“Enjoyed that beer?” She grinned. I nodded, cradling the empty can instead of placing it on the coffee table. My father would kill me for less than staining his precious Italian oak.

“Did you know that in Europe it is legal to drink from the age of eighteen? I always preferred the Russian way better.” Her smile was so big it almost felt like a wink.

Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko had an interesting mother. She’d run away from Russia with him, giving him freedom, and he, in exchange, lived his life the fullest.

And she was happy for him. Content.

How odd.

“Now, tell me all about your brother and your father’s threats regarding him. I want you to start from the beginning. From when your father placed him in the first group home.” Sonya grabbed a glass of what smelled like vodka from the coffee table and took a sip.

And I did.

I poured my heart out, telling her about how Theo was never loved, not really, by either of our parents. How Jordan had bribed his way out of being a parent, always taking the shortcut, always placing Theodore in institutions and hopping from city to city every holiday so we wouldn’t have to visit Theo.

I didn’t know what was more horrific—reciting the years in which Theo was neglected, saying it out loud and realizing how bad it sounded, or seeing their faces as I confided in them. Sonya looked like she was about to cry, and even Bane turned down the music at some point and stared at me like his world had turned a shade darker.

When I was done, Sonya cleared her throat, looking down at her thighs. “Roman, please step out of the room.”

If Bane was shocked, he didn’t show it, taking his beer and sauntering over toward the door. “I’ll be on the porch, smoking my ass off after that depressing story.”

When the door closed behind him, Sonya met my eyes. “Trent didn’t offer to help you?”

“I…” I tapped my lips, thinking about it for a moment. How much did she know? How much did I want her to know? Screw it. It wasn’t about my summer affair with an older man. This was about Theo. “We got involved for a while and he helped me with paying for Theo’s facility, but nothing more than that. And I doubt he’d wanna help me now. We’re…no longer in touch.”

Sonya uncrossed her legs, took another sip of her vodka, and pressed it to her cheek. Her eyes were glazed over, and for a moment, they held the same look as they had when Trent had entered her. Drunk. I shuddered into Bane’s shirt.

“Why?” she asked softly.

I blinked. “Why what?”

“Why did you end it?”

“Why do you assume I’m the one who ended it?” I wanted to get up and do something, anything, but the need to find out if she knew something I didn’t ignited and burst into flames in me.

Sonya put the glass on the table, looking up at me with a sad smile. “Because he never would.”

“How do you know?” I hated myself for asking. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. He needed to focus on his family.

Sonya looked up at me. “Because, Edie, he is in love with you.”

LUNA CAME FIRST, AND I had to remind myself of that.

The first thing to do was to secure my daughter’s future. With me.

Still, the need to confront Edie was almost feral. I wanted to slam my fist above her head and yell at her for giving Jordan the flash drive. I wanted to scream, and shout, and curse, and fuck her despite all of this shit. To make her see how not over we were, how we were only just beginning, how I was losing my mind over her. I wanted to show her how I loved the fuck out of her body and hated that we were wrong. Deeply, crazily, absurdly wrong for each other.

Which meant I had to take a step back.

The moment after Jordan and Val left, I was in the car, slicing through the streets looking for the one woman who could help me, who wouldn’t betray me. I called Dean on my way to her.

“I need you to go to Edie Van Der Zee and get some of my shit from her.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Because she handed my ass to her dad. Because she fucked me over. Because if I see her lying, cheating face in person, I would shit on everything I care about. In a nutshell.” I cleared my throat, my eyes on the road. People were walking, and laughing, and living their lives, not giving a damn that mine was collapsing.

No one was taking my daughter. No one.

“I take it you’ll elaborate later.” I heard Dean trying to calm crying Lev down. “What do I need to do?”

I told him, adding, “And whatever you do, don’t tell her about what happened with Jordan and Val. Her loyalty lies with one person—her brother—and she’ll do whatever’s best for him. I’m still not sure if it’s what’s best for me. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said.

I arrived at the office of the woman who was there for me, who’d help me take down Jordan.

“Oh, and Trent?” Dean asked from the other line.

“Luna will always be yours. You better goddamn believe we’ll make sure of that.”

Very few things are certain in this life.

One day, you’re going to die. Every year, you’ll pay taxes. If someone hates you before you even open your mouth—watch out for them, they’re out for your blood. Before I’d even had the chance to shake his hand, Jordan Van Der Zee had it out for me.

It turned out Val hadn’t needed a new identity; she had Jordan. He housed her. Gave her his credit cards—under his name. Cash galore. He paid for her lifestyle and her every little whim to keep her happy. And he promised her that one day, when the timing was right, he would strike and give her the life she’d always dreamt of. The kind of luxury only Todos Santos and the South of France had to offer.

Val was content with waiting, because she had nothing to lose. She’d never really cared for Luna or for me. She cared about materialistic things—the same materialistic things Edie hated so much—and Val knew no matter how much Jordan loved her, he was going to replace her with an upgraded version one day, just like he did Lydia. Coming back here would secure her financial support for the next fourteen years—four-fucking-teen—plenty of time to get her shit together and find another idiot who was stupid enough to give her his credit card. She had that shit all figured out.

Or so she thought.

As for me, I finally understood why Jordan hated me so much—I’d touched what was his and chained my destiny to her. Jordan didn’t love Val, though. He thought he did, but it didn’t matter. She was his. He was not the losing kind.

I made him lose.

He hated that.

Val had come back for Luna because she wanted to enjoy both worlds. Living with Jordan in Todos Santos and getting child support from me so that when—and yes, it was when, not if—he dumped her, she’d have something to fall back on. Luna was no longer a baby. She was relatively independent. She could dress up and parade around like a pretty accessory.

Jordan and Val thought they had this shit on lockdown. I could see it from the way they strode out of my apartment like they had me in their pockets. They were sorely mistaken, and I wondered how they’d even gotten to the conclusion I was a pushover. The facts spoke more loudly than I ever did.

Val had spent the last years in hiding from me, because she knew my wrath.

And Jordan held four times as many stocks as I did in Fiscal Heights Holdings and still couldn’t move an inch without me breathing down his neck.

That’s why I went prepared to the office the next day.

Amanda’s main job hadn’t been to find Val. What she did give me in spades—what I securely kept on my flash drive—was a lot of dirty, dirty information about Van Der Zee.

Which was why I felt completely at ease sitting on his chair, my signature legs-on-desk position with my hands behind my head, waiting for him first thing in the morning.

He walked into his office at eight a.m. like nothing had happened. Like it wasn’t his mission in life to try to destroy me. Like his other partners didn’t know he was now a lying, cunning piece of trash. Jordan stopped on the threshold, staring at me vacantly. His unpleasant surprise—me—stared back at him with enough hatred to blind him.

Reaching for the breast pocket of his blazer, probably to call security, he stopped when he heard me laughing as I lit a J.

“What in the world do you think you’re doing?” he asked through gritted teeth, taking a step forward. I tapped my chin, pretending to think it through.

“Making myself feel at home, seeing as this office will be my second home, soon.”

“Smoking here is illegal,” he pointed out, choosing to ignore my blunt statement.

“Funny you should mention that, Jordan, since illegal seems to be your favorite flavor.” I got up from his armchair, strolling over to him with the wickedest smile in my arsenal.

“What are you talking about, Rexroth?” His voice sharpened with panic, coated by annoyance.

Progress, I thought, but not enough. I wanted to pull it out of him. The terror. The inability to fucking breathe it hurt so bad. Because that’s what losing Luna would feel like.

When my pecs nearly brushed his, I stopped, towering a few inches above him. “You need to sit, Mr. Van Der Zee.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he spat out the words, but did as I said. This was the best kind of victory. The one where I got what I wanted watching my opponent dragging his feet. He was about to take a seat behind his desk when I tsked from my place in the center of the room.

“Forget about it, Jordi. Where you’re going, not only do they not have executive chairs—but I hear the mattresses are really fucking bad.” I tilted my head toward an ottoman by his oak bar. He stared at me. When he saw I wasn’t kidding, he warily made his way there, grunting. Jordan was eager to find out what I knew. The answer was simple.

I knew everything.

Amanda had helped me build my case, slowly. Slow enough to know I couldn’t take him down while Edie and I were forming a relationship.