Prologue
MMC POV
Thirty minutes. That was his limit. It always had been.
I watched the front door swallow him whole, the soft click of the latch sounding louder than it should have in a house this big. Marble floors. Glass railings. Art that cost more than my first car. None of it could hide how fast he ran from us.
Cindy didn’t bother pretending to be disappointed. She never did. As long as his credit card still worked, she could survive just fine without him. She wears her designer clothes like armor, her face smoothed and sculpted by surgeons, yet even all that money can’t make her company tolerable. Dad still can’t stand to be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes.
Honestly, it’s almost funny.
“I thought we could watch a movie tonight.” Cindy’s hand slides up my arm, practiced and invasive, her surgically enhanced chest pressing into me. The implication is obvious. “Movie” is just her code for attention—my attention—like I’m some substitute toy she can wind up when she’s bored.
She’s only ten years older than me, but I’d rather carve my own skin off than touch her. I wrench her hand away and fling it aside as if it’s contaminated. One sharp flick of my fingers dismisses her entirely, like an irritating insect. “Why don’t you go ask Cole?” I snap, venom dripping from every word.
Her face flushes an ugly red. She spins on her heel and storms into the kitchen, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the walls.
Good.
I pull out my phone and open the app I use to track Dad, zooming in on the blinking red dot that’s haunted me for months. Same address. Same place. Every time he comes home from a “business trip,” he goes there after dinner—like clockwork.
He always staggers back hours later, soaked in alcohol and bitterness, turning the house even colder than it already is.
I wonder who he’s fucking now.
He left twenty minutes ago. I know exactly where he is—an address burned into my brain from months of watching him disappear into it. It started in high school—throwing parties and obsessively checking his location so he wouldn’t catch me red-handed. Back then, it was survival. Now? It’s spite. Curiosity. A sick little habit I can’t seem to shake, just to see what that miserable bastard is doing when he thinks no one’s watching.
I grip the keys hard enough to bite into my skin and head out into the night.
***
As I pull onto the street, I catch a glimpse of my dad’s Lamborghini, its taillights slicing through the dark before vanishing around the corner. Of course. Always has to make an exit. I ease my car into the spot he left behind and wait. The engine hums softly while my phone glows in my hand. His movements unfold on the screen like a pattern I’ve memorized by heart—predictable, almost clinical. The blue dot crawls forward, pauses, surges, and slows again. Stop. Go. Stop. Go.
Then it settles. The bar.
I stare at it longer than I should. It’s pathetic, really. Watching someone unravel in real time, pixel by pixel. I shut off my headlights, kill the engine, and sink lower in my seat. Like a hawk perched high above, patient and unmoving, I wait. Half an hour passes. Then another.
Still nothing.
And then—a BMW rolls into the driveway.
She steps out.
She was all long legs and sculpted grace, her hair a sheet of platinum silk that caught the light like polished chrome. She looked exactly as she did in Maddie Stewart’s posts—untouchable.
Then, the illusion broke.
Her heel caught on a jagged lip of pavement; she stumbled, and a brass ring of keys clattered to the asphalt. When she reached for them, the world seemed to tilt. The hem of her dress rode up, exposing a sharp contrast of delicate lace against the soft curve of her thigh. It was a private detail, never meant for me, yet I inhaled it like a thief.
A heavy, dark heat flooded my veins, pulling the air from my chest and leaving me dizzy. My mind betrayed me instantly, imagining the phantom weight of her skin against mine, the illicit texture of that lace beneath my thumb. I felt the sudden, violent throb of my own pulse—a physical manifestation of a thought I should have buried.
Fuck.
I recoiled, slamming my back against the car seat as if trying to physically distance myself from my own eyes. I felt slick with a cold, sudden sweat. My heart hammered a frantic, guilty rhythm against my ribs, sounding like a gavel coming down. I was a predator in a parked car, watching a girl who didn’t even know I existed.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath again, this time more subdued - a prayer for forgiveness that I don’t deserve. As I sit there, my thoughts swirl with guilt and confusion. I try to justify my actions, reminding myself that I never really did anything wrong – it was all just an observation, right? But the image of the girl’s underwear still burns in my mind, fueling the fire of my desire. Fuck, what am I becoming? I’ve always known there was something twisted about me, but this... This is just wrong. Yet, the fact remains – I can’t stop watching her.
My dad can’t be fucking her.
A sudden movement catches my eye. The girl from Maddie’s Instagram has appeared in a window, adjusting her dress and then turning to face the mirror. I can see her reflection, and she seems to be looking over herself. I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking as she stands there looking at herself.
My eyes devour her silhouette, each curve and angle sending shards of raw, carnal interest through me. She’s fucking hot. The short dress she’s wearing clings tightly to her body, leaving little to the imagination. And God, my imagination was a devilish place.
The fabric slithered up, reluctant and slow, revealing tantalizing flashes of lace-trimmed silk against the porcelain smoothness of her skin. Seeing her like this—unfiltered, intimate—lit a forbidden fire in my gut, a wild, jagged heat that burned right through my sense of decency.
It was her legs that broke me first.
They were long, toned, and trim, stretching endlessly upward until they vanished into the dark folds of her dress. I could almost feel the phantom friction of my palms tracing that path, drawing gasps from her lips as I teased the edge of that lace. The sudden, vivid image of myself between those goddess-like thighs hit me like a narcotic, sending a heavy, rhythmic throb through my veins. My jeans felt like a cage, my body straining in a silent, desperate protest.
I watched her hand as she adjusted the dress, pulling and tucking with a careless innocence that felt like a deliberate torment. I wanted her bare. I wanted her spread out beneath me, stripped of the lace and the secrets. My hands white-knuckled the steering wheel, my knuckles aching as I fought the urge to touch myself—to break the tension thrumming like a live wire in my lower belly.
I could practically taste her, a sweet, imagined nectar on my tongue. My mouth watered at the thought of her writhing, begging for the very release I was currently denying myself. But the peak of the fantasy was the weight of it—sinking deep into her as I claimed every inch. I sank back into the seat, drenched in a cold, heavy sweat. A part of me screamed that this was a sickness—that I was a predator stalking a girl from a digital screen. But the darker part, the part that lived in the shadows of my mind, whispered back seductively, “What if she was yours?”
I watched, paralyzed, as she reached behind her. The zipper of the dress gave way with a silent, sliding grace. Slowly, the fabric fell, pooling around her ankles like a discarded skin, leaving her standing in the amber glow in nothing but that delicate, dark lace. My breath hitched, fogging the glass of the car window, but I couldn’t look away.
Then, her hands moved.
She wasn’t just checking her reflection anymore. Her fingers traced the line of her throat, sliding down to the swell of her breasts before dipping beneath the edge of the lace. A low, guttural sound escaped my throat—a sound of pure torture. When she arched her back, her eyes fluttering shut in the mirror, I watched her hips sway, her head tilting back as she lost herself in her own touch, and I let my imagination bridge the distance between the pavement and the glass.
I wasn’t just watching; I was there, my roughened fingertips replacing hers, my mouth silencing her breath. As she shuddered in the light of the window, she began to move again, oblivious and beautiful, while I sat in the wreckage of my own shame, realizing I needed to turn my fantasy into reality.
I yanked my phone out, thumb hovering only a second before I tapped the call. When my friend answered on the third ring, I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“Do you still have Maddie Stewart’s number?” I said.
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Make sure she gets the address to the bonfire,” I commanded, staring up at her in the window one last time.
