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.”

“There’s really nothing to tell. He needed a PA, and I needed a job. Since we went to high school together, he thought of me,” I explained carefully. Calling him an “old friend” would be lying to their faces.

I left out the fact that Vicious had said he needed me to do something shady for him.

That he admitted he had less than respectable plans for me.

That he’d already threatened to fire me twice.

And I definitely left out the part where he told me he’d fuck me against the glass desk of his office for everyone to see.

“He’s a fine-looking boy.” My mother clucked her tongue in approval, taking another generous gulp from her wine. “Surprised he hasn’t settled down with anyone. But I guess that’s how it is when you’re so young and wealthy. You have the pick of the crop.”

I shuddered inwardly. Mama admired the rich. It’s something Rosie and I were never on board with. Maybe because we had the misfortunate of attending All Saints High and tasting the disdain and snobbery of wealthy students. The bitterness stayed in our mouths long after we’d left Todos Santos.