One Mississippi.

Two Mississippi.

Three Mississippi.

After ten seconds, I leaned back in my seat and knotted my fingers together. “Come in.”

She did.

She came in wearing a red-and-white ladybug dress—I shit you not—and yellow leggings. I also saw that the heel to one of her shoes was glued on crooked. At least they were the right size this time.

Her hair was still light purple. Good, I liked it that she no longer reminded me of Jo. And her roots weren’t showing anymore. Great, that meant she’d made an effort for me since my visit last night. She’d tied her hair into a loose French twist. Emilia stared at me defiantly, not even offering a hello.

“Sit down,” I instructed. It was easy to be cold to people. Cold was all I knew.

My last real hug was when I was a kid. My mother. Shortly before the accident that stole her freedom. My stepmother, Jo, pretended to hug me. Once. At a charity event. After my response, she never did it again.

Help sat down, and my eyes glided over her legs briefly. She still had a nice body, despite looking like she could use a good meal or three. She had an iPad clasped in her hand. Her eyes were on me. They bled suspicion and disdain.

“Do you know how to use an iPad?” I asked slowly.

“Do you know how to talk to people without inspiring their gag reflex?” she responded, mimicking my tone and cocking her head.

I swallowed down a chuckle. “I see I got someone’s panties in a wad. Very well. Start writing. Book me an appointment with Jasper Stephens—you’ll find his number in my email, which you should have access to by now. Then a meeting with Irene Clarke. She’ll want to meet outside the office. Don’t allow for that to happen. I want her here, and I want her to bring the other CEO of her company, Chance Clement. Then send a driver to JFK—my stepmother should land there at half past four, and book me a taxi to Fourteen Madison Park for seven p.m. We’re having dinner there.”

I continued rattling off orders. “I want you to send fresh flowers to Trent’s mom—it’s her fifty-eighth birthday—and make sure there’s a personalized card with my name on it. Find her address. She still lives outside San Diego, but I have no fucking clue where. Ask the receptionist what I had for breakfast, and make sure it’s on my desk every morning from now on at half past eight or earlier. And coffee. Make sure there’s coffee as well. Make extra copies of every single document in this file.” I tossed a thick yellow file her way.

She caught it midair, still typing on her iPad, without lifting her head.

“Familiarize yourself with what’s inside. The players. Their likes and dislikes. Their weaknesses. There’s an upcoming merger between American Labs Inc. and Martinez Healthcare. I don’t want anything to fuck it up. Including my new PA.” I rubbed my chin, my gaze shamelessly gliding over her body. “I think we’re done here. Oh, and Emilia?”

Her eyes flicked up, meeting mine from across the desk.

I smirked arrogantly and tilted my head to one side. “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve come full circle? The daughter of the help becomes…” I dragged my tongue across my lower lip. “The help?”

I didn’t know how she’d react, just knew that I wanted to poke her one more time before she left my office. This woman made me feel uncomfortable, exposed. Fuck, I didn’t even know why I’d hired her ass. Well, I did. Still, most of the time she made me feel like I wanted to explode and tear the whole place apart.

Help raised her head proudly and got up from her seat, but didn’t make a move toward me. She just stared at me like I was a fucking freak. I knew my shirt was stainless and ironed. Black, crisp, and sharp. That I looked presentable. Handsome, even.

Then what the fuck was she staring at?

“You’re still here,” I said, moving my eyes to my laptop screen, clicking on my mouse a few times without purpose. She needed to leave. I needed her gone.

“I was just thinking…” She hesitated, staring at the reception area through the open blinds of my glass office walls.

My eyes snapped to where her gaze landed—the golden FHH hung inside a bronze circle. There was a hint of a frown on her full pink lips, and despite disliking her, I wouldn’t mind having them wrapped around my dick under my desk at some point.

“FHH?” She scrunched her nose in a way that I suspected most men would find adorable.

“Fiscal Heights Holdings,” I replied, curt and formal.

“Four Hot Holes,” she shot back. “You’re the Four HotHoles of Todos Santos. You, Trent, Jaime, and Dean.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Just hearing her utter his name aloud made me want to punch the desk. The initials of our enterprise were our little secret, but sometimes, especially when we met once a month for beer and business, we’d talk about how we’d fooled everyone. How people put their hard-earned millions in the hands of a company whose name stood for four football idiots, three of whose rich daddies paved their way to success.

But not Help. She knew. Saw past our bullshit. Guess that was what had always drawn me to her. To the girl who lived off cheap carbs and wore four-year-old shoes but never once fawned over my big mansion and glitzy car.

There were several reasons why I hated her. The first and most obvious one was that I suspected she knew what Daryl and I were talking about in my family’s library. That she knew my secret. It made me feel pathetic and weak. The second one was that she looked just like a young Jo. Same eyes. Same lips. Same slightly overlapping front teeth and that Lolita look about her.

Hell, even the same Southern accent, even though I could hear that she’d lost most of it now, after ten years.

Hating her was like atonement to my mother, Marie, for a sin that wasn’t even mine.

The third one, though, was part of the reason why I didn’t just hate Help, I respected her too. Her indifference to my power somewhat disarmed me.

Most people felt helpless around me. Emilia Leblanc never had.

I uncuffed the links on my dress shirt and rolled my sleeves up, taking my time and my pleasure in knowing she was watching me. “Now get your ass out of my office, Help. I have work to do.”

“Darlin’, bless your heart, I swear you look too good!” Jo clutched my cheeks in her cold, leathery hands. Her manicured fingernails dug into my skin a little deeper than they should have, and not by accident.

I flashed her a detached smile and allowed her to lower my head so she could kiss my forehead one last time before everything between us went to shit. This was the most physical contact I’d allowed her over the years, and she knew better than to overstep her boundaries. She smelled of chocolate and expensive perfume. The cloying scent felt rotten in my nostrils, even though I knew other people probably found it sweet.

Finally, she released me from her grip and inspected my face closely. The bluish tinge under her eyes suggested she was recovering from yet another facial surgery. Jo was what happened to the Bond Girl twenty-five years later. Her resemblance to Brigitte Bardot used to be uncanny. Only unlike Bardot, Jo never agreed to this thing called nature. She fought it, and it fought right back, and this was how she’d ended up having more plastic in her face than a Tupperware container.

That was her problem. All the bleached-blonde hair, surgeries, makeup, facials, and superficial bullshit in the world—the designer clothes and shoes and Hermès handbags—couldn’t cover up the fact that She. Was. Getting. Old.

She was getting old, while my mother remained young. My mother, Marie, only thirty-five at her death. With hair black as night and skin white as a dove. Her beauty was almost as violent as the accident that eventually ended her life.

She looked like Snow White.

Only unlike Snow White, she wasn’t rescued by the prince.

The prince was actually the very man who agreed to poison the apple.

The witch in front of me arranged for it to be delivered.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the truth until it was too late.

“I adore this restaurant!” She fluffed her over-styled hair and followed the maître d’ to our table, gushing about expensive shit and mistakenly thinking it passed as small talk.

I tuned her out. She wore the gray Alexander Wang dress I’d bought for her birthday—it took me forever to find a cheap knock-off that’d make her rich friends laugh at her behind her back—and a perfectly applied lipstick a shade darker than her favorite red wine, just to make sure she’d look prim and proper, even after her meal.

A part of me was angry at Help for not fucking up any of the tasks I’d given her today. I thought she’d promised to be a shitty PA? If only she’d forgotten to book Jo a driver, I wouldn’t be here now.

I trudged through the avant-garde design of the exclusive restaurant, moving past walls made of live plants, French doors, backlit black cabinets, and ornate paneling. For a few seconds, I felt like a kid who was about to endure some punishment he dreaded, and on some level that’s exactly who I was.

We sat down.

We drank our water silently from crystal stemware that was as impractical as it was nonsensical.

We flipped through the menu, not looking at each other, murmuring something about the difference between Syrahs and Merlots.