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Sonya put the glass on the table, looking up at me with a sad smile. “Because he never would.”
“How do you know?” I hated myself for asking. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. He needed to focus on his family.
Sonya looked up at me. “Because, Edie, he is in love with you.”
LUNA CAME FIRST, AND I had to remind myself of that.
The first thing to do was to secure my daughter’s future. With me.
Still, the need to confront Edie was almost feral. I wanted to slam my fist above her head and yell at her for giving Jordan the flash drive. I wanted to scream, and shout, and curse, and fuck her despite all of this shit. To make her see how not over we were, how we were only just beginning, how I was losing my mind over her. I wanted to show her how I loved the fuck out of her body and hated that we were wrong. Deeply, crazily, absurdly wrong for each other.
Which meant I had to take a step back.
The moment after Jordan and Val left, I was in the car, slicing through the streets looking for the one woman who could help me, who wouldn’t betray me. I called Dean on my way to her.
“I need you to go to Edie Van Der Zee and get some of my shit from her.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Because she handed my ass to her dad. Because she fucked me over. Because if I see her lying, cheating face in person, I would shit on everything I care about. In a nutshell.” I cleared my throat, my eyes on the road. People were walking, and laughing, and living their lives, not giving a damn that mine was collapsing.
No one was taking my daughter. No one.
“I take it you’ll elaborate later.” I heard Dean trying to calm crying Lev down. “What do I need to do?”
I told him, adding, “And whatever you do, don’t tell her about what happened with Jordan and Val. Her loyalty lies with one person—her brother—and she’ll do whatever’s best for him. I’m still not sure if it’s what’s best for me. Got it?”
“Got it,” he said.
I arrived at the office of the woman who was there for me, who’d help me take down Jordan.
“Oh, and Trent?” Dean asked from the other line.
“Luna will always be yours. You better goddamn believe we’ll make sure of that.”
Very few things are certain in this life.
One day, you’re going to die. Every year, you’ll pay taxes. If someone hates you before you even open your mouth—watch out for them, they’re out for your blood. Before I’d even had the chance to shake his hand, Jordan Van Der Zee had it out for me.
It turned out Val hadn’t needed a new identity; she had Jordan. He housed her. Gave her his credit cards—under his name. Cash galore. He paid for her lifestyle and her every little whim to keep her happy. And he promised her that one day, when the timing was right, he would strike and give her the life she’d always dreamt of. The kind of luxury only Todos Santos and the South of France had to offer.
Val was content with waiting, because she had nothing to lose. She’d never really cared for Luna or for me. She cared about materialistic things—the same materialistic things Edie hated so much—and Val knew no matter how much Jordan loved her, he was going to replace her with an upgraded version one day, just like he did Lydia. Coming back here would secure her financial support for the next fourteen years—four-fucking-teen—plenty of time to get her shit together and find another idiot who was stupid enough to give her his credit card. She had that shit all figured out.
Or so she thought.
As for me, I finally understood why Jordan hated me so much—I’d touched what was his and chained my destiny to her. Jordan didn’t love Val, though. He thought he did, but it didn’t matter. She was his. He was not the losing kind.
I made him lose.
He hated that.
Val had come back for Luna because she wanted to enjoy both worlds. Living with Jordan in Todos Santos and getting child support from me so that when—and yes, it was when, not if—he dumped her, she’d have something to fall back on. Luna was no longer a baby. She was relatively independent. She could dress up and parade around like a pretty accessory.
Jordan and Val thought they had this shit on lockdown. I could see it from the way they strode out of my apartment like they had me in their pockets. They were sorely mistaken, and I wondered how they’d even gotten to the conclusion I was a pushover. The facts spoke more loudly than I ever did.
