Chapter 1

Daniel

If I’m not mistaken—and I rarely fucking am—I think my secretary is wearing a ball gag as a necklace today.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” she says, as that big red rubber ball jiggles against her throat.

She’s tightened the leather straps up enough that it could reasonably be mistaken for a choker, but I’m not some uninitiated fuck—I didn’t exactly get my first erection yesterday.

“Make it quick.” I don’t have time to question my secretary’s more-than-questionable fashion choices. If I don’t figure out why the columns on this report aren’t adding up by the end of the day, I won’t know which incompetent jackass in accounting to fire tomorrow morning.

“It’s just, uh, your mother is here,” she informs me.

And then, right on cue, my mother flounces in. Doesn’t even give me time to feel sorry for myself.

“Danny, darling!” my mother coos, trotting into my office on a pair of peep-toe heels the color of cotton candy vomit. “How’s my favorite businessman? Give mommy a little smooch, that’s a good dear.”

I roll my eyes—but I do as I’m bid. My mother is as vapid and air-headed as they come, but she’s still the woman who gave birth to me, and for that, she can have as many cheek-kisses as she wants. I just wish she’d stop fucking calling them smooches—and I wish she would have left Muffins the Purse Dog at home for once.

“Missed you too, Mom,” I relent, keeping an eye on Muffins. His fluffy, feral little head pops up out of my mother’s Chanel purse just as I’m enveloped by the scent of No. 5—her favorite perfume.

To his credit, Muffins doesn’t fucking growl at me on sight anymore—but he does look like he’s ready to take a jealousy shit in my mother’s handbag any minute now.

“Maybe you should let my secretary take Muffins on a walk, Mom,” I suggest. I’d hate for Mom’s latest husband—whoever he is—to have to replace a sold-out handbag—plus, if my secretary really is wearing a ball gag, I’m sure she knows her way around a leash.

“Nonsense, honey,” Mom says, sitting on my desk like she thinks she’s still a teenager or something.

That’s my mother for you. Mentally, she hasn’t aged a day since 18. Physically, her plastic surgeon does what he can.

“Muffins and I are here as a team, darling. We’re on a mission today, you see.”

I shake my head and take the bait. “And what might that be?”

“We have a date for you, honey.” She says it like I’m supposed to be excited—or surprised. I’m not. “Muffins picked her out special, just for you! Didn’t you, schnuckums?”

While my mother feeds her purse dog a doggie treat, I’m just trying to suppress a groan.

“Oh, dear, don’t look like that,” my mother reprimands. “This one, Danny—she’s a keeper. Nice, wide, childbearing hips—and, I only think she’s had three nose jobs, so you know she’s got good genes for Dr. Scalpel to work with.”

Dr. fucking Scalpel. My mother knows that I have no intentions of settling down any time soon, and she’s already planning my children’s first elective surgeries.

“That’s sweet of you, Mom,” I say cordially, “but I think I’ll pass.”

“You’re not getting any younger, Danny.”

“Not without Dr. Scalpel’s help, I’m not.”

“And you know how I’ve always wanted grandchildren…”

“You have grandchildren,” I remind her. “Fendi has four kids, Mom. Chanel has two. Prada just had twins last week, for fuck’s sake—and she’s barely even sixteen.”

“Ruff!” Muffins barks aggressively. Briefly, I consider tipping over the purse—but then he might shit on my carpet, so I think better of it.

“Yes,” my mother agrees. “And I’m sure that for as long as your half-sisters can find YouTube stars to have unprotected sex with, they’ll give me plenty more. But I haven’t done everything I’ve done for them, Danny honey. I did it for you. For us. You need to start thinking about your legacy, sweetheart.”

I have to hand it to my mother: she knows exactly where to twist the knife.

I never knew my father, but from my mother’s stories about him, I’m better off this way. She had me when she was the same age as Prada is now, and he left her without even bothering to stick around for my birth.

Ever since, Mom has been enterprising in the only way I think she’s ever known how. Her next relationships were calculated affairs with rich old geezers who took us in, fed us, clothed us, and taught me everything there was to know about their business empires.

Even once they knocked Mom up and the relationship soured, her ex-husbands always kept an interest in me. Put me through some of the top business schools in the country and—to my surprise—even named me heir to their fortunes over their own children.

Part of me feels like Mom screwed over my half-sisters for life in that regard. Can anyone really blame them for all their accidental pregnancies and the strip clubs they’ve inadvertently burned down?

They’re sweethearts, but she did name them after her favorite purses—one of which, from the smell of things, Muffin is shitting in literally as we speak.

“I’m not even thirty-five yet, Mom. I’ve got the entire fortunes of three of your ex-husbands to blow before I have to start worrying about who might inherit them.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “We both know that’s not true. You’ve always been a responsible boy, Danny. You’re smarter than that. If you don’t want to go on the date with the nose-job girl, that’s fine—but it’s high time you stopped fucking sluts on your desk and started thinking about finding one to give you a baby—one who’s worthy of being your wife.”

I sigh, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

She’s not exactly wrong. I care more about her ex-husbands’ resort chains than I do about what bimbo I’m currently bending over my desk—which is why I had six of them in here last night, all lined up and begging for my dick.

It’s why I keep a drawer full of condoms in my desk, too. I hardly need an army of bastards running around my city, considering that I’m a bastard myself.

“Just think about it, darling,” my mother implores me. “A wife and a baby—it could be good for you. I only want to see you happy, you know, and—awwwwww, did Muffins do a widdle poop? Did Muffins ruin Mommy’s expensive handbag?”

It happens that fast. Just as quickly as my mother blew into my day, she’s already gathering her things and meandering back out of it, cooing at her handbag and holding it at arm’s length as she goes.

“Have a good day, Mom,” I call after her.

“You too, dear,” she says. I can hear her stop at my secretary’s desk on the way out. “Oh, my! What a gorgeous necklace, sweetie! You absolutely must tell me where you got it!”

Then the door closes behind her, and I’m alone again.

I try working once she’s gone. It’s no fucking use. Maybe it’s the lingering scent of Muffin-shit in the air, or maybe she’s really planted the idea in my head the way she hoped.

I don’t want my mother worrying about me.

And I don’t want to see all my hard work go to waste.

A wife. An heir.

It sounds fucking preposterous is what it sounds like. I’m not husband material—and I’m certainly not worthy of being a fucking father.

I’m a loose cannon—a bad boy sowing my wild oats like my father before me, only I have the decency to be fucking responsible about it. My wild oats ultimately end up safely contained inside a condom—and then immediately dumped in the trash.

I look at the pictures on my desk of my half-sisters and myself. There’s one of Prada and me on her seventh birthday, just before she stabbed the party clown with the cake knife, and I had to talk him out of pressing charges.

There’s another of me with Fendi and Chanel at that underwater night club I helped them open, just before they hooked the oxygen intake tubes up to bottles of vodka and all the mermaid performers nearly drowned.

Admittedly, I don’t love the idea of those three taking over my empire if something were to happen to me.

Maybe I do need an heir.

But to have an heir, I need to find the right woman—and to find the right woman, I need to clear my fucking head.

“Cancel the rest of my appointments for the day,” I tell my secretary.

“Yes, master—I mean, uh, yes sir,” she calls after me.

“And no more bondage porn while you’re at work!” I shout over my shoulder—because, yeah, I fucking saw what was on her computer screen before she closed the window.

“Sorry, sir!”

I drive through the city until I see a place where I can clear my head. It looks like some shit out of a bad Lewis Carroll novel—but on the bright side, at least no fucking women will be approaching me, trying to get me to bend them over the Mad Hatter’s tea table for a quickie.

Inside, there’s a woman sitting at a table with her three very pregnant friends. Exactly the kind of woman I’d want to put a baby in, really—not that I’m genuinely considering that right now.

I don’t know if it’s because I feel a sort of solidarity with her after the talk I just had with my mother—or if it’s because she’s just so fucking gorgeous that I can’t help myself—but I shoot her a sympathetic look as I walk past.

She doesn’t even fucking notice—and when I walk into a room, women always notice.

Incredible. Today’s just not my fucking day.

I order, grabbing a table near hers. From the sounds of things, her friends are planning a baby shower.

Fucking inescapable, this baby thing today.

But if she doesn’t want to be the odd one out…