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Chapter 1
Elle
Another business class. Another big fat F on my paper.
I sighed and shoved my laptop away, flopping back on my bed. My father was going to kill me. And my sister—oh-so-perfect Helene who never did anything wrong in her life, would help him bury my body in a shallow grave.
A mountain of homework was sprawled across my bed all around me as if a tornado had ripped through, spreading stress and destruction in its wake.
You will get your act together, young lady, and stop pissing on this opportunity I’m giving you. Show a bit more appreciation and bring your grades up.
The echo of my father’s voice left a sour taste in my mouth. Ever since starting school at East Regent University, he’d been hounding me to be the best, crush my fellow students, and come out on top of the competition. I was barely scraping by, which wasn’t acceptable for a man who graduated from Harvard at the top of his class. As if that wasn’t overachieving enough, he then proceeded to take the financial world by storm, founding a billion-dollar investment firm—DR Investments—within three years, earning international claim.
He would be livid when he saw the state of my grades.
I suppose I should have been upset about it. Instead, I couldn’t really bring myself to care. It wasn’t anything new. For as long as I could remember, I’d been the family disappointment who needed to be straightened out, scolded, reprimanded, punished. My father, Daniel R. Roche had never wasted an opportunity to remind me that I was a black mark on the family name and he would do everything in his power to polish me up so I stopped tarnishing his reputation.
My phone buzzed with an alarm. When I glanced at the screen, a small bloom of warmth spread in my chest. Romantic English Literature and Poetry started in five minutes. The one bright spot among my dreary, mind-numbing business classes.
Abandoning my homework, I shoved a few notepads and pens into my backpack, along with any books I’d need. Then I set off across campus.
Thanks to my father’s obscenely large financial contributions to the university, the staff folded like a house of playing cards when he demanded access to my coursework, cherry-picking which classes I would take, throwing out anything else he deemed frivolous.
The only reason I managed to wheedle my way into this one class was because of some fast-talking on my part, bullshitting my way through a long-winded speech about the benefits of literary analysis and how it could give me an edge on sizing up my competition in business.
All that buzzword lingo I’d vomited up in a panic was like music to my father’s ears. To my relief, he allowed me to continue the class.
I sighed, making my way across campus and into the lecture hall. At twenty-three years old, I should have more control over my own life by now. But that was the problem with living under the thumb of a wealthy father—he knew how to keep the purse strings as tight as a noose, yanking me around like a marionette. I had some meager savings from working various odd jobs at college—waitress, barista, cashier—until my father found out I was doing menial labor and put a stop to it by getting me fired.
By the time I arrived at the lecture hall, I was early and the cavernous room was empty. My sneakers squeaked on the hardwood floor as I took a seat at the back, slouching deep into my chair.
Sometimes, I wondered why I continued the charade of going to classes, writing papers, enduring tests. I wasn’t going to graduate anyway. The threat of flunking out loomed over my head like a thundercloud on a daily basis. I might be Daniel R. Roche’s daughter, but I wasn’t a cutthroat genius like him. I was just an average girl, trying to find her place in the world and drowning in the process.
The door opened and the chatter of voices filled the room. I grumbled to myself and slid even further into my seat to escape notice as three students filed in—two guys and a girl—laughing and shoving each other. Clearly flirting. They flopped into the seats at the front, backpacks spread haphazardly around them.
The girl knocked over her stack of books with her elbow and sent them tumbling to the floor. They landed face down, spines straining unnaturally, threatening to crack and break. She made no move to retrieve them.
More students poured in. Some jostled each other to get the best seats. Others wandered in with headphones on, or tapping away at their phones.
I felt like a ghost, observing the world around me that teamed with life I wasn’t part of. Sure, I lived in the dorms and ate in the cafeteria like everyone else. But I didn’t belong here. My father was the one who wanted this—an undergraduate degree in business administration—to prove that he had raised me right, carrying on the Roche legacy that he’d built.
These students had a blank future ahead of them. They could mold it, shape it, carve out a name for themselves that was all their own.
My future had already been laid out in a neat and tidy blueprint for me to follow according to my father’s standards. That’s what set me apart. That’s why I didn’t feel like I was really here—I had nothing in common with these people.
The classroom was nearly full by now. A student tentatively approached and gestured to the empty desks that flanked me.
“Are these seats taken?”
Slowly, I turned my head, fixing her with a long, silent stare. She shifted in place nervously and glanced away.
“Actually…never mind.”
Then she hurried off, wading through a few rows until she found another vacant desk. Within seconds, she started chatting up the student sitting next to her. Thank God I’d dodged that bullet.
After a few more minutes dragged by, the door opened, admitting Professor Vincent Stonebridge—the real reason I was so attentive in class.
I shouldn’t find him as attractive as I did at forty-eight years old—twice my age. But I wasn’t the only one. It was no secret that the professor had a decent string of admirers, especially among his female students, and a handful of male students as well. I overheard them often enough, whispering to each other before class started.
