CHAPTER ONE ARSÈNE

CHAPTER ONE

ARSèNE

The roofs are different in Portofino.

Flatter, wider, older.

The pastel-colored buildings sprout from the ground, so tightly cramped together you couldn’t slide a toothpick between them if you tried. The yachts in the harbor are docked neatly and equally spaced from each other. The Mediterranean Sea glitters under the last persistent sunrays as dusk begins to fall.

I lounge on the balcony of my hotel suite overlooking the Italian Riviera, watching a ladybug spinning backward on its axis, like Venus, on the marble banister.

I flip the ladybug, helping it find its footing, then take a sip of my white wine. Tonight’s menu is perched in my lap. The wild boar ragù appears to be the most expensive option, which means I’m bound to order it, just to watch the idiots from accounting sweating into their risotto plates when they realize this conference is going to cost them much more than they planned to spend.

Corporate events are where good ideas go to die. It is a well-known fact any trade secret worth whispering will not be aired during a formal company event. Valuable market information, like a weapon, is traded in the back alleys of the industry.

It isn’t my workplace that brought us here. In fact, I have no workplace to speak of. I am a lone wolf. A quantitative trading consultant paid by the hour by hedge fund companies to help them sort through the conglomerate of potential investments. What to invest in, how much, and how to keep up with the annualized returns their clients expect of them. My friends often say I’m like Chandler from Friends. That no one has any idea what I actually do. But my job is pretty straightforward—I help rich people get even richer.

“Just trying on this new dress,” a feminine voice purrs from behind the balcony door. “Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes. Don’t drink too much. You’re barely civilized for those tux-wearing cookie cutters while sober.”

After frisbeeing the menu to a nearby table, I pick up the book next to me and flip to the next page. Brief Answers to the Big Questions, by Hawking.

Since we are located on the top floor of the resort, I have a direct view to virtually all the other south-facing balconies overlooking the harbor.

This is how I notice them at first.

A couple, two terraces down from us.

They are the only ones out, soaking in the last rays of the setting sun. Their blond heads bob together. His hair is corn yellow. Hers is titian, a mixture of gold and red, like scorched desert sand.

He is wearing a sharp suit. She, a burgundy dress. Something simple, cheap looking, almost tarty. A call girl? Nah. Wall Street hedge fund tycoons invest in expensive-looking dates. The type with a built-in designer wardrobe, red-soled heels, and private school manners. Pretty Women only exist in fairy tales and Julia Roberts movies. Not a soul in Manhattan values charm, honesty, and quirkiness in women.

No. This is a country bumpkin. Perhaps an ambitious local who found her way into his bed in hopes of earning a large tip.

The couple is sharing a peach and sticky, juicy kisses. The nectar seeps down their lips as he feeds her the fruit. She grins as she nibbles on the fruit’s flesh, her gaze holding his. He kisses her hungrily, and she bites on his lower lip—hard—before his mouth rips from hers to murmur something into her ear.

The girl throws her head back and laughs, exposing the pale, long column of her neck. I shift in my seat, my book covering my ever-growing erection. I’m not sure what turns me on more. The peach, the woman, or the fact that I’m officially a voyeur. Likely, all three.

The man dips his head and licks a long trail of the nectar, not letting a good opportunity go to waste. They are leaning against the banister, his body pressed against hers.

Something passes between them. Something that makes the hairs on my neck prickle. Whatever these two are enjoying is something I don’t currently have.

I am not a man accustomed to unattainable things.

“Have you tried the white yet?” The glass door whines open. I snap my gaze toward the person the voice belongs to.

“Too much anise and truffle, right?” My date sneers and pulls a pout. She is still in her bathrobe. How many hours does one need to put on a damn dress?

I take a gulp of the wine. “Tastes fine to me. We’re going to run late.”

“And you care about tardiness since .?.?.??” She arches a brow.

“I don’t. But I am hungry,” I supply flatly.

“Play your cards right, and I might be your dessert.” She smiles devilishly, peppering the gesture with a wink.

I swirl the wine in the pristine glass. “No dessert, no date. This is quid pro quo, and I’m not known for my philanthropic notions.”

She rolls her eyes. “Can you at least pretend to be bearable?”

“Can you pretend to like me?” I shoot back.

She gasps. “Of course I like you. Why else would I be with you?”

“I could think of thirty-three million reasons.” That is my net worth before my impending inheritance.

“Christ, you’re crude. My mother was right about you.” She slams the glass door in my face.

I place the book on the table, redirecting my attention to the couple on the balcony. They’re still at it, making out without a care in the world. He wraps her hair around his fist, tugging, lifting her face, and kisses her hard. Their tongues swirl together erotically. She cups his cheeks and grins, grazing her top teeth over his bottom lip. My cock strains again. She is completely his, I can tell, and that blind conviction she belongs to him, how comfortable she is belonging to another human, makes me want to screw her brains out just to prove a point.

No one is yours, and you belong to no one. We’re all just fallen foes trying to survive this universe.

He drags his mouth down her neck, cupping her breasts, pushing the pebbled thing toward his lips. The edge of her pink nipple pokes from her dress. When his mouth reaches the valley between her tits, she remembers herself.

She pushes him away, panting. Maybe she knows they have an audience. If she’s waiting for me to be embarrassed, she better get comfortable, because that’s not about to happen. They’re the ones dry humping in plain sight. I’m just a man enjoying his pretentious glass of wine on a lazy summer day.

The glass door opens again, and Gracelynn Langston reemerges, this time in a black, sequined chiffon dress. An Akris piece I bought her the day after she crawled back into my bed for the thousandth time this decade.

This is Gracelynn’s—or as I call her, Grace’s—pattern. Fuck me. Dump me. Crawl back to me. It always surprises her to find herself on my threshold, looking pensive, and sometimes drunk, and always humiliated.

It never surprises me, though.

I’d come to accept what we are. A dysfunctional, screwed-up couple like our parents were. Minus the physical assault, maybe.

Over the years, I perfected the art of managing my stepsister. Using her explosive nature to my own advantage.

I am now able to detect the precise moment in which Grace is going to leave me. It’s always when our relationship starts to feel real and serious. When the salacious shine of fucking your stepbrother wears off, and she is left with the aftermath. With a man she despises. An aloof, taciturn monster. A social pariah, ousted from polite Wall Street society with a two-year supervisory ban for insider trading charges.

And so, like a Swiss clock, the minute she withdraws, I become distant, unavailable; I strategically notice women on the street. The kind of women she doesn’t approve of. The ones who wear too much makeup and their secondhand designer bags with all the pride of a hotel heiress.

It works like a charm. Grace always comes back. She cannot stand me. But she cannot stand it even more when I have another woman draped over my arm.

“Zip me up,” she demands now, swaying her hips as she saunters to me. She turns around, giving me her back. Each vertebra in her spine is pronounced. She’s managed to keep her ballerina body long after she gave up the dream.

I roll the zipper up her back. “How many people will be gracing us with their mediocracy tonight?”

“Too many, as per usual.” She speaks with bobby pins in her mouth as she tucks the last of her locks into an updo. “At least they’ve only invited the top twenty employees and their plus-ones. None of the airheaded PAs, thank God.”

Grace does not introduce me as her boyfriend. Rather, as her stepbrother, even though our parents have been divorced since we both went to college.

But she introduces me all the same, for I am well known in the stock business. Feared, respected, but rarely liked. She knows my leverage, my pull. I may be the black sheep of the hedge fund world, but I still know how to make money, and people on Wall Street really like people who know how to do that. It is their favorite party trick.

My fingers linger when I see the scar on her upper back. The one that reminds me what happened to her. What happened to me twenty-four years ago. I run my finger pad over it. Her flesh prickles into goose bumps, and she pulls away like I hit her.

“Is it very visible?” She fusses over a perfectly secured bracelet, clearing her throat.

“No,” I lie, tugging the zipper up. I halt. Something comes over me. The need to brush my lips against her scar. Comfort her. I resist the instinct. Instead, I say, “There you go, Venus.”

“Venus?”

“The hottest planet on the solar system.” I wink, channeling my inner Christian Miller, my friend who somehow managed to perfect the art of enjoying his relationship, as opposed to making it a screwed-up grown-up game like I did.

I can almost hear Grace scrunching her nose in disdain. “Thank Gawd you’re a closeted geek. Could you imagine if other people found out about your astronomy quirk?” She huffs, pushing farther away from me. “Now all I need is a pair of earrings. What do you think, the rose gold diamond studs or the aquamarines?”

The first pair, I bought her for her twenty-eighth birthday, deliberately one-upping her then-boyfriend’s gift. She dumped him the same night, horrified with the prospect of ending up with a middle-class Realtor who could only afford to buy her last season’s Louboutins. She’d later on waited in my bed wearing nothing but said earrings. The latter pair was a present from me after I ended a three-month affair with Lucinda—yes, her childhood nemesis—when Grace took too long to get back to me after one of our many breakups.

Poor, poor Lucinda. She was in for an unpleasant surprise when she got back from her tour in Paris as a prima ballerina to find Grace scorching up my bed.

My gifts are always laced with intention, purpose, and venom. They’re a dirty, violent kiss. A mixture of passion and pain.

“Aquamarines,” I drawl.

She leans down, placing a cool kiss on my lips. I want her to move along so I can see if the couple two floors down is now fucking in plain sight. Their brand of kink is better than ours. I glance at their balcony. Grace’s gaze follows mine.

Her mouth stretches in a malicious smile. “I see you’ve met my supervisor. Kind of, anyway.”

“You know this tool bag?” I take a sip of my wine.

“Paul Ashcroft? He’s Silver Arrow Capital’s new COO. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him.”

The company where Grace works as an analyst.

Paul and his companion have their backs to us. They seem to be talking now and keeping their hands to themselves.

“I’m sure you haven’t. Not that he seems like a memorable character.” I jerk my chin to the woman in red. “He’s getting pretty frisky with the help.”

Grace lets out a delighted laugh. Nothing brings her more joy than watching another woman being torn apart. “She’s a simple creature, isn’t she? Believe it or not, he put a ring on it. A pricey one too.”

I tsk. “He’s a hedge fund manager. Risky bets are where he thrives.”

“She’s a Juilliard graduate from the Deep South. I’m giving it six months,” Grace continues, squinting to get a better look at them.

“Generous of you.” I chuckle.

I know men like Paul. Manhattan sharks who glorify soft-spoken southern belles, only to find out that opposites may attract, but they don’t make a decent match. It always ends in divorce, a mutual smear campaign, and—if the woman works quickly enough—a fat child support check every month.

“You know me. Kindness is my middle name. I’ll go put my earrings on. What, no tie for you?” Grace pouts, looking down at me. I’m wearing a black cashmere sweater and plaid slacks.

“The last thing I want is to make a good impression.” I go back to my book.

“You’re a rebel without a cause.”

“On the contrary.” I flip a page. “I have a cause—I want everyone to leave me the fuck alone. So far, it’s been going great.”

She shakes her head. “You’re so lucky to have me.”

She disappears into our room, taking her giant attitude and matching ego with her.

I throw one last look at the couple. Paul isn’t on the balcony anymore.

But his wife is, and she is staring right back at me.

Intently. With an accusing ferocity. Like she expects me to do something.

Has she noticed me staring?

Confused, I look behind me to make sure it is me she is looking at. No one else is in sight. Her eyes, big and blue and unrelenting, bore harder into mine.

Is this a hostage situation? Unlikely. She looked mighty happy to make out with her husband just a few minutes ago. Is she trying to shame me for watching them? Good luck with that. My conscience was last seen at age ten, leaving a hospital room with a feral growl, punching holes in the walls on its departure.

I meet her gaze head-on, unsure what’s happening, but always happy to take part in a hostile confrontation. I arch an eyebrow.

She blinks first. I chuckle softly, shaking my head, about to get back to my book. She wipes her cheek quickly. Wait a minute .?.?. she is crying.

Crying.On a luxurious vacation in the Italian Riviera. Such fickle creatures, women. Always impossible to please. Poor Paul.

We are locked in that weird stare again. She looks possessed. I should get up and leave. But she looks so deliciously vulnerable, so misplaced, a part of me wants to see what she’ll do next.

And since when do I give two shits about what people do?

Coolly, I stand up, grab my hardcover, finish the last of my wine, pivot on my heel, and walk away.

Mrs.?Ashcroft might have a problem on her hands.

But it isn’t mine to fix.