“Baron…” Eli kept pulling at an imaginary goatee, like he was trying to rub the concern off of his face. His tone told me what I didn’t want to hear.

I shook my head. This was not happening. I didn’t need the fucking money. I made millions myself. Not a fraction of what my dad had, but still.

It was about Jo not getting away with fucking murder.

It was about not walking around the world feeling hollow and cheated.

It was about justice.

“Give that to me.” I reached for the file and snatched the will from his hand. I flicked through the document as fast as I could, my pulse hammering so furiously I thought my heart was going to explode. Hell, half the shit I was reading didn’t even register. But there were two things that stood out to me immediately:

First, the will was handwritten. It would be almost laughable, if it weren’t for the fact it was, indeed, my dad’s handwriting and dated well before he got sick. I flipped to the final page to the signatures of the two witnesses. I didn’t recognize either name, but that wasn’t unusual. Lawyers often called in their employees in to act as witnesses.

Second, there was a disinheritance clause.

“He put in a fucking disinheritance clause!” I punched Eli’s desk on a dry scream.

The more I read, the more my blood boiled. He’d appointed Josephine to be the executor. But that didn’t bother me as much as the main deal: Josephine Rebecca Spencer (née Ryler) was to inherit his entire estate. I was getting a measly ten million dollars.

The disinheritance provision meant that if I were to challenge the will in any way, I’d get nothing. Just an extra fuck you to his beloved only son.

Jo had just become filthy rich in her own right.

And I had just been reduced from an almost-billionaire to a man who was still rolling in it, but wasn’t going to make any Forbes lists anytime soon. Not that I cared. The money didn’t mean shit. Revenge did.

I said nothing while Eli watched me, his face wrinkled and wary.

I’d been blindsided.

My father knew all along that I hated him. Hell, maybe he’d even suspected my plans. I didn’t know how or why, just that Josephine was a step ahead of me all this time. I gulped down a sour ball of anger.

Eli came around to my side of his desk and sat beside me in a second chair. Plastering the will back onto the desk, we both read through it with hunched backs. The will was dated in June, ten years ago. My mind whirled with so many different emotions.

A bad year. A bad month.

“Anything weird happen around that time?” Eli echoed my thoughts. “Anything that could make your father change his mind about the provisions he set up in the prenup?”

My father had been open about the terms of the prenup. She got nothing if she ever filed for divorce. He used his money to keep her married to him, controlling her with the threat of being penniless.

So she’d stuck around. I wasn’t surprised he’d left her something after all these years. But everything? It looked like Jo was the one controlling him all along. That shouldn’t have been a surprise to me either. Fucking Jo. She’d been whispering in his ear again.

The will was dated shortly after I finished high school. After I threw Emilia out of California for good and everything went to shit. After I went off the rails completely…

Ten years ago was when Daryl died.

“Yeah.” I crushed the will between my fingers. “Jo was going through a difficult time. Her brother died. She may have strummed my dad’s emotions. I just…” I took a deep breath. “I guess I’ve always hated him, but it still hurts to know he hated me too.”

“I don’t understand why he’s always favored Josephine over you, but it’s time to move on with your life, son.” Eli knew what my friends didn’t.

When I was twenty-two, the HotHoles all came back to Todos Santos for Thanksgiving. We all stayed at Dean’s house and got plastered. I’d just gotten accepted to law school, so I thought it was a good idea to wander into Eli’s study in the middle of the night and look through his shit. He was there, and I was so drunk, so lost, so sad, that somehow, I’d ended up confiding in him about the abuse.

I’d kept my mouth shut about my mother’s murder, though, just like I had with Emilia.

I chose to handle justice myself, and I did. Until today.

Everything was collapsing. I was a walking, talking ghost. A no one. A man without a cause.

“Don’t let what they did to you define you. Find something else that makes you tick.” Eli’s voice shook with emotion. He didn’t care anymore that I’d fucked up his son’s face. Because my life was so much more fucked up than Dean’s ever would be. “Live, Baron. Live well. Don’t look back. And don’t ever visit that place again.”

He was talking about the mansion I’d planned to burn to the ground. The place where I was going to build a library to honor my mom.

When I walked out of Eli’s office, I collapsed on the steps leading to his patio and lit a joint. I fished out my cracked phone and called Emilia. She didn’t answer.

I called her again.

And again.

And again.

Then I started leaving voicemails. Voicemails that didn’t make any sense and that I knew for a fact I was going to regret. Her answering machine greeting was her singing in her sweet voice, followed by a breathless, girly giggle when she got to her punchline:

“Hey, this is Millie! Wanna hear a joke? Knock, knock! Who’s there? Not me, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!”

I don’t know what your fucking problem is, Help, but you need to get back to me because…because I’m your boss. I pay you good money. I’m waiting for your call.”

“Hey, this is Millie! Wanna hear a joke? Knock, knock! Who’s there? Not me, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!”

Are you mad at me? Is that it? Is this because I didn’t pick up the phone when you called? Should I remind you I had important shit to deal with because my dad had just died? Besides, I was upfront with you the whole time. This is not a relationship. It’s two people fucking the obsession out of each other. Get back to me. Now.

“Hey, this is Millie! Wanna hear a joke? Knock, knock! Who’s there? Not me, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!”

Emilia! What the fuck!

Then, out of the blue, my phone vibrated in my hand. I let out a sigh and felt a little warmth finally seep into my chest. I swiped the damaged screen quickly.

“When you get here, I’m going to deny you every fucking orgasm you almost-reach for a whole week,” I growled.

A throat cleared on the other end of the line. “I’m afraid that won’t be necessary, Baron.” It was Jo, and her voice sounded amused. “Remember when you said we needed to do the dinner and wine thing more often? Well, I’d just love to see you tonight for a meal. Do you prefer red wine or white?”

My jaw ticked, and I would have hurled the phone across the patio if not for my need to hear from Emilia. I hung up and screamed until Keeley, one of Dean’s sisters, came out and dragged me into the house to calm down.

For the next twenty-four hours, I was coddled and fussed over by the Cole women like a pussy, while Dean came in and out of the house and shot me dirty looks.

“Fire her,” I heard him singing from his kitchen at one point while his mother sat next to me in the living room with a cup of tea and recounted every single family catastrophe she could recall and how things had somehow miraculously gotten better.

“Fire the girl, fire her now,” he continued, undeterred.

She was driving a new wedge between Dean and me, and she wasn’t even taking my calls. Hell, who knew if she was even down with helping me take Jo down? I seriously doubted it. No, I was on my own.

I thought I was going to use Emilia LeBlanc, but I was no longer able to control my plans for her, or for me. She was the only person I wanted to speak to when my world collapsed. No matter the outcome of the will, I couldn’t see letting her walk out of my life. Not again.

I sat in her ex-boyfriend’s living room, my face squeezed into his mother’s chest like a child, and realized that it was too late to back out.

I no longer wanted it to stop.

I was going after her.

And fuck the consequences.

TWO DAYS AFTER I READ the will, I heard Jaime let himself into my wrecked hotel suite with the key card I’d given him so he could come and go as he pleased.

“Jesus. How long has it been since you let housekeeping in?”

Dean’s blood was still on the carpet.

I lay on the unmade bed, smoking and staring at the ceiling. Jaime threw a paper bag on the nightstand beside me before taking out bottled water, wrapped sandwiches, Tylenol, and other crap he thought I needed. I’d gotten wasted with him and Trent after I left Dean’s, because who the fuck wouldn’t after they’d just been disinherited.

I puffed a cloud of smoke, and he grabbed the joint from between my fingers, put it out, and yanked me by the collar of my stinky white shirt.

His nose crushed mine. “You’re still a millionaire. You’re still young, rich, and healthy. And all you can think about is your stepmom getting your dad’s dough? Big fucking deal.”