Then the line went dead and I dropped my phone onto the sofa, staring at Liam with shell-shocked dread curling through me.
Liam stretched out his legs, grinning like an idiot. “So. What’s your bet? Fine? Public apology? One-year probation where you’re only allowed to say ‘thank you to the team’ in interviews?”
I shut my eyes. “Fuck off, Liam.”
He hummed. “Think Julian will say the same when he calls?”
CHAPTER TWO
VIOLET
“I’m just saying,” Cleo slurred, pointing at me with her half-finished cocktail, “if you ever decide to have a whoring phase, now would be the time.”
“Jesus, Cleo.” Imani choked on her drink, coughing out a laugh.
I rolled my eyes. “Lovely. Thank you for that unsolicited life advice.”
Cleo waved a hand. “You’re twenty-six, single, and terrifyingly competent. You need a little recklessness in your life.”
I snorted. “What, like you?”
“Yes,exactlylike me.” She grinned. “Look at me thriving.”
Imani arched a brow. “You lost your passport in Madrid and got banned from that rooftop bar in Monaco.”
“Irrelevant.” Cleo huffed. “Those were technical setbacks.”
I just shook my head, sipping my drink. “You two are unhinged.”
“And you,” she said, pointing at me again, “are way too sensible. You should be making poor decisions in questionable locations, not babysitting your father’s expectations.”
“I make plenty of questionable decisions.”
Cleo’s brows rose. “Name one.”
I hesitated.
Imani smirked. “Exactly.”
“See?” Cleo sat back, victorious. “You’re responsible to a fault. You just spent six months working with underprivileged kids in a country where the tap water gave you food poisoning, and what was the first thing you did when you got back?”
I frowned. “Slept?”
“You moved into your father’s penthouse.”
Imani tsked. “Self-sabotage, honestly. Remember what it cost you last time?”
“My sanity?”
“Your Audi.” Cleo shook her head. “And two years of your life.”
He’d also kicked me out of the penthouse so I had to move into student housing and blow through more money.
“It’s temporary.” I took a slow sip of my drink.
It had to be. I’d spent five years burning through my mother’s inheritance to pay for the degrees he refused to fund. Tuition, rent, the master’s he called “decorative.”
But the well was running dry.
