Blake Vandershall stares at my hand like it’s coated in tar and caged with barbed wire. I smile, forcing back the urge to gloat. This man and his preppy clothes is halfway what I expected. I knew he’d be a frat boy and the same height as me. I didn’t know he’d possess a grit and snarl in defense of his sister.

I thought he’d be more like his father—believing women exist purely to be used. Or perhaps he is like the man, and he’s as good at hiding it as Malcolm was.

“Boyfriend?” He finally grasps my hand, and his shake is a brutal squeeze that I return. “Is he for real?”

We turn in unison to Penny, who’s standing slack-jawed. She glances at me and I give her a glare her brother can’t see.

Don’t deny it. You have no choice.

She has to mask her surprise, or Blake will never believe her.

I tilt my head, silently saying, Or do you want me to tell him too?

She fakes a smile for him. “I—yeah. Didn’t I tell you I was seeing someone?” She averts her eyes.

Not good enough. “Penny’s been shy about introducing me to people.” I put as much softness into my tone as I can and pluck up the most familiar, intimate thing I can think of. “The mourning period has been hard for her.”

Their reactions couldn’t be more opposite. She gasps, hides her face behind her hair and turns to the ocean view.

Blake’s lip curls and his stare intensifies, not on me but on Penny. “The best thing for you is to get over it. Not wallow in it.”

“Maybe for you.”

“For you too.”

She spins to face him, her eyes reddened. “Why are you here? If it’s to criticize me for being upset again, leave.”

“I’m not here to—”

“Then why are you here?”

A sigh escapes his throat. “I’ve tried calling and you never answer.” He looks at me, the intruder, the fly on the wall he wants to squish, the stray dog he wants to chase from her home.

I cross my arms, my feet unmoving. “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“You need to go,” he says. “I have to speak to my sister.” I know what that means. He’s an attorney and the manager of her trust. He wants to talk money with her.

“Anything you have to say to her, you can say in front of me. She tells me everything.”

Blake’s nostrils flare and he cracks his neck. “Fine. Penny, meet me during your lunch break tomorrow.”

I interrupt, “She’s having lunch with me.”

“I am?” The confusion on her face is mixed with relief.

She’d rather see me than her brother. Interesting. She won’t feel that way when she finds out why we’re having lunch together.

Blake stares at his sister, searching her face.

She shoos him away with her hand. “You can go.”

He grits his teeth and turns his stare on me. It’s a judging stare, a condescending stare. He takes a step toward me and opens his mouth to say something.

I speak before he can. “She told you to go.”

His answering threat, if I were a lesser man, would have me shaking in my shoes. But life has dealt me far harsher things than the intimidation of a pampered rich boy.

“Play nice, Kane,” he leers in my face, low enough so Penny can’t hear. “If you hurt her, I’ll hurt you more.”

I almost laugh. “I’m sure I don’t want that.” His defense of Penny makes me hate him more. His sister is still alive. My revenge will be all the sweeter against him too.

He glances at her, concern flashing in his eyes. “Please call me.”

“Goodbye,” she answers in a monotone.

He passes me one more bitter look, then leaves.

Her brother gone, she slides open the door to her terrace. Her eyes close as the sea breeze hits her face and blows back her hair. Pleasure replaces the strain in her features for a brief moment.

She steps out onto the stone deck, a plea to be left alone.

I won’t. I have too much to say. There’s still too much for her to know.

I follow her out and the ocean gleams in the sun. A blue so brilliant it’s like her eyes.

Her eyes? Seriously? I clamp mine shut. My brain is a traitor. She’s a spoiled bitch I’m exploiting for money.

I glance at the “spoiled bitch.” Her back to me, she leans her elbows on the chrome railing. She doesn’t look spoiled—she looks pained. A pain I will delight in making worse. “What lies do you have for me today, boyfriend?”

“What? So you can spit on me again?”

She turns to me, her lips parted, pink and full.

There was also the part after she spit at me: how I held her down, how I kissed her like I would catch fire if I didn’t. How she kissed me back—her little teeth biting at my mouth like she was starving. How she arched underneath me—some wanton thing aching for me to . . .

Fuck.

I walk to the railing and lean against it, staring at the ocean. Anything to keep from looking at her.

“No one will believe you,” she murmurs.

I shouldn’t care that she doesn’t believe me. She’s one on a list of many. For some reason, though, Penny Vandershall denying it irritates me like none of the others have. I will make her believe it—somehow.

I loom closer. “You can say that as much as you want. It doesn’t change the truth that your father was a—”

She shoves me, two hands against my chest, thrusting me away from her. I stumble backward. “Don’t you dare call him that!” She stabs me in the chest with her finger.

I grab her hand, forcing her finger back into a fist. “Call him what? A rapist? That’s what he was.”

“No!” She swings her other fist but I catch her hand before it connects. “You’re a foul, evil person to say something like that. Your lies are despicable. Your lack of decency and humanity and—”

“I’m as evil as they come, sweetheart, and I like being that way.”

“Let go of me!” She struggles to free herself, whipping her arms back and forth.

“With someone as ‘evil’ as me, you sure are brave,” I taunt. “Or stupid.”

“Why?” She pauses her fight.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of.” I’m not sure what I’m capable of. The revulsion I feel for her lifestyle—where she lives, the clothes she wears, the car she drives—is limitless. Her attitudes, her moping about her father’s death, her self-pity about her pathetically easy life make it worse.

I could crush her wrists with my bare hands. I could rip her to bits. I could enact the best possible revenge on her for the violence done to my sister—an eye for an eye.

I should.

Fear erupts on her face, and not the euphoric kind she gets off on. The genuine fight-or-flight kind. “You wouldn’t,” she whispers.

“Wouldn’t I?”

She opens her mouth on a scream so loud, it rattles my brain inside my skull.

I cover her mouth and grab her, kicking in my arms, wailing against my hand. I lift her up and carry her back into the house.

She bites my thumb. Hard, like teeth digging into my skin, drawing blood hard. “Jesus!” I shout, and drop her to the floor.

She scrambles away. Going straight for the phone.

Shit. This is all wrong. “If you call the police, I’ll tell them everything and it’ll end up in a report. Public record. Where everyone will see.”

She doesn’t stop, her fingers typing on the screen.

I scrub a hand through my hair. “I’m not your father. I could never do to a woman what he did to my sister.”

She glances up, her breathing still quick, but she pauses her typing.

As much as I crave violence, as much as I hate everything she is, as much as I wish every Vandershall was lifeless and six feet under—I could never be that sort of man.

“I won’t hurt you.” I hold up my hands, innocent, blood dripping down my wrist. “And judging by this, you take care of yourself.”

“I took a self-defense class.”

Then why didn’t you throw me off last night, before I kissed you? “That’s good.”

“You won’t hurt me?”

I’ll ruin you in every other way I can. “Physically, no.” I’m so calm, it’s like I’m talking about what I’m eating for dinner.

She grips the phone tight in her hand. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll give you two weeks to get me the money.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“It’s for me.” After a lifetime of scraping to get by—hand-me-down clothes and shoes, used cars, and floor-cleaning jobs—I’m done. I’m getting away from everything in this shitty life I’ve been given. She has more than enough to spare. “I made an appointment at the county courthouse tomorrow.”

She lowers her phone. “What for?”

I glare at her. She’s smart. She can figure it out . . .

Her sweet face contorts with despair. “We’re getting married tomorrow?”

. . . there we go. “You’ll have two weeks to get me the trust fund money.”

“What happens after two weeks?”

“If I don’t have the money?” I can’t help my lips quirking at the corners. “I make calls. I think the Nashville Times would be the best place to start.” The newspaper near where her father was president of the university. I want that more than I want the money—to expose everything. But then I wouldn’t have a front-row seat to the destruction of her life.

“They won’t believe you,” she says.

“When they see the old police reports, they will.”

“Police reports?”

“The DNA evidence from the rape kits.”

“Oh my God.” She covers her mouth.

“That was ‘kits.’ Plural.” I fight off the stab of pain I feel every time I say that.

“It’s fake. Fabricated.”

“You won’t say that if you see the reports. The details.” I shouldn’t feel restrained in showing her the dirty evidence, but something in me doesn’t want any woman to see those reports. “So assuming you don’t want that made public, tomorrow morning you’ll be—”

“I can’t.”

“You will. Or should I call the Times right now?”

She tucks her face against her knees. “I’m not getting married.”

“You have no choice. For the first time in your coddled life you have to do something you don’t want to do.”

“The first time? You know nothing about me.”

“I know you would rather marry a bastard like me than lose your father’s retirement pay and the funding for the hospital dedicated to your poor dead mother who died giving birth to you.”

“Fuck you!” The snarl on her mouth is foreign, like a blemish on a flawless painting. Like the feral look in her eye. Not so sweet and sheltered now, Miss Vandershall. “You don’t get to talk about my mother.”

I nod, satisfied. It’s not like I want to talk about my mom either, the one who was so useless my sister essentially raised me—or us. The only thing dependable about our mom was her preference for gin over whiskey. At least I had my sister. Louisa had no one. No one to make sure the money was there to pay rent or buy groceries. No one to make sure she did her homework or care that she went to college. She did all that herself. And did her best for me too.

But that’s none of Penny’s business.

I move toward the door. “I’ll be here at ten a.m.”

“I have to work.”

“I don’t give a shit about your job. Call in sick.”

“But . . . what if someone sees me out with you?”

“Not my problem.” My hand is on the doorknob.

“You’re the most horrible person I’ve ever met.”

“I’d believe that, except I know who your father was.”

* * *

He slams the door behind him.

Marry?

Tomorrow?

But if he ruins my father’s reputation, it won’t matter whether he has proof or not. The university board wants any excuse to cut my father’s million-dollar retirement pay. His contract says his family is owed it on his death, but the university doesn’t want to pay it. It’s one of the many legal battles my brother’s been fighting since father died.

Our hospital needs that money. The Mary Elizabeth Vandershall Memorial Hospital—the only thing I have left of the mother I never knew.

I muffle my face in the couch pillows.

This can’t be happening.

He’s a vile man, the worst sort of criminal, a manipulative monster.

I should call the police. Have them waiting here tomorrow when he comes to get me. But he could tell them and ruin everything.

He is ruining everything.

I flop back and stare at the ceiling.

As a little-bitty girl, I grew up thinking I’d get married in Tennessee, on the Vandershall family estate, to a nice southern boy, with my father walking me down the aisle.

Except my father’s gone. They sent me to California for school, so I never got to meet a southern boy. And I have no idea who’s living on the Vandershall estate, because my brother is in California with me.

So instead, I’m getting married at a courthouse, to a man who is a menace, with no one there, because I can’t bear for anyone to see my humiliation.

He’s ruining my life.

But I have no choice. No matter how wretched he is.

I’m marrying him, a man I met yesterday, a man who every time he glares at me looks like he wants to torture me. Or worse—make me want him to.