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 Thornestilldidn’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 ashimstole 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 acontract.
“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?”
“Onme. 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.”