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MILLER

M aren’s little sister is a fucking brat.

That’s the first thing I thought when I met Kit Fischer—seventeen and too lovely for her own good—at a family dinner I’d never wanted to attend in the first place.

I’d bumped into Maren over a drunken spring break. She was beautiful. I was twenty-two. That’s the entire reason we got together. I thought I’d made it clear that I was leaving for law school soon, that I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and if asked I’d have said we were just hanging out. Insisting I attend her family dinner didn’t feel especially like hanging out.

“You have to go,” my youngest sister had said. Maren was already making a name for herself, but it was the chance to meet Ulrika —a model so famous she needed only one name—that really wowed my sister.

Because her dating history was a fixture of gossip columns, I knew Ulrika had used her long legs and blonde hair to run through wealthy men for twenty years straight, producing two lookalike daughters along the way. But I had no idea what I was in for with one of those daughters when I agreed to go to her house.

“Would you like something else to drink?” asked Maren as I set my empty wine glass on the linen-covered table.

“Do you always drink that quickly?” asked Kit.

“ Kit ,” Maren and her mom hissed, horrified.

She shrugged. “Just wondering if this is a pattern. Alcoholism tends to present early in life.”

While Ulrika and Maren both had this sweet, almost childlike innocence about them, the youngest member of the family came off like a bitter war veteran who’d seen some shit and had nothing left to lose.

She made fun of my hair and what I was wearing, and followed this by asking how much my father had to donate to my alma mater to get me in. Henry Fischer—Kit’s biological father and Maren’s adoptive one—was known for his brutal takedowns. It seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

In the kitchen, Ulrika’s boyfriend, Roger, clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t mind Kit,” he said. “She means well.”

I raised a brow, and he laughed. “Her mom hasn’t always made the best choices with who she’s brought around. It takes a while to win Kit’s trust. She took a golf club to the guy before me, though he absolutely deserved it.”

Ulrika had run through four husbands at that point, and there were rumors about the last one—suspicious bruises, a drinking problem. I’d assumed they were bullshit.

Maybe they weren’t.

Maybe Kit’s animosity wasn’t about me at all. Maybe it was how she protected the people she loved. I could respect that.

“So how much of your family’s income comes from the Greek mafia?” she asked when I returned to the table.

I handed her my phone. “Check with my mom. She handles the finances.”

She asked if it was true that my father’s firm made most of their money representing human traffickers.

“Everyone likes a client who can pay in cash,” I replied.

For the first time all night, her mouth twitched, and it was as if I’d won something, though I had no clue what it was or why I cared about winning it.

“Sorry about Kit,” Maren said as she walked me to the penthouse’s private elevator to the lobby. “That was unusually bad, even for her. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Weirdly, by that point, I no longer wanted Kit’s abuse to stop. Because it served a purpose, yes, but also because I’d begun to enjoy it. When she sent that acid tongue of hers in my direction, it was like she was throwing down a toy she wanted me to fight her for.

As I left, I could suddenly picture staying with Maren, becoming part of her family. Returning, week after week, to bat off Kit’s abuse.

It would take me way too long to understand what had really changed.