My expression probably gave away my shock. He smiled his rare, patronizing grin that drove me to murder.

“Fairhurst ran his mouth about your daddy’s little playground. You grew up here, but I know secret places you would never dream of finding yourself. If you play your cards right, and prove to know how to suck a cock, I might show you some of them—just as long as you don’t confuse this for a relationship, or expect me to get you off. I don’t get people off. Other people’s pleasure turns me off.”

He said the words so frankly, I almost thought he was joking. He advanced to the door, calm and serious.

“You expect me to make you come, yet you won’t make me come?” I asked when he had his back to me, at the threshold to my room.

I couldn’t wrap my head around why any girl would agree to that. Yet dozens of girls at All Saints High had. I’d witnessed it myself.

“Slow learner, but she’s finally getting it.”

He didn’t bother stopping before he slammed my door shut.

The next day, I managed to get rid of my parents, who had come along to help me settle in at Carlisle.

My dad went hunting with a bunch of his rich-ass buddies on the outskirts of wherever-the-fuck we were in Berkshire. Mom was busy furnishing my room and spending time with her GBFF (gay BFF), Fairhurst.

I started my morning at six o’clock with a jog to let off some steam. Discipline was going to be the key to surviving this bitch for six months, and I had plenty of it. After a quick shower, a coffee, and a smoke, I picked up the two keys to the cellar where I kept my work in progress and hit the studio. Apart from Edgar, I wasn’t going to let anyone see it before it was done. That was the opposite of the point of having a prestigious internship, but fuck it, I didn’t come here to learn.

I came here to avenge.

Getting into my studio was a tad harder than breaking into the Pentagon. I’d put an entire system in place to ensure complete privacy. To start with, the room used to be the castle’s pantry—cold, dry, and underground—a perfect cave to keep marble and stone. There were two doors, and therefore two locks, so no one could see what I was working on.

And I was working goddamn hard to make sure mine was the best art piece.

I picked up a drill and began wrestling with the sculpture, stone dust gathering at my feet. Metric’s “Help I’m Alive” blasted through my earbuds as I worked. The shape of the statue was starting to sharpen and take on three dimensions. I’d thought about this piece more than I liked to admit while I was fucking around in the Hamptons, playing normal with my extended family for a few weeks earlier this summer. I’d ended up sending it straight to England, because I couldn’t stand to look at it, and I knew there was a good chance people would be able to see it if I worked on it there.

I penciled reference marks, cut, carved, shaped, and polished the sculpture the entire day, knowing Lenora was probably somewhere upstairs, wandering aimlessly, trying to figure out where the fuck I was. She was free to do whatever she wanted with her mornings and afternoons. I wasn’t going to use her services, unless her lips counted as service when they wrapped around my cock every night.

As long as I kept tabs on her, she was good to roam free and play with her garbage.

I tried to push last night from my thoughts—specifically the part where she’d pushed my hand into her jammies. I thought I’d handled it fine. Though she did suspect I was a virgin.

Fuck.

Did it matter how I handled it? She was a fucking no one. Why would I care?

Okay, Vagina McPussyson. Deal with this eternal question after you’re done working.

At around six pm, I heard a knock on the outer cellar door. The way it was designed, there was a cobblestone stairway with a door at the top and another one when you reached the bottom of the stairs. Wiping the sweat and dust from my brow, I turned around and fished for the keys in my pocket. I didn’t wear a protective suit, goggles, or a mask while sculpting. If my lungs were going to collapse at twenty-five from being filled with stone, weed, and tar, so be it.

I opened the first door, and when I reached the top of the stairs, I pressed an elbow against the second.

“Secret word?” I growled.

If it was Good Girl, who’d somehow found me, I was going to chain her to her bedpost and have her suck a gallon of my blood as punishment, watching as she squirmed in embarrassment as she did.

“Bugger off,” I heard Edgar Astalis growl from the other side. The secret word we’d agreed on was Michelangelo, but bugger off seemed more fitting.

I’d told the old man he could monitor my work when we’d agreed I’d take this gig. Someone had to make sure I wasn’t going to present a twelve-foot marble dick at Tate Modern six months from now.

I unlocked the second door, motioning for him to come downstairs.

When we stood in front of the sculpture, he frowned.

“I’d like to make one thing clear,” he said, staring at the general shape I’d worked my ass off on all day.

“I know you made things difficult for Lenny in high school. And for the most part, I turned a blind eye to it, because I believe it is our job to pave our own way in life. But if you try to hurt my daughter—or do it unintentionally, for that matter—I will make sure no gallery in Europe will ever work with you. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly.” I shoved my fists into my pockets, all calm. I took his threat in stride—not necessarily because I didn’t plan on hurting her, but because I wasn’t counting on getting work as an artist. I sculpted because I liked doing it. I could work as a roofer and be perfectly content.

He shook his head.

“The heads are disproportionate. The composition feels wrong. You might have to start from scratch.”

“Fuck that.”

“Watch your language. And as I said—you might. This is not up to par with what I’m used to from you. You’ve put your skill into this, but where’s the rest of you? You need to bleed your heart into this piece.”

I don’t have a heart. “Working on it,” I said instead, ignoring the fact that he was right.

I’d gotten sloppy, not because I lacked the talent or technique, but because staring at this statue was hard, and doing it justice was damn near impossible. The air was thinner at the top. The more successful you were, the more suffocating the expectations for your work became—another reason why artists were depressed all around.

His eyes roved the sculpture. It felt like he was ripping my guts open, poking at my organs.

He shook his head. “Work harder. Connect with this piece,” he rumbled, his voice as big as his body. “Professor Fairhurst is looking for you. He is upstairs. Oh, and Vaughn?”

I turned to look at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You cock this sculpture up, you make me regret giving you this internship, and I assure you, Daddy Spencer is not going to save you this time.”

It wasn’t the first time someone had threatened that my last name wouldn’t get me out of trouble.

But it was the first time I’d believed it.

I pushed Harry’s office door open without knocking, leaning against its frame when I realized what I’d walked in on. He had a guy—a student, I bet—bent with his elbows pressed against the windowsill, pants down, his milky-white ass hanging in the air. Harry was inclined, ass on his desk, pants open, stroking himself and enjoying the view.