t even have time to drop her ass back on the covers from giving me access to her pussy. Her sudden moan sliced the air when I pushed my thumb to her clit and started massaging, working her up.

“It’s going to hurt today,” I said.

“Why?” she purred, instantly warming up to the idea. “Who pissed you off this time?”

Her name sat at the tip of the tongue, but letting it loose was acknowledging Edie was on my mind. She was young. So, goddamn young. And even if I didn’t care about the age—which I did, her body was straddling the rope between ripe and juvenile. It still hadn’t reached its full potential and gotten all its defined curves. I cared about Fiscal Heights Holdings and had plans for it. Plans that didn’t include Edie or her vindictive father. She was therefore a calamity, a downfall, and a sure-as-fuck distraction.

“No one.” I licked my way to Amanda’s throat, stopping to stare at her. Amanda didn’t expect a kiss. No one did. “No one important.”

It was a lie I wanted to believe in.

It was a lie I cultivated with my brain, my heart, and whatever was left of my soul.

It was a lie which would become truth. It had to.

My phone alarm buzzed with enthusiasm we obviously didn’t share at four a.m. sharp. Waking up in the ink dark wasn’t my idea of fun, but surfing was, so I bit the bullet, convincing myself that it was temporary, even though I had no reason to think that.

Yawning, I stretched inside my twin bed, my eyes slowly regaining focus. Pink walls. Two chandeliers. White, antique furniture restored and imported from Italy. Everything in my room suggested I was a happy, cheerleader-type teenage girl. No one could suspect this room represented a cage, a persona I was supposed to perform. No one knew that I had to shove my surfing gear, wax, wetsuits, and whatnot to the back of my closet, even though I used it every day, in the off-chance someone would find out I wasn’t an ice princess.

Surfing wasn’t prestigious enough to be an approved-of activity for a Van Der Zee.

My surfboards were hidden under heavy brown fabrics in one of the garages, where guests couldn’t see them, even by accident, and all the family pictures I’d hung on my coral walls had been taken down the same day I’d put them there, the only evidence to the fact this room was once warm and mine were the naked nails hammered to the wall.

No one knew a thing about the real me, because I wasn’t perfect, and the Van Der Zees were.

At least on the outside.

We were The Brady Bunch, sans the gazillion kids. Blonde and beautiful and with the biggest, whitest smiles in our zip code.

I slipped into an orange bikini, a matching wetsuit, and a black hoodie, and texted Bane. We didn’t get to surf together now that I was working a dead-end job, but I still offered. It sucked to surf in the pitch black, not to mention it was exceedingly risky. But I didn’t have much choice. I started work at seven in the morning and didn’t get off until seven in the evening. And when I did, I had to check on my mom, cook for her, make sure she was okay. Someone had to, after all, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Jordan.

I entered the kitchen for some coconut water and a granola bar. Blood-red granite countertops and stainless steel appliances shone from every corner. The kitchen was one of my favorite places in the mansion because my father rarely ever wandered there. He had his food delivered to his room by one of our housekeepers whenever he was home. When he did make an appearance, it was to make my mother some tea, which was the only thing that seemed to have soothe her troubled mind.

“Mom?” I gasped when a frail, hunched back greeted me, wrapped in an off-white sateen robe. “What are you doing up?”

She was sitting at the marble dining table, staring at an article in a local newspaper. I walked over and pressed my lips to the crown of her blonde head.

“Hey,” I said softly. “Late night?”

“Who is April Lewenstein?” She pressed a thoroughly-chewed fingernail onto an image of Dad hugging a young businesswoman, both smiling to the camera at one of FHH’s functions. She dragged her finger across their picture and ink smeared both their faces. I allowed myself an indulgent sigh, my shoulders loosening.