And I need the money.

Bad.

I’ve never been bothered by my poverty. Haven’t known anything else. Where I come from, you inherit poverty the way you do your eye color or height. You can’t escape it, but you sure can ignore it.

No money, no pride, no problem.

Materialistic things do nothing for me. I’m a fugitive who escapes reality with a good book. This is the first time in my life I really need money, and I need it to survive.

It’s time to turn my back and leave Stockton as well as Godfrey’s watchful eye. Saving up is crucial so I can disappear.

For now, I have a place. I share it with a guy called Irvin and pay Godfrey pennies for the rent. But that’s the problem—relying on Godfrey Archer’s goodwill? Better to slit my own throat right f*cking here.

Mrs. H is still eyeing my ass, eyes so heavy with desire she can barely keep them open. I feel the ache between her legs for her. Rich girls love bad boys. The tattoos, the attitude, the danger.

The hopelessness.

They want to f*ck something dark and damaged, but always with a condom, God forbid our bleak reality would rub off on them.

Mrs. Hathaway built a fantasy in her head and cast me in the leading role. In that fantasy, I’m a beast, taking her from behind, going in dry, fisting her hair, spanking her until she purples, claiming her like a savage and leaving marks that’d confirm her grave assessments about my nature. I know that, because she’s not the only rich girl who’s tried to get some since I was released.

I may be a felon, but she’s a sexual harasser of the highest level.

When I’m done wiping her windows, I change from the swim trunks she makes me wear on my shifts to my usual attire. I stand in her drawing room (the f*ck is a drawing room? I’ve no idea, but she keeps calling it that so I humor her) and she slaps cash into my palm.

That’s just the extra she pays me for working in nothing but my trunks. She also gives me a payslip every two weeks.

“Have fun in Tahoe,” I grunt, praying it won’t lead to more boring-ass small talk. Rich people just love small talk. For them, time’s not a luxury.

“Thanks,” she says, stretching her long limbs. She’s got the legs of an eighteen-year-old sorority girl attached to a body of a forty-six-year-old housewife who fights nature with plastic surgery and bullshit green shakes.

“Ever been to Tahoe, Nate? It’s quite spectacular. A lot to see and experience.”

Here comes brainless blather. I crack my neck and squint, not sure why she’s asking a question with such an obvious answer. Where does a Tahoe vacation fit into my reality? Next she’ll ask me if I have a place in Aspen.

“We can go together sometime if you’d like. Stan will be spending the summer in New York. His company is opening an East Coast branch.”

I raise my brow in amusement, leaving no room for negotiation.

“See you next week, Mrs. H. Again, enjoy Tahoe.”

I stop at a drive thru before I go back home. It’s a ritual I keep religiously, the only part of my day I don’t hate completely.

Stella, my beat-down Toyota Tacoma (it’s okay to give it a name when it’s your only reliable companion in this world) is red and blends, but I still pull my hoodie over my face just in case I’m being watched. The Aryan Brotherhood is breathing down my neck, always. Seeking retaliation for a crime I didn’t do, forever.

Two weeks after I got out, they almost managed to off me, blocking my way out from a side street armed with baseball bats. I beat them up and ran away.

Four months forward, and the car I’d bought when I left prison with the little money my mother left for me was set on fire in downtown Stockton. It wasn’t just a financial disaster, an inconvenience and a f*cking warning—it also made the authorities and my parole officer suspicious of my doings.

The day after my car exploded, I stood in front of a freshly released Godfrey. I told him I was willing to work for him in exchange for his protection. God has been dealing with the AB since his Californian drug cartel expanded before he got thrown in the can. They respected him inside and out. We struck a deal.

Now, eight months later, I still feel like the bull’s eye.

Godfrey claims he’s got them by the balls, but I don’t trust anything the man says.

I order two double cheeseburgers, and it’s only when the cashier hands me the food, that I remember that God’s girl is with us.

And that she’s vegetarian. Fan-f*cking-tastic.

I smack my steering wheel and swallow a curse. Another mouth to feed, and an irritating one too.

“Get me something for a vegetarian too. A salad or some crap,” I grumble to the teenager who serves me. She ain’t happy about me placing an additional order when I’m already at the window, but she complies.

God’s girl.

More accurately—Camden’s girl.

How stupid can you be to get your ass tangled with the Archer men by choice? I know that she’s some rich kid from the Bay Area, and as I said before, I have my theory regarding rich girls and bad boys, but this one didn’t just jump into bed with a baddie. She didn’t just f*ck a baddie without a condom. She practically made babies with him, in the form of poisonous maggots that are now eating her life away.

At least she can take a f*cking punch.

Seb’s a jackass for hitting a woman. But the mouth that’s attached to this woman. . .uncontainable. Uncontrollable. Of course he would f*cking hit her. She’s so much stronger than he’ll ever be. Baby dick syndrome sufferers won’t tolerate women like Country Club. Probably why she’s neck deep in shit.