Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 132498 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132498 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“Trust me.” I slide my phone into my pocket and back away from our room. “Buttering up to rich people isn’t my hobby.”
To be fair, her warning is warranted. My only concern for as long as I can remember—hell, probably for my whole life—has been making sure Mom and I had enough money to eat.
We’re poor poor. Walk-to-work-in-the-snow poor. No-new-shoes-even-when-my-feet-grow poor. The only three shirts I own were scrounged from the stained discards of our local Salvation Army and bleached to unsightly hues, courtesy of the dish bleach from Mom’s last job as a busser.
“I need this job, Lorenzo.”
Not sure who she’s trying to reassure—her or me.
I edge backward, dragging my feet. “You’ve said that seven times.”
“I mean it. We’re lucky to be here. This job pays well.” Mom sighs, brushing invisible lint off her blouse. She’s always obsessed with keeping up appearances as if cleanliness can hide the stench of poverty on us. “Keep your head down. Be polite. Work hard. No trouble. And for God’s sake, don’t talk back to anyone.”
I hear it then. It’s not the warning or the worry. She’s scared, and it’s more than just about the job and the house. It’s about me.
The possibility that I might fuck up my life beyond repair downright terrifies her. Hence, her banging on my door this morning at the ass crack of dawn and demanding that I pack. Within two hours, out of nowhere, my life was uprooted. All because I got into a bit of trouble.
Or . . . I guess, a lot of trouble. Depends on who you ask.
“Okay.” My voice dips. “I’ll behave.”
It’s my fault we’re here, after all. I might as well play nice.
Mom shakes her head, smiling the way she does when she worries I’m turning into my father—cold, distant, and mysteriously absent.
I don’t want to be him.
Especially since that’s basically all the info I know about my dad, and I managed to scrounge it all up on my own with some subtle clues.
Ditched his kid for eighteen years? Distant.
Not even a Christmas card? Cold AF.
Not a phone call, either, by the way—absent.
So, no, I don’t want to be like my deadbeat dad.
But I don’t want to be a charity case either.
I escape before Mom can keep lecturing me.
The estate—correction: summer home. Apparently, these are a thing—is quiet in that expensive way. It’s the type of silence that feels purchased. Even the ocean breeze seems trained, brushing the hedges like it’s been ordered not to rustle them too loudly.
I wander along a stone path, hands shoved deep in my pockets. The air smells like salt and lemon trees, a natural scent that could be bottled and sold as perfume, costing more than my mother’s old car.
A gardener kneels near a row of rose bushes, trimming them with surgical precision. When I pass, he nods without looking up. Staff recognize staff. Or at least, they recognize the defeated slouch of someone who can’t afford to quit.
I keep walking until the mansion rises across a long sweep of lawn. It looks different from this angle. More glass, more light, more angles to see everything I’m not supposed to touch.
I should turn around.
I don’t.
Because of her.
The girl standing on the balcony.
She’s leaning forward, elbows propped against the railing, staring out at the ocean, her brows furrowed like she’s trying to memorize the horizon. The wind lifts her hair—light blonde, glossy, long enough to whip across her face. She tucks it behind her ear in a motion so smooth it looks trained.
She wears white.
Not a simple white dress or some casual rich-girl outfit. No, this thing is made of silk that probably costs more than the entire staff earns in a month. It drips off her frame, soft and light, like it was carved out of air.
She looks . . . untouchable.
And bored.
Painfully, devastatingly bored.
Her eyes flick down. Land on me.
For a second—just one—her expression cracks.
Not disdain. Not superiority.
Curiosity.
The dangerous kind.
I immediately look away.
The last thing I need is to get noticed by someone who can ruin our lives with one complaint.
I head back toward the path.
“Hey.”
Her voice drops from above like a coin tossed into a wishing well.
I freeze.
God-fucking-dammit.
I pause but don’t say anything until she repeats herself in that same detached tone.
Finally, I turn. She’s still on the balcony, leaning over the rail more now, studying me the way kids study animals at the zoo. Except she doesn’t have that smug, tight-lipped smile I usually see on rich people. She looks . . . fascinated.
And fascinated is worse.
Fascinated pays attention.
She rests her elbow on the railing and her chin on her open palm to better stare at me. “Who are you?”
“Staff.”
“That’s not a name.”
I shrug.
She tilts her head like she’s evaluating artwork. “Are you new?”
“Obviously.”
Not to be egotistical, but most people who see me remember me . . . even at a glance. It is what it is.