They didn’t care that I wanted company, friends, actual relationships.
Relationships were off-limits for me. They posed a security risk. A political risk.
Each year, my parents would email me a curated list of people with whom I could socialize from my class. Every year, the choices not only consisted of, but were limited to, girls who wanted nothing to do with me.
The Brainiacs, the overachievers, found me lacking. Not smart enough, not interesting enough, not motivated enough. They snubbed me, making the task of living a pseudo-normal life impossible.
I never went to the movies with friends, never attended parties, never slurped neon slushies with a classmate. Nobody wanted to hang out with the weird Thorne girl.
I had also suspected what I now knew to be true—my parents hadn’t isolated me from others for my own benefit. They didn’t want me to have confidantes. People I could share my life and secrets with. They didn’t want a scandalous headline on their hands in case I put my faith in the wrong person. Anthony and Julianne Thorne still didn’t care about my mental health as much as they did their precious reputation.
They wanted me to come back home so they could monitor me.
I always refused. I’d had a taste of what it felt like to be with them during holidays. They fawned over Hera, their perfect child, while berating me for the way I looked and behaved, the second-best grades I brought home.
After I graduated from high school, friendless as a junk food wrapper on a bench, I went to a community college in Los Angeles. Mom and Dad were horrified. They’d wanted me to go to Harvard or Yale. At the very least Dartmouth. But I liked the idea of “slumming it with the plebs” they “protected” me from. Thought maybe, just maybe, I’d finally find my crowd in people who didn’t have a trust fund and shadow yachts.
My parents had rented me this Hollywood Hills mansion. The terms were clear—they were happy to pay whatever the owner was asking, as long as nobody else lived here.
No boyfriend, no roommate, no BFF.
I cried and begged, reasoned and bargained, but nothing worked.
And so, pathetically, today marked the first time I’d heard the noises of someone else living under the same roof as me. And for it to be someone as hostile as him stole a treasured hope. My heart coiled into itself painfully, the vines around it twisting. My chest hurt.
I heard a door on the second floor whining open—probably of the bedroom the bastard had now claimed as his own—followed by footsteps descending the curved stairway. The Nespresso machine coming to life. The drapes were pushed open. A speakerphone call between Nameless Asshole and a man I assumed was his business partner ensued.
“How’s L.A.?” the other person asked. He sounded wide awake, so I guessed Asshole was either from the East Coast or Midwest.
“Filthy. Ugly. Plastic.” Asshole opened the screen door leading to the backyard. The casualness in which he used my house as his own made my blood boil.
“Having fun, I see.” The other man laughed. “Is she…？”
“Bearable?” Nameless Asshole completed. “No. As likeable as an ingrown toenail.”
You’re no ball of sunshine, yourself.
“Have you sat her down in front of our contract?” the other man asked.
There was a contract.
“Not yet. Locked her in her room overnight to tire her out.”
“Ransom!” the man chided, chuckling.
Ransom? Really? What a bad-ass name for a world-class prick. Couldn’t he be Earl or Norman?
“You can’t take a page out of Moruzzi’s book. You ain’t in Kansas anymore.”
Who was Moruzzi?
“She tried to stab me with a bottle. Then called the police.”
“On herself?”
“On me. Brat doesn’t have two gray brain cells to rub together.”
My scalp stung, as if the insult had been poured over me.
Not much offended me at this stage in my life—I’d been called everything under the sun by the press, and by my own sister, too. But it always hurt when people called me stupid.
Maybe because I believed them. I felt so lost, so in over my head.
The other person laughed a hearty, good laugh. He sounded like a genuinely nice person, which surprised me, because he was in business with a sociopath. “You’re getting your fair share of female drama for the first time in your life, and I’m here for it, Ran.”
“I’ll bring the bitch to heel,” Ransom clipped out.
“I’ll make some popcorn in the meantime.”
“She’ll be defanged, declawed, and wearing a collar long before the microwave pings.”
The air got stuck in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. The man was so cruel, so unbearably callous. I’d dealt with bodyguards before. But only for decorative purposes. He’d been right about them—they existed solely for the clout and as standin photographers for random Instagram opportunities.
This man actually had power over my life. A frightening amount of it. And it sounded like he couldn’t wait to abuse it.
After he was done making fun of me, I heard Ransom’s footsteps ascending the floating stairway. I held my breath. He unlocked the door from the outside. He shoved it open halfway, but stayed firmly outside, knowing he wasn’t invited. I froze into clay. Even after he’d explained that he was my so-called protector, everything about him made the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Are you decent?” he asked gruffly.
“Why? It hasn’t stopped you before,” I spat out, before sighing. “Yeah, I am.”
“That’s refreshing.” He pushed the door open, propping a shoulder against its frame.
I decided to greet him by clutching the first thing I could grab on my nightstand and hurling it across the room at him with force. Ransom caught it effortlessly, an inch before it hit his nose. He tilted my Magic Wand—unwashed—here and there. A cocky sneer smeared across his haunting face.
“Not my first choice for a weapon, but it beats the banana in Scary Movie.”
I huffed to cover the embarrassment. Pain and shame swirled in the pit of my stomach like eels. “Give it back to me. That was a mistake.”
He must have thought I was a sex maniac. Just another rumor I’d never bothered to correct. According to the tabloids, I’d gone to bed with more than twenty Hollywood heartthrobs. No one, not even Keller, knew the truth.
That I was still a virgin.
That I’d never even gone on a date.
Not a real one, anyway.
Ransom tossed my vibrator behind his shoulder, ignoring my request. “Make sure you charge it often, because like I said, no boys under this roof while I’m here. Sleep well?” He moved along my room like a demon, seeming to hover over the floor. He flung open all the curtains. Natural light spilled into the room.
Not a vampire, then.
“None of your business.”
He tsked. “Where are your manners, princess?”
I was about to tell him they were hiding in whatever hole his decency had crawled up into, when he raised a manila file in the air, boomeranging it my way.
“My company’s contract. Read it.”
I tossed it on my nightstand, unblinking. “Sorry, my literary taste runs more sophisticated.”
“I wouldn’t believe that even if there wasn’t a copy of the National Enquirer on your nightstand.”