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“I know who it is.”
“Oh, yeah?” I cleared my throat, trying not to sound too eager.
“His child’s mother.”
His child’s mother. After I’d found out Trent was Luna’s dad, I’d snooped around with Camila, finding out that her name was Val, she was from Brazil, and that they’d never been together. Not in a relationship, anyway.
I watched Jordan’s face carefully. Watched how it morphed from boredom and disdain to interest. He really was fascinated with this guy, and it irked me. He folded the paper, pocketing it.
“More,” he said. “And soon.”
Deflated, I pushed some hair from my eyes, groaning. “Can I please fill out the papers to have Theo visit me sometime this summer? Just for the weekend.”
Me.
Visit me.
Be with me.
Heal me.
“Absolutely not.” Jordan got up from his chair, making a show of preparing my mother a cup of tea like he was Husband of the Year. For him, this conversation was over. For me, it had only just begun. He took the steaming cup and sauntered out the kitchen. I jogged after him down the hallway, the sleek marble, the beautiful arches, the ugly truth beneath these walls. Tempted to yank the sleeve of his Prada suit, I decided against it when I considered the consequences.
“Please,” I said.
“Parading him around for a weekend is going against our agreement, Edie.”
“Jordan…”
“Father.”
“Focus on your Rexroth task and forget about this. You need purpose. This is it. Helping your family. Theo is my family!”
My father stopped in front of the closed door to the bedroom and spun in place. The expression he wore told me I’d crossed the line.
“If you don’t deliver—I will make sure Theo is thrown out. I want everything there is to know about Rexroth. Everything. And I do not negotiate with children.”
“You won’t do this to me.” My voice trembled. What if I couldn’t find more dirt on Trent? What if finding this dirt made it so difficult for me to look in the mirror I’d want to throw up on myself?
“I will. You know I will.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” The admission felt sour on my tongue, like defeat.
“It’s all broken anyway. There’s nothing left to be ruined.” He meant Theodore. I knew.
I opened my mouth to answer when he slammed the door in my face.
My father had given me two choices—take Trent down to save the person I loved, or compromise the person I loved to keep an innocent man safe.
I knew what option I was going to choose.
It just made me sick to my stomach.
I WATCHED TOBAGO BEACH FROM the comfort of my terrace, smoking a fat blunt in my designer briefs, my Bling H2O water still at room temperature despite the unforgivable heat thanks to my housekeeper, who kept sliding one ice cube into it every ten minutes. I tipped my Wayfarers down, staring at the black dots spread around the golden beach. I didn’t fucking know why anyone would buy water at forty bucks a bottle, but I still did it because I could. I did it because, once upon a time, I’d been so poor that the soles of my old shoes were too thin and I’d had to smear superglue on them and let them dry in the sun so my feet wouldn’t burn against the concrete.
I was fascinated with my bank account, as all poor boys who grew up to be rich men were. Flaunting my money was almost mandatory—a flaw I wasn’t proud of—and money made Edie Van Der Zee sick. It was easy to see why we disliked each other.
Anyway.
I tapped the ashes into the ashtray beside my lounge chair, smoke rising with lazy spirals from my mouth. When I looked back down, my eyes focused on my targets, the ones who’d poured out of my building moments ago. They were walking closely next to each other. My mother, Luna, and Edie.
They were moving almost in slow motion, and I couldn’t see who was who. Other than Luna. She was the smaller dot. One of the women set a red towel on the beach—my mom, probably—the color barely recognizable from the distance. The two other figures ran to the ocean closely, maybe even hand in hand. My heart stuttered in my chest as I put the water to my lips, my eyes chasing them before they slowed down close to the wave breaking on the shore. They were just dipping their toes. Nothing more.
Calm the fuck down. Luna is fine.
I needed a distraction. I took out my laptop and started working, glancing down every now and again, trying to guess which dots were the girls I cared about. And Edie. Half an hour later, my phone began to vibrate and I snatched it. It was my mother, calling through a video chat. I slid my finger across the screen. My mom appeared, blurry but happy, smiling to her phone camera and waving. “Hey!”
