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“Good luck, Penelope. I hope everything works out for you. And if you do find yourself in need of that help, please don’t hesitate to call me.” Lifting her hand, she passes me a small rectangle card. Taking it, I glance down and find a handwritten cell phone number scrawled onto the back of a thick business card.
“Thank you,” I say again, rising from the chair with the letter and business cards gripped tightly in my hand. After paying the bill, I ride the elevator down to the lobby, sliding the letter and card into my purse alongside the video camera.
Warm sunlight heats my skin when I step outside, and I tip my head back and allow myself a second to enjoy the feeling. For a moment, the weight of the day settles over me, and the wave of exhaustion that hits feels almost overwhelming. A part of me wants to just curl into a ball and hide, but I won’t because I’m almost done. It’s almost over.
Opening the app, I request an Uber, climbing in and settling into the back seat the moment it arrives. My cell buzzes in my purse, but I ignore it, because I refuse to look at all of the missed calls and texts from my parents. I turned off the GPS tracking on my cell the moment I left their house last night, and an odd sense of dark humor fills me when I think about how much they must be losing their minds wondering where I am.
If they had any clue what I planned to do today, I’ve no doubt they would have found a way to stop me. But for the past three and a half years, I’ve done exactly what they asked of me, and even now, I doubt they’d ever expect me to step out of line.
The only time I’ve ever deviated from their plans for me was the day I should have gone to dinner at Gulliver’s house. I’m not an idiot. My parents may have wanted and plotted to arrange an alliance between me and Gulliver, but I knew he, more than any of the other guys on the list, didn’t want me.
The morning of the dinner, Mom came into my room and told me that she and Dad expected me to do whatever it took to please Gulliver. She gave me a book on giving the perfect blowjob and a dildo to practice on. Then she said that getting on my knees was a small price to pay to secure the perfect fiancé.
It was the first time she’d ordered me to do anything beyond flirting with someone. Over the years, she coached me in teasing and toying. She taught me how to be a perfectly innocent slut, but she always said not to take things any further.
For months, I’ve felt the almost stifling weight of graduation, knowing that my parents planned for me to be engaged before I left for college, but knowing that she expected me to suck the dick of a boy who so openly loathed me just to curry favor with him, had still surprised me.
The night before, we’d been at an event, and the cute bartender had given me his number and asked if he could take me out. After Mom had left me that morning with an idiot’s guide to sucking dick and a sex toy, I’d texted him and arranged to meet him at a club. Stupidly, I’d thought that he liked me, that he wanted me, just Penelope, but in the end, he’d known about the money and was hoping to use me as his meal ticket.
When I got home that night, I’d been terrified that my mom would lose her mind. Instead, she’d laughed at my misery. She’d reminded me that the only reason I was useful to anyone was because my name was on that will, and that if I stepped out of line again, my identical twin was more than capable of taking my place.
Since I woke up and saw how truly terrible my parents are, I sometimes try to decide if it’s me or them who is the biggest monster. Instead of waiting to inherit when my grandfather died, my dad was completely overlooked and forgotten in favor of me. And a part of me can almost understand my parents being willing to do whatever it took to get access to the money, even if it meant using me and my sister. But am I really any different from them? I did exactly what was asked of me for years without ever questioning how morally reprehensible it was. It wasn’t until they crossed my metaphorical line in the sand that I realized how fucked up everything was. But if they hadn’t hurt Izabella, would I have just done what was expected of me? Would I have ever woken up and seen how awful I was?
Although it’s hard for me to admit, even to myself, I know that I’m the truly evil one, because even though I was a child when all of this started, I still did things that I knew deep down were wrong. I wasn’t blinded by greed or need; I’ve never gone without anything in my entire life. I don’t have any way of excusing my behavior, because there is no excuse, I’m just bad, just a really bad person.
I wish I could say that what I’m doing now is truly selfless and that everything I’ve done today was solely to release my sister from the shackles of obligation, but that would be a lie. Trying not to ruin her life any more than I already have is definitely part of it—something inside of me wants to help her—but the biggest part of my motivation is to save myself.
When Gulliver announced his engagement to my sister, my parents freaked out and immediately moved on to plan B and the next most desirable boy on the husband wish list. Only he’s not a boy. Geoffrey Bancroft is business-mindedly brilliant, rich, and successful. He’s also a predatory, disgusting thirty-five-year-old man, who is bisexual with a penchant for barely legal prostitutes of either sex.
On the one and only evening I spent in his company, he told me that he “likes his girls young” and that “he can’t wait to break me in.” When I told my parents, they’d chuckled. They laughed like selling me to a man like that was amusing to them.
Before my great-grandfather died, Izabella and I rarely saw our parents. They spent the majority of our childhood traveling under the guise of working, and their two children brought nothing but inconvenience to the lavish lifestyle they preferred. And that was okay. Izabella and I were raised by a series of nannies and tutors. I’m sure we weren’t the first rich kids to have absentee parents, and we won’t be the last.
But after the will was read and my great-grandfather’s wishes were revealed, everything changed. The parents I barely knew were suddenly intimately involved in every aspect of my life. They went from having practically forgotten Izabella and I existed to orchestrating every move I made. Overnight, Mom had an opinion on everything. The length and color of my hair, the way I spoke, how my makeup looked, the clothes I wore, and the people I associated with.
Looking back now, I’m ashamed to admit how easily I allowed my parents to manipulate me. Perhaps if I’d grown up differently, I’d have seen their actions for what they were—controlling. But to a fourteen-year-old girl who had gone from seeing her parents three or four times a year to suddenly having them there every day, doting on me, it was invigorating.
Back then, I was so excited to be the center of their attention. I loved that they were only interested in me and not Izabella. Because for the first time in my entire life, I was the important one, and it didn’t matter that she was smarter, more poised, and more beautiful with her strange purple eyes. I was the heiress. It was my name on that will and not hers.
Now I see it for what it really was. I was so incredibly jealous of my sister that I jumped at the first opportunity to feel like I was more than her. If I had even a shred of decency left in me, I’d be ashamed of myself, but I think I’ve become so deadened inside that I don’t really feel anything anymore, least of all shame or remorse.
Another text message notification pops up on my screen, but I ignore it. It’s been hours since I fled from my parents’ home, and they must have figured out something was up, but I’m starting to consider that my parents are conceited enough to believe I’d never truly oppose them. They’ve gotten to a point where I think they honestly believe that they’re untouchable, that my inheritance will protect them from the consequences of their behavior. For the past nearly four years, they’ve simply used money and the promise of power and influence to manipulate everyone around them—including me.
A wry scoff falls from my lips, and I notice my Uber driver glance at me in the rearview mirror. If I could have just gotten one D on a test or an assignment, all of this would have been over by now. I wouldn’t have had to resort to desperate measures, to begging a boy who despises me to have sex with me. But my insane parents have paid off every single member of the faculty at GAA and made it impossible for me to fail, no matter how much I try.
A tremor ripples through me as memories of Hawthorn and me together play like a film reel through my mind. I almost wish I was repulsed by the things he did to me; it’d be easier than admitting that if I close my eyes, I can still feel his hands on me. I can hear his low, gruff voice in my ear and feel the pain-filled pleasure he gave to me.
My eyes drop to my purse in my lap. No one would know if I pulled out the video camera and watched the footage. Hawthorn watched it. He got to relive every touch, every moan, every orgasm. It’s only fair that I get to watch it too.
Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I bite down on my lip, using the pain to banish all thoughts of Hawthorn. This morning wasn’t about a lover’s embrace, it was nothing more than the mechanics of intimacy between two people, and no matter how much my memories want to romanticize what we shared, I can’t allow myself to forget that it was just an act, just sex.
When my car slows to a stop, I exhale slowly, then open my eyes, looking out the window at the brownstone that holds the offices of Stanton, Stanton, and Kingston Attorneys at Law. The last time I came here changed my life, and I’m about to change it all over again, only this time instead of inheriting a fortune, I’m going to officially walk away from it.
I haven’t called ahead, but I don’t plan on leaving until they agree to see me. I just hope they don’t contact my parents the moment I walk through the door. But no matter what they do, today I’ll end it all, one way or another.
Dragging in a deep breath, I pull back my shoulders, lift my chin, and with my resolve firm, I climb the steps and press the buzzer.
“Stanton, Stanton, and Kingston,” a voice says through the speaker.
