SCANDALOUS

“Not following,” I said, mainly to buy time, because what the fuck?

“She looked upset to see Val. What was she doing here? What’s going on?”

I looked up and offered her the answer she didn’t want to hear. It made no fucking difference if Camila knew or not. It’s not like she had access to Jordan or would ever tell him.

“Dear Lord, Trent, she is just a kid!”

I shook my head, tired of hearing the same old shit. “She’s more of a woman than the bitch who walked into my house two seconds ago and told my kid she’s her mother.”

“Your so-called woman ran away from here in tears, looking every inch of the teenager she is.”

Another sucker punch to my stomach. They just kept on coming today. I wanted to grab my keys and run after Edie, but of course, I couldn’t. Not with Val here. I didn’t even care about the goddamn flash drive anymore. All I cared about was saving Edie and Luna’s ass. If I could get mine to stay intact after this was all over—that was a nice bonus.

I heard the bathroom door creaking open and turned around with the intention of marching to the living room and ending this shit show. My doorbell rang again.

Edie.

I was about to get it, but Val beat me to it—again, as if she lived here—and when she swung the door open, the final piece of the puzzle fell.

Jordan Van Der Zee.

Camila and Luna left for a McDonald’s (you know it’s the apocalypse when you let your daughter have McDonald’s at half past eight on a weekday) on cue, leaving me to deal with the clusterfuck that had walked into my life the same afternoon an eighteen-year-old had decided to smash my heart into micro-pieces. Asshole Van Der Zee strolled toward Val, pressing a possessive kiss to her temple and jerking her by the waist to his side. “Long time no see, beautiful.”

“It’s only been a week.” Her plump red smile had that extra confident curve, telling me whatever Jordan had pla

“You haven’t been going to Zurich.” I threw my head back, laughing bitterly. “SwissTech doesn’t need your ass to pay them regular visits. We already renewed their contract weeks ago. We thought you were banging a European piece and writing off the expenses.”

“You were wrong.” Jordan sighed and sat on my couch with a grin, oh-so-fucking-proud of himself. “Georgia is closer, and so much more tempting, with this lady by my side.” He pulled Val down, and she fell onto his lap, giggling breathlessly like some fucking 50s New York showgirl. “Now, be a good servant and get us some drinks so we can all have a talk.” Jordan winked, looking more approachable and nice than I’d ever seen him. I stood in front of them, one shoulder propped against the wall separating the kitchen and the living room, hawk-eyed and ready to dive for an attack.

“I’d advise against these kinds of jokes. If you keep them up, you might need to live off liquids anyway, because I’ll break every tooth in that smug mouth of yours.”

“Eh, there we are. A thug, showing his true colors.”

“Quite the contrary. I’m begi

“Luna and you are my problem,” Jordan corrected, his eyes slicing to mine, glittering with uncontained hatred. “You walked into my life and messed it all up without even realizing what you’d done, Rexroth. Why do you think I bought your piece-of-shit company, ran by a bunch of pampered little assholes?”

“Because you’re only good at buying successful corporations? All the ones you started from scratch went under in less than five years. I’ve read between the lines of your squeaky Forbes interviews,” I quipped, unblinking.

“No. I did it to make sure you’ll never be with Valenciana,” he said.

“Explain to me the logic in that, Van Der Idiot. Smaller brain and stuff.” I tapped my temple sarcastically.

Jordan smirked, leaning down for his briefcase. Val slid down from his knees to the sofa, plucking a pack of Marlboro Reds from her purse and lighting a cigarette. Val puffed a screen of smoke upward and I walked over to her, snapping the cigarette in two.

“You’ve already abandoned your daughter. It is grossly u

She pouted, giving me her big Lolita eyes like they’d do something to me. Like they could touch what Edie had managed to somehow clutch and squeeze and fuck so raw I no longer felt like any of my i

“Party pooper.” Val scowled.

“You have no idea. I’m about to shit all over your fucking life, sweetheart. Now, the seahorse. How did you know about it?”

Val unknotted her long legs and sat back, letting Jordan sift through his documents while humoring me at the same time. “Your little girlfriend was pla

“You’re a fucking demon.” I laughed, crazed.

“I could have been your demon,” she whined, wild.

“You could never be anyone’s demon. Soulless people ca

With that, I walked off to the kitchen, needing something…something to calm me the fuck down. I downed a bottle of water and came back to the living room. Jordan was arranging stacks of paper all over my coffee table. It looked like a plan. One I wasn’t going to like.

“So let’s make it short and sweet, shall we?” He rolled up the sleeves to his crisp, button-down shirt, licking his fingers as he thumbed through the pages, acutely concentrating on them. “Five years ago, I had a company called SilverStar, Inc. It was located in—”

“Chicago,” I finished for him.

Jordan’s shoulders shook with a chuckle. “That’s right, boy. And so, during one of my many trips to Chicago, I met Valenciana and we started dating.”

I was tempted to remind him the word he was looking for was “affair,” but semantics weren’t really top priority at that moment.

Jordan plucked one document out of a pile.

“Val caught my attention in one of my trips. How could she not? Look at her. We began to see each other every time I was in town. Which was a lot. I admit, I was smitten. Val, however, did not share the sentiment, as she continued her straying ways. I let her, because, let’s admit it—she wasn’t my only mistress, either.”

He handed me the document, and I took it, examining it through a mist of red anger. It was a report conducted by a private investigator named Barry Guilfoyle. There were highlights of the times I’d been away from the apartment, from Luna, showing I was working long hours and going on frequent business trips, leaving her with Camila or with my parents.

“We were supposed to get stronger as time progressed, Val and me. I told her to have an abortion. It didn’t matter who was the father. I didn’t appreciate being fiscally chained to some stripper, either.” Jordan drew a breath, handing me some more documents. “Val said you were the father. That you were too good a financial opportunity to pass up. I didn’t offer her money, assuming that you would. I’d knocked up a couple of women in my day after marrying Lydia, and I bought my way through their abortions easily enough. But you chose not to pay, and by the time I calmed down and got back into the picture, Val was already five months pregnant. Too late for her to get rid of the kid.”