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It’s always starts the same: tightness in my throat, pressure in my chest. It feels as though if I don’t remove myself to a place where I can be alone, that I might die—even though sometimes I wonder if that would really be the worst thing. So I run. At least this time, I had the wherewithal to put on tennis shoes and not run out in my slippers.

 That penthouse. The glamorous sterility of it makes grounding myself damn near impossible. I can’t find something to name in the room of different colors when everything is either white or various shades of tan. That vanilla existence literally sends me into orbit. There is nothing in that environment to distract from the darkness swirling inside me.

When the panic sets in, like it did tonight, I pace the entire minute-long elevator ride to the ground floor. Like a caged animal, I ping four steps from one wall, then four steps to the other. Back and forth. I can’t stop moving. Sweat beading on my neck, my damp hands fidgeting as I beg for the ding of the doors before they open. I desperately anticipate seeing those big plate glass doors that let me run from their expectations. I can put a pin in my father’s predetermined future for me, at least until they find me.

Funny how the path he’s chosen for me has changed so drastically over the last few months. Before, it was law school, working for him, breaking my back to make up for the fact that I was born his meek little girl and not his goddamn respectable son.

Liam Betancourt is far from father of the year. Everything with him is a business transaction. He wasn’t always like that, but one day he woke up and slipped into his god complex like a perfectly tailored suit and hasn’t let something as emotional as fatherhood color his judgment since. His priorities changed quickly. All that matters to him anymore is power, and he only bothers with things that will give him every ounce that he feels entitled to. Now that an opportunity for a fistful of it has come his way, or more specifically, in his daughter, he won’t let it slip away from his insatiable grasp.

“What the fuck are you doing, Avery?” Finn asks, his mood yet again unreadable.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, trying to inject as much nonchalance into my tone as possible. I tip my wine glass back, gulping down way more than I should be with the anxiety medication coursing through my bloodstream.

“Cut the shit. I only like you coy when you’re on your knees.”

My gaze cuts to him as I struggle to swallow the last sip of wine.

“And you fucking know it,” he finishes, an obvious attempt to rile me more after my reaction showed he hit a button.

“I’m not doing anything, Finn. Just trying to have a peaceful first dinner meeting my boyfriend’s family.”

“Meeting the boyfriend’s family,” he scoffs.” The only people not acquainted with one another here are my brother and the woman who was riding me, screaming my name as she came on my face not that long ago.”

I scoot back in my chair, throwing my napkin on the tabletop.

“Stop it, Finn,” I snap.

“Oh, are you afraid the boyfriend will overhear what I’m saying?”

“No, that’s not it at all,” I say, lifting my chin in defiance. “I know you’re just trying to piss me off—or make me leave, perhaps. But it’s not going to work.”

Finn’s eyes narrow slightly, but the reaction is quickly masked with indifference as he leans back in his chair, taking another sip from his wine glass.

“Do you think of me when he’s inside you?”

I yank my wine glass up, tossing the rest back and slam it back to the table harder than I intended. I glance up to Finn as the glass snaps at the stem, the bowl of the glass falling to the table and rolling a few inches toward the center. His eyes trail the movement then settle back on me; a blaze ignited behind his gaze.

“How many times have you squirmed underneath him, imagining it was his brother’s big cock thrusting into you, claiming you, filling you over and over until you tumble off that cliff, that pretty little pussy clenching as you come?” He leans forward. “Do you close your eyes to picture me? Or do you let him fuck you with your eyes wide open but my face where his should be?”

★★★★★ Goodreads Review – “This book is phenomenal.”