No one had ever hurt me physically before. It was the unwritten rule of the rich and noble. You could ignore your child, send them off to boarding school in Switzerland and leave them with the nanny until they reached eighteen, but God forbid you lay a hand on them. I looked around for the YSL bag, confusion and panic churning in my gut. Rexroth caught up with my plan quick enough, because he kicked the bag between us. It bumped into my boots with a thud.

“Don’t get too attached to it, sweetheart. Three.”

“My father would kill you if he knew you touched me,” I sputtered, trying to regain balance. “I’m—”

“Jordan Van Der Zee’s daughter,” he cut in matter-of-factly, saving me the introduction. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t give two shits.”

My father was in business with Rexroth, and held forty-nine percent of Fiscal Heights Holdings, the company Trent incorporated with his high school friends. It made Jordan a threat to the man in front of me, even if he wasn’t exactly Rexroth’s boss. Trent’s intense frown confirmed he really wasn’t scared. But I knew my father would flip his shit if he knew Trent had touched me. Jordan Van Der Zee rarely spared me a look, but when he did, it was in order to assert power over me.

I wanted to taunt Rexroth back. I wasn’t even entirely sure why. Maybe because he was humiliating me—though part of me acknowledged I deserved it.

His eyes shot daggers at me, burning the skin wherever they landed. My cheeks blossomed into crimson, and it hit me hard, because he was nearly twice my age, and outrageously off-limits. I was feeling juvenile enough getting caught red-handed without the side-bonus of feeling my thighs clench as his fingers dug into my wrists like he wanted to split them open and pop my veins out.

“What are you going to do? Hit me?” I jerked my chin up, my eyes, voice, and stance defiant. His mother was white, so his dad must be either black or biracial. Trent was tall, built, and tan. His black hair was buzzed close to the scalp, marines-style, and he wore charcoal slacks, a collared white shirt, and a vintage Rolex. Gorgeous prick. Stunning, arrogant bastard.

“Two.”

“You’ve been counting down from five for ten minutes, smartass,” I notified him, one eyebrow arching. He let loose a grin so devilish, I swear it looked like he had fangs, dropping my wrists like they were on fire. I immediately collected one into my palm and rubbed it in circles. He hovered over me like a shadow, completing the countdown with a growl, “One.”

We both stared at each other, me in horror and him in amusement. My pulse skyrocketed, and I wondered what it looked like from the inside. If the ventricles in my heart were bursting with blood and adrenaline. He raised his hand teasingly slowly and tugged my hoodie down, letting my mane of long, wavy blonde hair cascade all the way to my waist. My nerves shredded into ribbons at how exposed I felt. His eyes explored me lazily, like I was an item he was debating whether or not to buy at the Dollar Tree. I was a good-looking girl—a fact that both pleased and upset my parents, but Trent was a man, and I was a senior in high school, at least for the next two weeks. I knew rich men loved their women young, but jailbait was rarely their jam.

After a stretched beat, I broke the silence, “What now?”

“Now I wait.” He almost caressed my cheek—almost—making my eyes flutter and my heart loop in a way that provoked me to feel both younger and older than my years.

“Wait?” I furrowed my brows. “Wait for what?”

“Wait until this leverage on you becomes useful, Edie Van Der Zee.”

He knew my name. My Christian name. It was surprising enough that he recognized me as Jordan’s daughter just from seeing me across the lawn at his friend’s barbecue weeks ago, but this…this was oddly exciting. Why would Trent Rexroth know my name unless he’d asked for it? My father wouldn’t talk about me at work. That was a hard fact. He tried to ignore my existence whenever he could.

“What could you possibly need from me?” I scrunched my nose, skeptical. He was a powerful, thirty-something mogul and so completely out of my league we weren’t even playing on the same field. I wasn’t being hard on myself. It was by choice. I could be rich like him—correction, I was potentially fifty times richer. I had the world at my feet, but I chose to kick it aside instead of making it my oyster, much to my father’s consternation.

But Trent Rexroth didn’t know that. Trent Rexroth didn’t know that at all.

Under his arms and scrutiny, I felt incredibly alive. Rexroth leaned in my direction, his lips, made for poetry and sin and pleasure, smiling into the skin between my throat and my ear, and rustled, “What I need is to keep your father on a short leash. Congratulations, you’ve just reduced yourself to potential sacrifice.”