Chapter One
Scarlett
“Time?” I call out to my roommate, Mia, a bubbly blonde with big eyes and a killer smile.
If I run the whole way, I can get to the subway on time. Maybe an e-bike? No, they run almost twenty dollars an hour. I race into the living room, hopping on one foot while wrestling with a black micro-mini dress and a pair offuck-meheels.
Fuck me.The heel just snapped off one of them.
“Six fifteen,” Mia yells back.
“Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Glue? Where’s the Gorilla Glue?” I hop into the kitchen.
“Junk drawer.” She emerges from her room and stares at me. “I thought you didn’t have to work today.” She leans against the door jamb of her bedroom.
We live in a fifth-story walk-up on the Lower East Side. The rent is outrageous, and for the price, we get two closets the landlord mistook for bedrooms—each just big enough for a twin bed. We have a windowless living room and a kitchen consisting of a sink, three drawers, a two-burner stove, and a dorm fridge.
“They called me last minute with some crazy masked,wear almost nothing in weaponized heels, secret society, billionaire bullshit. Ugh, I hate billionaires.”
“Hey!” Mia scoffs.
“Except for you. And you’re not a billionaire; you’re a black sheep. Ah, there it is—Gorilla Glue.”
I bite the dried glue off the tip of the nearly empty tube and forcethe usable remnants out. Liberally spreading the adhesive over the base of my shoe, I fit the spiked heel back onto the only pair of nice heels I own—the ones I wear too often to events like the one I am now going to be late for.
“Ugh, I’m not going to make it.” I blow on the end of my shoe.
“We can take the Lambo,” Mia says with a smile. “I’ll drop you off.”
“No, it’s cool if I’m late, they called me last minute,” I say, blowing on the shoe harder.
“Here’s the thing, and I mean this in the nicest way: You, dressed in that, with those heels on, are going to get brutally slain. I’m not talking mild homicide; I mean, headless in a ditch somewhere.” Mia grins.
I hate that she isn’t wrong.
“You read way too much dark romance…” I touch the glob oozing from the seam to see if it’s dry and suddenly have glue-skin on my finger… likely forever.
“Come on, I haven’t driven Larry in a while. He needs to get out of his cage.” She dips back into her room.
“I can’t believe your dad thought a Lamborghini was a sensible car,” I say, shaking my head.
“Oh, he didn’t. Big Bro regretted that the ‘little oops’ didn’t get big bucks from Daddy’s estate. Larry the Lambo is one hundred percent guilt. Larry was Daddy’s treasured 1987 Countach, and though he’s an old man, he can still get it up, if you know what I mean.” She offers a wicked smile.
“Why do you live here? You could sell that car and buy a house. A big one!” I still don’t understand why Mia lives with me, other than the fact that we’ve been best friends since the second grade.
We grew up in the same run-down tenement building. My mom sold her body; hers sold her soul to the diner down the road. Mia’s mom was a hot waitress who boned a billionaire one wild weekend in the Poconos. She was killed in a car accident, leaving Mia to live with her much older half-brother and her elderly father, who never knewshe existed until DCF dropped her on his doorstep.
My mom died of a drug overdose just after I turned eighteen. Mia and I got this apartment the minute we were both old enough to sign a lease.
“Because I love you, and I want to drive down these mean streets in an impractical car. Come on, you’re going to be late. Besides, Beckett is probably going to be at this party, and I like to piss him off. He’s so fucking omnipotent. Being the bratty little sister he can’t control makes me smile. I’m the only one in the world he isn’t able tocommand.” Her voice deepens on the word.
“He’s a doctor, not a dictator,” I say, grabbing my coat and taking a tentative step in my barely fixed shoe.
“If you asked him, he’d tell you he was God. No thanks. The other guys in his little fight club are hot as fuck though, and all single.” Mia grabs her keys from the side table.
“Isn’t your half-brother like fifty or something?”
We leave our cramped apartment and walk down five flights to the basement. Mia pays way too much for one of the three parking spaces behind the building in the alley, where she parks a five-hundred-thousand-dollar car. Granted, the alley between our brownstone and the one next door is chained off with an electric fence, so it’s pretty secure.
