She's staring at me like she's some fucking deer in headlights, and honestly, I'm just as surprised as she is. What are the chances of running into the woman I fucked in a bathroom stall the other day at a bar? Especially here at Lorna's house.

I'll admit; she looks good in that tight skirt she's wearing and I'm reminded why I decided to fuck her in the first place, but I can't afford to get distracted right now.

"Are you going to invite me in, or are you going to stand there all night?" I ask.

I don't have time for the awkward gawking. It is what it is.

I don't want to be here, so it's best to get this all over with as quickly as possible.

She steps back and motions for me to step inside, but still hasn't said a word. This should be an interesting dinner.

I walk inside and look around the place. It's not bad. Lorna has an eye for decorating, and there's certainly a level of opulence. I'll give her that, but that's the only good thing you'll ever hear me say about that fucking woman.

"Welcome, Mason," Lorna says. There's a chill to her voice. Instead of her normal pantsuit attire, she's wearing a black dress that ends well above the knee and a pair of 5-inch black heels. "Please, have a seat." She waves her hand toward the dining room.

She walks over to the long dining room table and motions for me to sit in a chair adjacent to her own, which makes me feel like I'm trapped in a real-world game of chess where she's the queen capable of any move, and I'm just one of her pawns.

If you think that somehow sounds exciting, you're wrong, Gorgeous.

"I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Becca," Lorna says. I try to stifle my surprise. What the fuck? This is Lorna's daughter? Given our impending marriage, will this now make Becca my stepdaughter? If that's true, then I've fucked my own stepdaughter and the thought of that throws my brain for a loop.

"A Pancetta crisp, sir?" her butler asks me, breaking my train of thought. I smile and nod, and take one. I place it in my mouth and realize it's better than what I was expecting—sweet, salty, and crisp, like bacon, but better, and it's topped with goat cheese and pears, and the sweetness cuts through the salt in all the right ways.

Maybe dinner won't be entirely bad. At least I'll get a good meal out of it.

The butler comes back and begins pouring me a glass of bubbly Chenin Blanc, and when I take a sip, the crackly carbonation matches the crisp Pancetta in a way that makes me smile despite the fact that I'm sitting next to a snake thinly-disguised as a woman in a skin-tight black dress.

"Now that we're all here, I'd like to make an announcement," Lorna says, tapping her wine glass with the edge of her silver spoon making a tinkling sound that breaks our silence. Becca and I both look up. I'm dreading what's about to tumble out of her mouth. It could fucking be anything.

She continues, "Mason and I have gotten engaged."

The sound of someone choking comes from across the table and I see that Becca is having a hard time swallowing her dinner roll. I wonder if I'm gonna have to perform CPR, but she recovers by gulping down her entire glass of wine.

I can tell she's trying hard to contain her surprise, but she's clearly floored by this news. The same thought that crept into my mind has now probably made it into hers.

"You are full of surprises mother," she says. "Shall I say congratulations, or would that be too soon? Maybe I should wait and see if this marriage lasts longer than all the ones before it?"

Lorna bristles at her comment. "Instead of being a bitch, I think you should try and show your mother a little respect."

"Respect?" Becca asks. "Is that what you call this? That's hilarious."

"Careful, Becca. I'd hold that tongue of yours," Lorna says, and her chilly words bring a renewed silence. The kind of deep silence that accompanies a winter storm.

I don't know what's going on between these two, but I'd say they don't have the healthiest of relationships. But can anyone really have a healthy relationship with this devil in disguise? Even I know that anyone who gets close to this bitch gets burned. Just look at what happened to her father.

Their butler, Carl, enters the dining room again, this time bringing us plates of steak. I eagerly cut into it with my knife and see right away that it's a "black and blue" steak, which seems to sum up the way my bruised confidence is feeling right now. It's seared on the outside—almost burned really—but when I drag my knife through it, I see a mixture of blue and red on the inside, and I don't just mean a little rare, but fucking raw. It's blue and bloody, and while I rarely shy away from a good, thick steak, I'm not sure I can stomach this one.

Don't give me that look Gorgeous. You think true meat connoisseurs should enjoy their steaks raw? Well, have you ever eaten a "black and blue" steak? It's a fucking obscene and violent way to eat a slab of meat, and in my opinion, it's a fucking red flag when it comes to sexual partners, and maybe that's why Lorna chose it. Mark my words. Run for the hills.

The problem for me is that even though every fucking alarm bell is going off in my brain, I can't run for the hills. I'm fucking stuck.

I find myself pushing pieces of the steak around my plate when Lorna's cell phone starts vibrating.

"Excuse me, dear," she says, placing her hand on top of mine as she pushes her chair back from the table. "I need to take this call."

Dear? That word from her mouth makes my stomach lurch even more than it already is.

As soon as she's gone, Becca turns to me and says, "You're an asshole. You could've told me. You could've given me some sort of a heads up that a freight train of fucked up news was going to plow into me."

"It's not what you think," I say.

"Is that so? It all looks pretty obvious to me. Do you get off on 'stepdad-stepdaughter' role-playing or something? Is that why you fucked me? Or maybe that isn't it. Are you after my mother's wealth or something? I'm just trying to wrap my head around all of this," she says. "What's in it for you?"

"Look, slow down. First, I had no idea who you were that day at the bar," I say. "I had no idea that you were Lorna Lowell's daughter. And second, I have enough wealth without your mother's. I haven't been called the King of Wall Street for nothing."

"So what is it then? Are her tits that impressive? Has the head of your cock swollen so much that your brain has lost all ability to reason?"

This is a side of Becca I've never seen before. I have to say, she looks kind of hot all riled up like this. This girl has spunk.

"None of the above," I reply. "This has to do with my position with the board."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, tucking her blonde hair behind one ear.

I'm really not in the mood to re-count the whole story to Becca, but I figure this may be my only opportunity. I need to set the record straight.

"Your mother owns a large stake in my company, Kane Price," I say. "So large that according to company bylaws, I had to give her a seat on the Board of Directors. And she's now in the role of Chief Counsel advising all investment matters."

"But I still don't understand," Becca says. "Why would you have to go and marry her? Where's the connection?"

"She basically held my hand to the flame."

Becca laughs. "Give me a break. You're a grown man. Why wouldn't you just say no?"

"It's not that simple," I say, "and if you've watched the news at all, you'd see I recently got myself in a bit of a fucking mess."

"That's putting it mildly," she replies.

"She threatened me. If I didn't agree to marry her, she'd not only bring me down, but the entire company as well. You may not believe me, but I actually give a shit about the thousands of Kane Price employees. Their livelihood is at stake, just as much as mine is."

"Well, I'm still pissed you didn't tell me," Becca says.

"It wasn't my choice," I reply. "That night, I had no way of predicting this."

I can see by the look in Becca's eyes that she still doesn't believe me, but it's too late to convince her any further because I hear Lorna enter the dining room.

"What wasn't your choice?" she asks, her voice sharper than my steak knife.

Fuck my life.

I need to pull something out of my ass to placate her and smooth things over. This should be interesting.