“Why do you want to buy my silence?”
“Confidential spy project.”
“You turned on the windshield wipers when you were trying to adjust the air conditioning in the car last night, double-oh-seven. Try again.”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
“So you pay me off and I tell the world about your super-secret serial killer lair out here in the woods anyway, which we both know I’ll do. You’re never going to trust me no matter how much money you give me, so why offer me money at all?”
She’s had coffee.
Coffee that has given her an innate advantage over me. That has to be what’s going on here.
I left my thinking brain at the M2G headquarters when I walked out of the building for the last time because I wasn’t supposed to need it for anything beyond checking my itinerary every morning to plug my next destination into my GPS on this road that will eventually get me to a place that I’ll know when I find it. The place where I’m supposed to begin my new life, somewhere in the middle or western states, far, far away from Manhattan.
I’m supposed to be waking up today free and clear of all obligations and responsibilities beyond making it to the next overnight stop on my road trip to explore all of the places I might consider settling.
Heading into a fresh start without the burden of generations of expectations from people who feel entitled to dictate my entire life simply because they made me.
After one good night of sleep.
Which was supposed to be last night.
I haven’t slept more than four hours in a single night since my father went to jail because I was holding his company together for the shareholders and employees and franchise owners all while realizing I don’t have the drive or the instincts for what I was trained to do from birth.
But here I am, with one more obligation smiling broadly as she plops onto her ass, pulling her arm out from between the mattress and box springs with her phone in hand.
It takes more effort than it should, but I snatch it from her and shove it under the covers and down my underwear.
Yes, mytighty-whities.
And you know what?
They’ll hold the goddamn phone.
Boxers wouldn’t do that.
“What. Do you. Want?” I growl as she stares at my midsection like she’s seriously contemplating coming after the phone.
Her brown eyes meet mine.
Margot has blue eyes. Blue eyes and light brown hair. Sharp wit. Strong moral compass. Good sense of humor. She’s a tad more slender than Daphne, though neither are the waif-thin model-types everyone expects children of the rich to be.
Daphne, on the other hand, is brown eyed and used to be brown-haired, though there are some streaks of color in it now. Her fairy-tattooed arms are on full display this morning. She was wearing a jacket over the cocktail dress last night, and the wig that’s still in my SUV was hiding her half-smushed, half-wild dark hair as it falls past her chin.
She has a diamond stud in one nostril, three piercings in each lower ear, and a loop in one upper ear.
And I’ve never understood her.
She was born with everything.
Everything.
Same as I was.
But while Margot and I worked our asses off to give back to the families that gave so much—to pay an invisible debt that we didn’t ask for but shouldered anyway—Daphne thumbed her nose at every convention and expectation.
And she actively sabotaged herself every step of the way.
