Prologue
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This could be a ticket to a new life if I play our cards right.
Danielle Beaucroft could still see it all now—the whirlwind courtship of meeting him at the club, thinking he would be the prince to save her—the dazzling lights of the Vegas Strip that glittered almost as fiercely as the diamond he placed on her finger—being fucked better than she could ever remember in herlife.
Well, almost, she corrected herself, but that thought brought pain with it, and she swiftly pushed it aside.
Her ex-husband had bought her steak dinner, paired it with Champagne. Now, what did she have? With a violent cry, she swept the remnants of the Thai takeout she couldn’t really afford into the satin-lined jute trashcan. Cold noodles doused in sauce.
It had all come down like a sack of bricks, thanks to her ungrateful child.
She had seen a picture of her the other day. It must have been a slow news day becauseThe Hollybrook Heraldhad run a puff piece on some save-the-children benefit gala. Her stepson, Nicholas, was in the foreground, wearing a suit that looked like it cost as much as the car she’d been forced to sell, and standing beside him was Justine, who was doing that tucked-in thing with her shoulders that she’d done whenever she’d been forced to dress up as a child.
“Relax your arms, Justine, for god’s sake. Do youwantto look like a hunchback?”
She also recognized the necklace nestled into her daughter’s cleavage, the bracelets as heavy as handcuffs around her wrists. Those diamonds had used to behers. But Damon had left his first wife’s jewelry to Nicholas in his will, and now apparentlythey were just medals to be awarded to any Beaucroft whore for her service.
She never could manage herself, Danielle thought uncharitably, remembering the low-cut Grecian gown with a flicker of envy.All that money, and she can’t even find a dress that fits her properly.Not that she was likely to have picked it out herself. Danielle had been around enough men to recognize that look, to know when a man had decided to take it upon himself to do the managing. She could see it in Nicholas’s eyes when he looked at her daughter.
The little hypocrite.
Danielle breathed into the palm of her hand and wrinkled her nose. Onions. The onions were a mistake. That was what she got, for calling the first place to hang a sign on her door. With a roll of her eyes, she headed into her en suite bathroom. It was theonlybathroom in her one-bedroom apartment, but en suite sounded better. Classier. She needed to manage herself, too.
Unlike Justine, she was good at it. It was why the men at the Beat & Tease had always asked afterher, instead of those trashy nineteen-year-olds with their ill-fitting heels and ugly brown lipstick who got drunk with customers and flirted with the bartenders like they were there to party.
They weren’t just dancers. They were selling afantasy. She understood what the men were paying for and had played the role as well as any actress. And like all good actresses, there had been trophies, awards. She’d gotten Damon—
Until Damon had gotten her.
God, it sucked. How many men had she been forced to blow or screw to get to where she was now? And how many of those men had hightailed it just as soon as they found out that there was a kid in the picture? Oh, they were happy enough to buyher off with a nice dinner or some money to cover gas, but deep down, every man wanted to believe he was the first and only.
There was no bigger mood killer to these men than staring at the reminder of another man’s prowess from across the kitchen table as she asked you crossly to pass the Fruit Flakes.
She hadn’t asked to be a single mother. She supposed very few peopledidask for that, but most people didn’t have her streak of bad luck. Most people were stupid.
She saw how they looked at her, as they took in her box-blonde hair and the boob job that had cost two months’ rent and had her and her kid eating plain-wrapped mac-n-cheese that tasted like yeast and sawdust. She didn’t get offered the kinds of jobs where people gave a shit about what was going on inside her brain, not like herdaughter. They all thought she was some cheap bimbo.
Stop frowning, she told herself, as she savagely brushed her teeth.You’ll get wrinkles.
She, Danielle, had done the work and made sacrifices to get them out of that crappy little apartment in the Mission. And all she had asked of Justine was to return the fucking favor for once. She’d grown up in that house just like the rest of them, draped in designer labels and gold jewelry, toting around a real Louis Vuitton purse. And she’d been happy enough to go to that hoity-toity UC school on their dime, too, attending protests that she’d allowed herself to be tagged in, paint on her face, holding up signs protesting the 1%, which had sent Damon into a rage.
“Who does that ungrateful little bitch think she is?”
Danielle had said nothing, because there was really no point. She didn’t know, either. All her life, she’d been the dutiful little daughter, clinging to mommy’s hand, never letting her justbreathe. Then it was like she’d lost her little mind, gettinginvolved in scandal after scandal, ruining their name, their family, their brand. Which she could have fixed by coming back, but she never had. Not untilshe, her mother, had been forced to beg Nicholas, hands out. Little Miss Don’t-Mind-Me was the only one he had ever heeded. And when she’d spoken to him, he had made it very clear—obscenely clear—that there would be no money without Jay.
After running away and leaving everyone else to deal with the fallout of that dreadful party and its aftermath, Danielle felt like coming back and dealing with her brother was the very least Justine could do. Damon never would have disinherited her if Justine hadn’t wound him up.
But eventually, her daughter had stopped calling and Danielle was tired of waiting, of catering to the child who still dared to talk to her like a disappointment when she was very clearly fucking her own stepbrother.
She picked up her old cracked iPhone with its dangling strawberry charm and dialed Justine’s number. It rang several times, which made her realize that she had no plans about what to do if her daughter didn’t pick up, but then she heard aclick.
“Hello? Mom? I’m at work. What do you need?”
That’s a lot of attitude from a girl who’s got her tits out on the society pages. She snorted delicately. “Put your brother on the phone. I need to talk to him about the money.”
There was a pause. “I really don’t think I should do that. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
