“So no one’s ever been in your apartment?”

“My parents visited once or twice. Sailor knows the address but is not allowed to come there. Why do you still live with your parents?” He threw the explosive question at my feet. I hitched one shoulder up, feigning calmness.

“I don’t see the point of paying for a place when I basically live at the hospital.”

“Don’t act like living in your own apartment would require you to wash a mug. You’re too rich to do shit yourself, and you and I both know that. Why are you still hiding behind Mommy and Daddy?” he repeated sternly.

The truth was complex, surprising, and worst of all … unbelievable. He would never buy it. Even if I told him. Which I did not consider doing since the truth was embarrassing. I was a puppet. A pawn in my parents’ game. Nothing to be proud of.

I shook my head.

“Does that mean I’m no longer banned from Badlands?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re still banned, missy. I don’t want to see you partying with these losers. One of the bouncers will show you through the back door when you get here tomorrow, but you’re not allowed at the bar or any of the card rooms.”

“See you tomorrow, Monster.”

“Nix,” he nodded his goodbye.

I all but made it back home in a tornado and Googled his nickname for me, elated and terrified and pleased and joyous.

Nix: A water being, half-human, half-fish, that lives in a gorgeous underwater palace and mingles with humans by assuming a variety of attractive physical forms (usually as a fair maiden).

Nix was a female monster.

Sam still thought of us as the same.

Dark, unpredictable creatures, lurking in plain sight.

Now that he let me in, I was going to destroy every single one of his walls and finally make him mine.

Ten hours after being balls deep inside Aisling Fitzpatrick, I got a call that Catalina Greystone, AKA Mother Dearest, had finally (and uneventfully) kicked the bucket.

“Just thought y’all should know. What with the fact that they’re gonna knock the whole thang down next week. Not that the property’s worth a dime, mind you. But I thought, why not let her son know?” Cat’s neighbor, Mrs. Masterson, munched on something crunchy in my ear via a particularly annoying phone call.

Because I don’t care, I was tempted to reply.

Catalina’s death was new to me but not something I was interested in finding out more about.

She caught me at my personal trainer’s, flipping a truck tire that weighed almost as much as I did. I put her on speaker, tossing the phone on the foam floor as I continued flipping.

“How’d you get my number?” I grumbled, not mentioning the special code it required to get through to my line.

“Your daddy gave it to me. Troy somethin’.”

So Troy knew she was dead, too. I was surprised he didn’t show up at my door this morning with a bottle of champagne.

“Well, I appreciate the heads-up, but I can’t imagine there’s anything in this house of value to me.”

Other than my fucking long-lost childhood and memories of drug and alcohol abuse.

Cat had tried reconnecting with me over the years since dropping me off at the Brennans’ with nothing but a duffel bag and bad memories, but the truth of the matter was, I’d rather get fucked by a cactus—raw—than exchange a word with her.

Hell, I’d marry the goddamn cactus if it meant never seeing her wretched face.

Fortunately, being the garbage human that she was, Cat hadn’t gone through extreme lengths to try to reach out. She sent me letters periodically and tried to call every now and again, especially when she had money troubles, which—cue the surprise act—was fucking always.

As if giving a fuck was on the menu for me. By the address on the letters (that went straight into the trash—unless it was wintertime, in which case straight into the fireplace), I figured she spent the last half decade on the outskirts of Atlanta, sucking soggy cock to fund her drug and designer bag problems.

One especially slow night at Badlands I even Google-mapped her address and wasn’t surprised to see she lived in a place I wouldn’t even store my shoes. A rickety wooden thing any wolf could blow over and knock down.

If I cared enough for revenge, I’d have gone there to do exactly that. Made her homeless. As it happened, not enough time had passed for me to think of her as an afterthought, let alone an enemy.

“Aren’t you gonna ask how she passed away?” The woman on the other line continued nagging. My trainer, Mitchell, a man who looked like a rock (not to be confused with The Rock), handed me a fresh towel, offering me a what-the-hell look.

He wasn’t used to me giving strangers the time of day.

“Air bike and ropes next. You’ve got sixty seconds to recover, Monster,” he mouthed, offering me a fist pump I refused to reciprocate on the grounds I wasn’t fucking five, before scurrying behind a black curtain to allow me some privacy.

“Hello? You still there?” the Southern woman on the other line demanded, her nasal voice grating.

I picked up the phone from the floor.

“Listen, Mrs. Masterson, I appreciate your motherly concern, but to say Cat and I weren’t close would be the understatement of the fucking century. There’s nothing I need from her place. I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to go down to Georgia.”

But I had every fucking intention of going down on Aisling tonight, and that was a problem. A pleasant shiver prickled my skin. Who would have thought little Nix had it in her? To con, deceive, and weasel her way into my club—into my pants—and give me the fuck of a lifetime?

Not me, that was for sure, but I was happy to give her a replay and finally get her out of my system. See all the tricks she picked up in med school and mar that pale, milky skin of hers with my nails and teeth. She was swan-like. Elegant and aristocratic. And it made fucking her so much more pleasing than my usual flavor of pointy long nails, botoxed lips, and ass implants.

There was something simply not as exciting about being buried in a woman that had already seen more dicks than a urologist. Experienced or not, I could tell by the ice princess’ touch she didn’t give it out so easily.

She couldn’t have.

She was hopelessly fucking obsessed with me.

And fuck, for the first time in a decade, that little fact made me proud rather than annoyed.

“Drugs. She had an overdose. That’s how she passed away,” Mrs. Masterson continued, unconcerned with my lack of interest in the conversation. “Poor thang. Girl Scouts found her. Came to try to sell her some cookies. Would you believe? They looked through the window. Saw her lying on the floor and called 9-1-1. Poor children. No one ought to see somethin’ like that, let alone kiddies. They say she’d been like that for days. Maybe a week. No one came to check on her. Her phone log said no one even called. She was a lonely woman, your mother.”

I was hardly surprised. Cat was about as lovable as an SS soldier and just about as endearing. When she was younger, she had her looks to save her. Once her beauty had faded, she became just another haggard junkie, and life tended to be harder on those people.

“Look, I know you two weren’t exactly thick as thieves…” the old woman on the other line sighed “…still, son, you should be here.”