Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
My chest tightened as I directed Katherine into the elevator that would take us into the home that I loathed. She must have noticed I was tense because she stowed her phone.
“How long do we have to stay?” she asked.
“Let’s try to make it through dinner.”
She nodded. “There’s a bright side to this.”
I raised my eyebrows in question. “Is there?”
“No Christmas Eve mass.”
I chuckled, surprised by the way she’d so easily defused the situation. “Two hours of midnight mass isn’t your cup of tea?”
“I can think of other ways to use an altar.”
I shook my head, trying to hide my delight. “Sacrilege.”
She just winked at me and then faced forward as the doors opened. She had made me forget what we were walking into. This woman. This infuriatingly irritating woman. I never expected her to get me, but there were advantages to marrying someone in my social circle. We understood each other and how fucked up our childhoods had been.
“Shall we?” she asked.
I nodded curtly. Then we stepped into my father’s home together.
The first thing I saw was a short incredibly tan woman with a thick head of dark brown hair. I stopped moving at the sight of my sister.
“Candice?” Katherine asked in shock.
Shock enough for the both of us.
I hadn’t seen Candice since the day I married Katherine. She was a bit of a holistic nutjob. The last I’d heard, she was in Bali, living a New Age Goop-esque lifestyle—vagina-steaming, bee-venom therapy, and fifteen-thousand-dollar sex toys. But before the wedding, she’d been in Dubai, living off of martinis, then Casablanca to soak up the essence of the ’40s, and some private island off the coast of Morocco for a sex-healing treatment, which I could only guess consisted of nightly orgies.
She hadn’t gone to Harvard, where our father had donated a small fortune to get her in. She had no degree. She’d never worked a day in her life. Not even as a socialite. Instead, she lived off her trust and flitted between one mindless brainwashing adventure to the next. I’d once had to endure an entire conversation with her where she described in detail how she’d gotten with a “journey” group and done hallucinogens to open up her mind’s eye.
Candice slowly turned, revealing her enormous stomach. “Heyyy,” she trilled. “You made it.”
She was pregnant. My cultist sister, who was high more than she was sober, was pregnant. Jesus Christ, who had been stupid enough to let that happen?
“What are you doing here?” I asked dryly.
“Nice to see you, too,” she said with a wink, stepping up to us. “And your beautiful wife. How’s the sex?” She pressed her hand to Katherine’s stomach. “Still fucking like rabbits?”
Katherine stepped back, glaring down at Candice. “That’s really none of your business.”
“Oh, come on. Didn’t you hear? I’m a certified sex therapist now.”
“Certified by whom?” I asked with a shake of my head.
Candice waved her hand. “It was in Taiwan at this sex temple. I’ll have to tell you the whole story.”
“Please don’t,” I said. “I need a drink.”
“Make it a double,” Katherine said under her breath.
“Oh, but you shouldn’t be drinking,” Candice said gleefully.
Katherine shot me a pained look.
“Martini?” I asked.
She nodded gratefully.
I headed to my father’s wet bar and poured her the dirtiest martini I could madke. I went for my father’s scotch. As much as it upset me to admit it, he had an even more extensive collection than I did. I brought the martini back to Katherine, who looked like a fawn ready to bolt in distress. Neither of us had prepared for dealing with Candice on top of my father and his new family.
“Camden,” a voice said behind me.
I turned to find my latest stepmother standing in the doorway to my father’s sitting room. “Hello, Elizabeth.”
I regrettably left Katherine to deal with Candice.
Elizabeth Cunningham was my father’s fourth wife. They’d secretly eloped a month before my own wedding. I didn’t mind her or her daughter, Harmony, who was Katherine’s age. She was better than the last two. Candice’s mother, Carrie, had despised that there was a child between Candice and the entirety of the Percy fortune. More recently, he’d married Jaclyn, a supermodel who was younger than me. She’d tried to fuck me once or twice. I’d almost done it out of spite, but I was certain my father might have actually killed me. Heir to his empire or not.
My mother was the only one he’d married for love. And shortly after having me, she’d abandoned us both. Run out on him and only returned long enough to sign the divorce papers, refuse custody, and give up her claim to any Percy money. My father never let me forget that I was the reason she’d left. He never believed in love again after that. Drilled it into my head at a young age that marriages were business deals. Plain and simple.