calls loudly, “Miss MacLaine? Your father would like a word.”
He opens the door to the Maybach, its rear seat nearly the size of a limo’s, and there’s my father, looking dead ahead, his jaw set with anger.
All the other students milling around stop in their tracks to look at me—some entitled bitch who’s father calls her to business meetings. All I want is to run the opposite direction. Take every class on campus, then do all the homework, before reading every book in the library. Anything but get in the car.
And why shouldn’t I?
Because he pays my tuition. There’s been no way around it. No financial aid for someone claimed on her father’s tax return. Someone who’s father makes billions.
And I need that tuition money, because, if I ever want to be free of him, I have to finish school and make the kind of money that means I’ll never need him again.
But mostly, because this moment was inevitable.
So, I get in.
It takes a second for my father to acknowledge me as he finishes something on his phone, and when he does, it’s to let out a long sigh. “Adair, there’s a matter we need to discuss.”
“And now’s the time?” I ask flatly. It’s not like he’s ever needed to talk to me before. “If this is about Sterling, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“You made that very clear the night of your brother’s wedding. And I did my best to stay out of it—”
“Bullshit.” He’s probably just been too busy with things that actually matter to him to bother tracking me down for round two.
“—since then,” he continues, despite my outburst. “But something has arisen that requires that to change.” He lifts the top of the armrest centered between us, and reaches inside, withdrawing a large manilla envelope.
“If you changed your mind, the least you could do is come out and say it,” I snap, trying to ignore the appearance of the envelope, which fills me with cold dread. “You don’t need to be dramatic.”
“I received an email three days ago. The contents of that message are in the envelope,” he says, handing it to me. “You should prepare yourself.”
For what?
My fingers tremble as I unwind the figure-eight string closing the end of the envelope. Inside, there is a small tablet computer and a single, folded piece of paper. The message on the paper is a print-out of an email:
To avoid disclosure of its contents, send a check for $1,000,00,000 to the following address:
I stop reading as soon as I see Queens, NY. What am I reading? My head snaps toward my father, and the muscles near the corner of his jaw are as tight as cables. There’s none of his usual perverse joy at my discomfort, if anything, he seems uncomfortable himself.
“The video has been muted,” he says. “You should know that I did not watch it in its entirety, Adair.”
He’s beginning to scare me.
I tap the power button on the tablet, and the screen blinks to life, a media player already loaded. An alarm somewhere in my brain tells me I’m suffocating, and I realize I haven’t even been breathing. I take a second to steady myself before pressing play.
It’s Sterling’s dorm. He’s standing near his closet, halfway out of the frame. Then I see myself coming in from the other side, wearing a pair of his boxers and one of his undershirts. When we both come together near the center of the frame, I realize it’s a video from the night of the wedding. We had just come back from Little Love in the rain, and we’re about to promise…
My eyes want something else to latch onto, and it feels like the car itself is spinning, my stomach doing flips that send wet, hot bile up my throat. I close my eyes to avoid throwing up, and when I open them again, we’re having sex. He’s biting my shoulders and back, and I’m...just letting him? Letting him touch me. Letting him claim me.
And, worst of all, letting me trust him.
Confusion gives way to revulsion. Then a sense of violation. It detonates inside me, rending my heart to pieces. But—worst of all—my brain keeps flashing images of then and now, which play like a hellish, repeating slideshow.
My father, sitting beside me but looking away, his hand shading his eyes against the sun streaming in through the car window.
My hands, as foreign as someone else’s, holding a screen that shows my