Maybe if I piss her off enough, she’ll send me back to New York?
“How about this,” I add, when I realize that she’s pursed her mouth too tightly to get any words out. “If I go on this talk show with you, you let me talk to my grandparents.” Her eyes go wide, and her face pales. That’s when I know I made the right decision not telling her about Maxine. Tess feels threatened by the Banks family. That much is painfully obvious in this moment.
“You are a minor child,” she says instead, taking the wrong tactic with me. I don’t do well following blind orders. “If I say you are going on the talk show with me, then you’re going.” I watch as she both metaphorically and literally digs her heels in. “Your kidnapping might not have been all that traumatic for you, but it destroyed me. I can handle a lot of things, Dakota, but disrespect isn’t one of them.”
I’m seething on the inside right now, but what can I do? What the actual hell can I do? Tess used her money and her lawyers and her influence to separate me from the Banks. Now, she’s throwing that weight around so that I’ll advance her career, too. I don’t feel like a daughter to her, just a pawn, something to be played with, to be pushed around a board until I’m in just the right spot.
“I’d like this dress please,” I breathe, my voice husky with anger.
“It’s too flashy,” Tess says, but then, as if she’s realized she’s pushed me as far as she’s going to get me, she backtracks. “But if it’s the one you want …”
I slam the changing room door closed before she can finish.
Nothing about my life is what I want.
Nothing.
The next morning, I get up early of my own accord. I still hate it—and I still don’t understand why nobody in this weird family sleeps in on weekends—but there’s just something uncomfortable about sleeping four hours past everyone else in the house. Like, when I finally get up and pad downstairs for a drink, I’ve got mussy bed hair and the whole Vanguard family is dressed and ready for a corporate conference or something.
Today, I waltz in dressed in a cropped Genshin Impact t-shirt and jeans to find Maxx, Chasm, and Parrish all seated at the dining table together. Kimber isn’t far off, as usual, schmoozing all over Chasm. Somehow, her fixation with him bothers me more than usual. Is it because we almost kissed? Because he’s been tutoring me? I don’t know.
“Oh, look, it’s the orphan,” Kimber quips with a rude sneer, but I am just not here for that shit today.
“Orphan would imply that I have no family at all, not two sets that both want me so badly they went to court over it.” I pad into the kitchen and reach for the handle of the fridge before glancing at my supposed sister to find her face red as the boys all pause in whatever they’re doing to watch the exchange. “And anyway, if I were an orphan, do you really think that’s something to poke fun at? Are you heartless?”
Kimber shoves up from the table, blond curls bobbing with the motion. She looks between me and Parrish, me and Parrish. It’s like she expects him to stand up for her. Instead, he leans back in his seat like he’s enjoying the show.
“Are you seriously going to sit there and let her talk to me like that?” Kimber growls at him, and he gives a loose shrug.
“If you’re going to dish it, you should learn to take it. Nobody likes a bully, Kimber.”
With a scream of rage, she shoves away from the table and goes stomping off, but only so far as the entrance to the hall. She whirls around, her face twisting in an expression of teenage fury. It’s okay, I’m used to it. I’m still in that stage myself.
I take the carton of milk—probably the same one that Parrish was drinking from yesterday—and turn around to face her, carefully unscrewing the top. Knowing that he’s watching me, I lift the milk to my lips and chug some.
“Gamer bitch,” she spits, as if that’s an insult of any kind. I smile as I lick the milk from my upper lip. The sound of a chair scraping across the floor briefly draws my attention, and I notice that Parrish is looking sharply away from me, jaw clenched tight, teeth gritted. I return my attention to Kimber’s smug face.
“Listen, I already told Tess that I don’t want the free nose job. She said you were desperate for boobs, so … have at it. You can take my surgery slot, although I think it’s weird as fuck that you’d let your dad put breast implants in you.”
