A bad apple.
Van Der Zees always hang with the shiniest fruit in the basket, Edie.
Snapping my head back to the shore, I paddled faster.
“Fucking coward,” Bane yelled loud enough for Jordan to hear.
I didn’t answer, and not for lack of words. Bane didn’t know the whole story. I needed to stay civilized with my father. He held my future in his callous hands. I wanted it back.
Bane got his name for a reason. With zero filters, he was essentially a glorified bully. Only reason he was never kicked out of school was because his mother had a shit-ton of connections with the city council. But Bane ruled us all. Every single damn kid in the school. The rich assholes. The corrupted footballers. The cheerleaders who made the other girls’ existence a living hell.
Bane wasn’t a good guy. He was a liar, a thief, and a drug dealer.
And my sometime boyfriend.
So, while Bane was right—my father was indeed a world-class prick—Jordan was right about something else. I was obviously making dubious life choices.
“Jordan?” I asked, hoisting the board horizontally and tucking it under my arm as I strode toward him. The cool sand clung to my feet, numbing my skin. The rush of the surf still coursed through my veins, but I knew the adrenaline would die down soon and I’d freeze. I didn’t wince, knowing my father would take small pleasure in watching my discomfort and deliberately lengthen the conversation.
He jerked his chin behind my shoulder, his eyes narrowed to slits. “That the Protsenko kid?”
I scrunched my nose, a nervous tick. Even though Jordan was a first-generation immigrant, he had a problem with me making friends with a Russian kid who’d come here with his mom after the downfall of the Soviet Union.
“I told you to stay away from him.”
“He’s not the only person you’ve told me to stay away from.” I sniffed, squinting to the horizon. “Guess we agree to disagree.”
He thumbed the collar of his dress shirt, loosening it around his neck. “See, this is where you’re wrong. I’ve never agreed to disagree with you, Edie. I simply choose my battles. It is called good parenting, and I try to execute it as much as possible.” My father was a chameleon, interchangeable, and adaptable to a fault. He masked his ruthlessness with concern, and his bulldozing ways with enthusiasm and a type-A driven personality. It was his actions that made him the monster he’d become in my eyes. From afar, though, he was just another law-abiding citizen. A poor Dutch boy who’d come to the States with his parents, fulfilled the American dream, and became a self-made millionaire through hard work and merciless wit.
He sounded concerned, and maybe he was, but not about my wellbeing.
“Father.” I wiped my face with my arm, hating that I had to call him that just to please him. He hadn’t earned the title. “You’re not here to talk about ‘the Protsenko kid’. How can I help you this morning?” I jammed the surfboard into the sand and leaned against it, and he reached to touch my face, before remembering I was wet and withdrawing his hand back into his pocket. He looked so human in that moment. Almost like he didn’t have a hidden agenda.
“Where did you hide your acceptance letters to Boston University and Columbia?” He parked his hands on his waist, and my jaw almost dropped to the sand. He was not supposed to know that—obviously. I’d been accepted to five universities. Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Brown, and Boston University. My GPA was 4.1, and my last name was Van Der Zee, meaning these people knew my father would donate a couple million dollars and a kidney to the fine institution that would unburden him from my presence. Unfortunately, I’d never had much interest in attending an out-of-state college. The obvious reason was my surfing. It was my oxygen and air. The sun and the open sky were food to my soul. But the main reason was that the only person I cared about in this world was in California, and I wasn’t moving away. Not even to Stanford up north.
Jordan knew that damn well.
“I didn’t hide them. I burned them.” I stripped out of my wetsuit, the latex slapping my flesh punishingly as I revealed my small purple bikini underneath. “I’m staying close to him.”
“I see,” he said, knowing we were not talking about Bane. The whole reason why my father had decided to have this conversation at the beach and not at home was because he couldn’t chance my mother overhearing us. Lydia Van Der Zee was in a fragile state, her sanity constantly hanging by a thin thread. Shouting was a hard limit for her, and this topic was volatile enough to bloom into a massive fight.
“Just say it.” I closed my eyes, a sigh rolling from my throat.
“Edie, I think I’ve failed you as a father, and for that, I apologize.”
I was shuddering. The adrenaline from surfing had long subdued. I was standing practically naked and exposed, waiting for the stingy sun to come out and caress my skin.
“Apology accepted.” I didn’t buy it for one moment. “So what’s your next scheme? Because I’m sure there is one. You didn’t come here to check in on me.”
“Since you are not going to go to college this year—and let us be clear that this does not mean you will not be attending next year—and since you’ve officially graduated from high school, I think you should come work for me.”
For. Not with. The devil is in the small details.
“In an office? No, thank you,” I said flatly. I taught kids how to surf three times a week. Now that it was summer break, I was trying to pick up more work. Yes, I was also mugging on the regular ever since my father cut off my money stream. I tried to pay for my gas and insurance and clothes and life and him, and wasn’t going to apologize for stealing the cash. When I wasn’t stealing—I was pawning stuff from my father’s mansion. The one he’d purchased in Todos Santos the minute he shoved himself into the Three Comma Club. Jewelry. Electronics. Musical instruments. Hell, I’d pawn the family dog if we had one. I had very little limits when it came to keeping the dude I loved happy and content. And, yes, stealing wasn’t a hard limit. Although I only stole from those who could sustain the financial hit. I made sure of that.
“It wasn’t a request. It was an order,” my father said, tugging at my elbow. I dug my heels deeper into the sand.
“And if I refuse?”
“Then Theodore has to go,” my father enunciated, unblinking. The ease with which he said his name broke my heart. “He’s been a constant distraction in your life as it is. I sometimes wonder how much further you’d have gotten if I’d done it years ago.”
Chaos brewed within me. I wanted to push him away, spit in his face, and yell, but I couldn’t because he was right. Jordan did have power over me. And connections galore. If he wanted Theo out of the picture, he’d make it happen. No sweat.
“What’s the job?” I bit the inside of my cheek until the metallic taste of blood rolled in my mouth.
“Whatever there is to do around the office. Mainly legwork. No filing or taking phone calls. You need a good dose of reality, Edie. Getting accepted to several Ivy League universities and turning them all down so you could spend your days surfing with a pothead? Those days are over. Time to apply yourself. You will come with me every morning at seven a.m. and open the office—and you will not leave until I tell you to, be it seven, or eight at night. Understood?”
My father had never gone this far to try to punish me, and I was already well over eighteen, but that meant absolutely nothing. I still lived under his roof, I still ate his food, and most importantly—I was still at his mercy.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why here? Why now?”
His left eyelid ticked again, his jaw tensing. “Please, you brought this on yourself with your thoughtless lifestyle. It’s time you lived up to your name. There’s no need for these theatrics.”
Then he turned around and stalked to the Range Rover waiting on the curb of the empty boardwalk. The engine was purring, his driver shifting his eyes between us and the time on his phone. A thin smile found his lips. My father had taken less than
ten minutes to put me in my place.
I stood there, rooted to the ground, like an ice statue. I hated Jordan with the kind of passion people usually reserved for love. I hated him like hate was supposed to be felt—it tainted my soul and poisoned my mood.
“I’ve a feeling you’re now regretting not taking my advice to tell him to piss off,” Bane muttered beside me as he dug the sharp edge of his board into the sand and collected his wild blond hair into a man bun. I didn’t answer.
“Sounds like your ass has been served.” He elbowed me, plucking a Budweiser from his backpack lying on the sand, because who cared that it was seven in the morning?
I clenched my seashell necklace and gritted, “You have no idea.”
CRAZY.
The place was the very definition of madness.
I’d never been to my dad’s office before, but I knew anarchy when it looked me in the eye. And on the fifteenth floor of the Oracle building in Beverly Hills in which Fiscal Heights Holdings was located, I met true chaos.
The only man whose madness could match Bane’s.
Baron ‘Vicious’ Spencer.
The whole place was buzzing with ringtones, women gossiping in St. John pencil skirts and men arguing in sharp suits. Ivory-colored granite and antique dark-brown leather adorned the reception lounge of FHH. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered the perfect view of ugly, beautiful, fake, real, raw Los Angeles in all its glory.
And there, in luxury, in indulgence, in power, I came face-to-face with the man who was deemed a legend at All Saint High, so much so that even over a decade later, they’d named a bench after him—Vicious.
“If you are going to plagiarize a whole article about the stock exchange, at least don’t steal it from the fucking Financial Times. Who hired your ass as head of PR? Who?” The man with the sleek raven hair and dark indigo eyes threw a batch of documents in a horrified-looking young man’s face. The papers rained down like hail, not confetti. Vicious’ jaw ticked as he stabbed a finger into the guy’s ironed shirt.
“Fix this shit before you box up the two and a half pictures of your fucking family you probably brought here to domesticate your four-by-four-inch office, dickface. And do it by five, because when I sit down for my six o’clock meeting, I want to act like it never happened. Am I clear?”
Although nearly every person on the floor had gathered in an open circle to watch the show, no one called Vicious out on his rotten behavior. Not even my father. Everybody seemed too scared of him, and while I felt really bad for the PR guy, who mumbled that his name was Russell, I didn’t want to start off my employment by pissing more people off.
“Please, sir. You can’t fire me.” Russell nearly dropped to his knees. It was nothing short of torture to watch. I shrank into the sensible black wool dress with a French designer tag I’d snatched from my mother’s closet that morning and tried not to flinch.
“I can, and I am, and fuck, where is my coffee?” Vicious looked around, tapping his finger on his lip. He had a wedding band on his left hand. You’d think marriage would have made him mellower. You’d be wrong.
Suddenly, the commotion stopped. The throng of suits sliced in two and in walked three men I recognized all too well from the financial magazines lying around my house.
Dean Cole, Jaime Followhill, and Trent Rexroth.
The first two were merely decoration, standing on either side of Trent, a few inches shorter, and leaner, and generally less God-like. It was Trent who had the room, who stole the show. He wore a baby blue button-down shirt and light gray slacks. He looked like sex, he walked like sex, and I was obviously not the only one to think so, because at least three women in my vicinity let out breathless giggles.
“Spencer.” Trent regarded him coolly, clutching a Starbucks in his hand. “Is Aunt Flow in town? Tone this shit down. It’s eight a.m. on a Monday.”
“Yeah, what crawled up your ass, V?” Dean Cole chimed in, his wide smile making the room significantly warmer and less daunting.
“Language,” my father boomed beside me, clutching my arm tighter. I’d forgotten he held me in place. He’d first started manhandling me at sixteen, when I showed up at his house with two rings in my left nostril, and moved to bruising grips when I’d decorated my lower torso with a huge back cross. It was never too bad—as I said before, rich people don’t hit their children—but we both knew he did it because I hated standing next to him. The fact he’d sometimes leave bruises was probably a nice bonus in his eyes.
The cross wasn’t about religion. It was a message, marred with bold, black ink.
Do. Not. Cross.
“Dudebro is fired. I want his laptop on my desk by noon. Not to mention all his passwords, company phone, and parking pass, which I will give to someone more worthy. Maybe the fucking kid who delivers us fruit baskets every morning.” Vicious waved in Russell’s general direction, snatching one of two coffee cups from Jaime’s hands. My heart tightened.
Trent kicked what I assumed was his office door open silently. I probably shouldn’t have felt sheer glee at how they’d all dismissed my father. “No one’s getting fired today. Besides, we have bigger fish to fry. In my office.”
“A—fuck your fish. And B—don’t order me around,” Vicious finished his coffee in two swallows and handed the cup to the person nearest to him. “C—coffee. I need more of it. Now.”
“Vicious…” Jaime cleared his throat as the guy holding Vicious’ cup quickly ran to the elevator to get him a second Starbucks.
“The man copied and pasted a Financial Times article to our site. We could have gotten sued, or worse.”
“P-please,” Russell stuttered, tickling the blood sport inclinations in any predator in his vicinity with his overflowing weakness, mine included. “It was a mistake. I had no time to write the article. My daughter is two weeks old. She doesn’t sleep well at night…”
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Give the man a break!” I blurted out. I wiggled my arm free, shaking my father off as my legs started working their way to the HotHoles. All four men snapped their gazes to me, and even though they all looked surprised, Trent was the only one who had that extra layer of abhorrence on his face. I ignored him, pointing at Russell.
“He said he was sorry. Why would he deliberately screw up? Come on, he’s got a family to feed.”
“I love this.” Cole chuckled, slapping Spencer’s back and shaking his head. “Bossed around by a teenager. Cute.”
My cheeks turned scarlet. Vicious looked indifferent—barely acknowledging my existence and looking back to Russell, shooing him away and sparing him his redundancy, while Trent bared his teeth, turning his focus to me.
“Is this bring-your-kid-to-work day? Because I don’t remember getting the email.” His voice was laced with enough venom to kill a whale. I returned a stern stare, burrowing into faux confidence I wasn’t feeling.
You’re a potential sacrifice, his words swam in my head, drowning every positive thought I’d had about him and his good looks. He’d said it mere weeks ago, but I’d almost forgotten he’d be a complication in working here.
“Edie will be working here for a while.” Jordan pulled me to his side again, not unlike a possession.
“Says who?” Trent asked.
“Says me.”
“I haven’t agreed to that. None of us have.”
“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask.” My father smiled politely, choking my arm with his thin, strong fingers. I ignored the pain. Starting another beef with him could lead to me not going to see Theo on Saturday, and I couldn’t risk that. Trent strode in our direction, every step he took sending a current to my body, like paddling into turbulent waters.
“With all due respect to white, upper-class nepotism and awarding your underqualified daughter with a job most deserving candidates would kill for, every major HR decision goes through all of the partners, correct?” He turned to his friends, who nodded solemnly, forgetting all about poor Russell. I was
now the newest victim to mess with, spineless and helpless. A little mouse lured into a fat cats’ den.
“For God’s sake, Rexroth. She is going to be an assistant, not an account manager.” Jordan’s impatient wave did nothing to make matters better. His grip on my arm became so tight, my bones were ready to pop, sticking out of my skin.
“She is going to be on this floor, have access to our things. I don’t care if her job is to peel bananas in the kitchen. This goes to a board meeting tomorrow morning. End of discussion,” Trent growled.
All eyes were on him, the dark energy in the room buzzing with shock. The Mute had spoken. Not only a few words—but sentences. And it was because of me, no less.
I’d finally found him. The one man scarier than my father. Not that I was looking. Because while Vicious made a lot of noise, Trent Rexroth was the silent hunter who would circle you for hours, striking when you least expected it.
A desolate panther. Wild, quiet, and slick. His pale, cold eyes ran the length of my father like he was muck, coming to stop where his hand held my arm like a vise grip. I’d never seen anyone look at my father with such disdain. Jordan’s fingers eased on my skin.
“You’re really going to fight me over this.” My father scrubbed his smooth cheek with his knuckles, incredulous. Figures. He was so used to my mother and me bowing our heads to his every whim, I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t Team Rexroth. Sure, The Mute didn’t want me around—but I didn’t want to be around, either, so we were on the same wavelength. Trent stopped his stride inches from Father, where I was able to breathe in his singular scent, of a clean man and a dirty fuck. He oozed sensuality, making me want messy, forbidden things. My reaction to him was almost sickening, and I made another mental note to stay away from him.