“I needed a PA,” I gritted out. It had been ten years. They were together for a semester and a half. It drove me crazy that Dean made it out to be what it clearly wasn’t.

“She was his first and last serious girlfriend,” Trent accused.

“And she was mine,” I said flatly, shoving a blunt between my lips and lighting it in his car.

The windows were rolled up—it was winter, after all—and zero fucks were given on my part. It was Trent’s fault for butting into my business.

Trent tapped the steering wheel. “Goddamn you. Give me a hit.” I passed him the blunt.

He inhaled before returning it to me. “You keep saying she was yours”—smoke poured from his mouth—“but did you ever tell her that? All you did was talk shit about the girl and bully her every time she came near you.”

“Excuse me, but have you grown a vagina since you found out about becoming a father? What is this crazy talk about feelings?” I exhaled smoke from my nostrils. “When’s Jaime landing?”

My best friend was flying in from London for my father’s funeral.

“Christmas Day. He’ll leave Mel and Daria at home.”

I nodded. I knew he would.

“Think you can shut up about my PA and focus on trying not to fuck your way into another mess till then?” I scowled at him.

Trent shook his head and hit the accelerator, swerving onto the shoulder of the road. He breezed up the side of the congested highway, his jaw tight. “Fuck you, Vicious.”

“Honey, I’m home!” I announced when I walked into my father’s cold mansion. Soon to be mine. Soon to be no one’s after I burned it down.

Okay, fine. Technically, I was probably going to use a wrecking ball. After that, I planned to use the land to build a nice library named after my mom, Marie Collins. Not Spencer. His last name was unworthy of her.

No one answered my greeting, so I climbed upstairs to my old room and pulled out my drawers, packing up before I said goodbye to this goddamn place. Most of the shit in my old room was football related.

I wasn’t a very sentimental person. I found letters I’d received from dewy-eyed teenage fangirls, an eight-year-old blunt I’d forgotten to smoke, and Emilia’s chewed pencils. They were at the bottom of my bottom drawer. I was about to throw them into the trashcan beside my old bed when I decided, why waste them?

They were fucking pencils, I reasoned with myself. They didn’t have an expiration date.

As I packed, I got a phone call from my father’s attorney. I’d been chasing his ass along with trying to reach Eli since I’d gotten the call about Dad dying. Goddamn holidays and people who had real families. Dad took his last breath alone. Only Slade was there to tend to him. The other nurse was celebrating Christmas Eve with his family. Jo was spending the holiday with a so-called friend in Hawaii.

She wasn’t there for him, like he wasn’t there for my mom.

I wondered if Jo had ever loved him. Really loved him. I knew nothing about relationships, but something told me the answer was no. Something told me that my mother was murdered not because of a great love but because of pure greed.

“Hello?” I pressed my phone to my ear.

Mr. Viteri, my dad’s attorney, was a man of few words. “The day after the funeral,” he said.

It didn’t seem too long a wait.

“Who else are you sending a copy to?” I asked. Not that it mattered. Wills were public records.

“You, Josephine, and your dad’s brother, Alistair.”

Alistair was irrelevant. He was sixty and lived an ordinary life on a ranch in a small town in Texas. If anything, I was planning to split the funds with him, though I knew he didn’t care about money. Lucky bastard. But now I knew for certain Jo was in the will.

“Can you send my copy to Eli Cole? His house, not his office?” I asked.

I heard his Sharpie as he scribbled down the address. “I’m sorry for your loss, Baron,” he finally said, because that was what was expected to say.

“Thank you, that means a lot,” I said, for the exact same reason.

I finished packing, took my stuff and my sorry ass to The Vineyard, the nearest five-star hotel, ordered room service, and got drunk on whatever was in the mini bar.

I was eager to see Jo’s face when I confronted her about knowing everything she and Daryl did. When I forced her to give up every single penny my father left her.

I was eager to have Emilia by my side again. Catering to me. Assisting me. Fucking with me.

Rubbing my hands together at the very idea of what was to come, it dawned on me that the idea of flying my PA to Todos Santos was just a little more exciting than seeing Jo’s face crumbling with agony as I laid the new laws of life in her fucking face and stripped her of the money she wrongfully claimed to be hers.

I picked up the phone and called my PA.

To say I got no response would be an understatement.

She didn’t take my calls and didn’t answer my text messages either. Not on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or the day after. I dialed, I hit send, and each time my phone sat there silent, I wanted to smash something. Although, to be completely fair, my messages were less than welcoming.

What the fuck happened to your phone? Answer me.

He dropped dead. I need you to come here. Call me back.

I wonder how blasé you’ll be when I bend you over and fuck the rudeness out of you for not answering your boss for three days in a row.

It felt ridiculous. The sitting. The waiting. The craving.

That needed to change. I needed a distraction from this woman.

And I knew just how to change it.

“Just leave it outside,” I yelled to room service from inside my suite.

It couldn’t be anyone else, because the only person I’d invited to my hotel—Georgia, my high school casual fuck—was already inside the room. She was also pissing me the fuck off with her annoying, whiny voice. The years hadn’t been good to her. Sure, she worked out and was always wrapped in the latest designer number, but everything about her was self-involved, plastic, and overdone.

I needed to throw her out before she made a move on me. Ridiculous, considering I’d asked her here so I could fuck her and the aching memory of Emilia from my system.

So, I’d called one of my old flings to distract myself until I had the will in my hands? So what.

Georgia was sitting on the sofa across from my chair, still babbling about something that happened at Todos Santos’s country club five years ago. I wasn’t listening—I lit up a blunt.

“…and I was shocked, Vic, so shocked. I mean, it was one thing that she didn’t want to donate to my charity, but to shamelessly accuse me of founding a whole organization just so Dad would look better during his senate campaign—”

“Why did you break into Emilia LeBlanc’s locker that day?” I cut her off suddenly, smoke fanning out of my flared nostrils.

I was physically unable to hear any more of the boring shit she was feeding me. Downstairs, in the hotel bar, where we’d had a drink, I’d convinced myself that I didn’t mind her annoying voice and annoying facial expressions and annoying self. Alas, I was wrong. I minded all of these things. A lot.

“Emilia LeBlanc?” Georgia twirled a strand of her hair with her finger, blinking at me. Her mascara was too thick and obvious. It didn’t really help my disinterested cock.

“Yeah. Don’t pretend like you don’t remember her.” I blew smoke to the ceiling and twisted my wrist to check my Rolex.

“I do remember her. I’m just surprised you do.” She arched an eyebrow.

I stared at her, expressionless, rubbing my thumb on my temple with the same hand that held the blunt. “She found her calculus book in my bag, remember?”

Georgia huffed. “Because you took it from me and threatened you’d ruin my life if I ever did it again!”

“You had it coming, sweetheart. You acted like a little brat,” I countered without even blinking.

There was another knock at the door. Who the fuck hired this kind of idiot? Why couldn’t they just leave the food outside?

“Get the fuck out of here and take my dinner with you!” I shouted. I wasn’t hungry anymore. And I definitely didn’t want her to stay and dine with me. But what I really didn’t want was to touch her. It wasn’t unusual for me to throw out a perfectly good one-night stand if I wasn’t in the mood. But it was definitely the first time I got annoyed to the point that I wanted the woman out of my life for good.

“Vic, what is this?” Georgia smiled uneasily, shooting up from the sofa and striding over to me.

I took another hit from my joint and watched her. She placed her ass in my lap, and I shook my head slowly, my eyes dead. “Move your ass, pronto, Georgia. Off.”

Another knock on the door, and this time it was a brutal blow to the wood. I got up to answer, and she scrambled to her feet just in time. I didn’t care if she landed on the floor.

She grabbed my free hand and squeezed it. “I was a little wild. So what? We all were. That was adolescence. We grew out of that phase.”

“I don’t want to see you again,” I told her, setting the joint in the soap dish I’d appropriated from the bathroom. “You were a nasty bitch to her, and I suspect you’re still a nasty bitch to whoever was unlucky enough to stay in this goddamn town. This was a mistake. I want you to leave.”