This time, when I take a swig, I down enough in one go that I feel momentarily lightheaded.

I offer the bottle to Oscar, even though I’m certain he isn’t going to take it. To my surprise, he does, swigging it like he’s as repulsed by this place as the rest of us. He looks like he belongs here though, even more so than Vic.

“Are you okay?” I ask, noticing the faintest sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, but there’s something off in his silver gaze that tells me he isn’t being entirely truthful. “This whole scene … it reminds me of my father.” He takes another drink, shoving the bottle into Aaron’s hands and then moving forward to rejoin Vic.

“His father …” I murmur as Aaron glances my way. I feel like he should be nervous, seeing Tom and Ophelia again, but instead, he just seems pissed off. His mouth is set in a thin line, his shoulders taut. I stare at his tattooed hand as he curls it into a fist around the neck of the champagne bottle, stretching and twisting the letters of HAVOC that are inked into his flesh.

“His dad ran in these same sorts of circles,” he offers, but no more. He’s as aware as I am that Oscar’s story is his to tell. Aaron turns his green-gold eyes from me to something just ahead of us and then frowns, letting me take the champagne from him. “Who the fuck is that?”

There’s a pit in my stomach that hurts, even before I see that what he’s looking at. Turning my head, I notice a pretty young girl with hair like gold and a face carved by expensive moisturizer, a nutritionist, and a professional trainer. Motherfucker. She looks right at me as we approach, the same way that Sara Young did, like she hates me for no reason at all. It’s called internalized misogyny, and it’s a hell of a bitch. Even though I know it’s there, even though I try my best to control it, I feel it, too.

Get the fuck away from my men, I think as the girl saunters up to Vic and Oscar in a gold dress that swishes when she walks. That’s the type of dress Penelope always liked to wear, one with movement. But when she did it, she walked like the whole world was fun. This girl walks like the whole world owes her a favor.

I scowl, and Callum chuckles, finishing my strawberry and flicking the stem onto the passing tray of a different waiter. It’s covered in empty cups and toothpicks.

“Go, defend your territory,” he tells me, so I do, stepping forward to stand at Vic’s side just as his mother introduces the newcomer.

“Victor, this is Trinity Jade,” Ophelia says, smiling sweetly as she lazily flicks her fingers at the young woman. The fact that she won’t even acknowledge my existence or my place as Victor’s wife puts a seed of hate deep into my heart.

But that’s part of the game, isn’t it? The most important part really, to pretend that you’re not playing it at all.

“Trinity,” Vic says as he nods once in greeting then turns back to his mother. “What is this? Your pathetic, too-late attempt to set me up with someone?” Based on Trinity’s reaction or rather, the fact that she has no reaction at all, I can tell she’s already been briefed on the situation. “Thanks, but no thanks.” Without him having to say a single word, I know what Victor wants. I take his arm, standing opposite Oscar on his right side. Hael has already wandered away to look up at paintings that are two stories tall and bathed in too-white light. In reality, I think he’s canvassing the place for possible exits, cameras, and guards. “Have you met my wife, Bernadette?” Vic gestures at me with a tattooed hand as I try to hide the sheer pleasure I get at hearing him use the word wife.

It’s a traditional term, steeped more in pain and servitude than anything else, but I like the way we’ve twisted it. I’m married to Victor Channing, but I’m fucking four other guys. I hide my lascivious smile in the champagne, snatching another strawberry off a tray.

When I take a bite of it, I look Trinity right in the eyes.

Hers are brown, but not a honey-almond color like Hael’s. Nor are they dark as pitch, like Victor’s. More like … an endless stretch of sand on a deserted coastal beach, wet and covered in seaweed. She gives me nothing in response, even when I eat the strawberry the way I might suck a dick.

“Trinity’s mother is the head of the Save These Precious Children League.” Ophelia delivers the words the way any normal person might, like she’s actually interested in a charity that helps kids. The two women exchange looks and smiles before Ophelia turns back to her son. “She’s grooming her to be the head of the charity after she graduates college.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s ‘groomed’ her—just not for that,” Vic says with a laugh that makes the hair on the back of my neck raise up. His double meaning of the word ‘groomed’ doesn’t escape any of us. Ophelia’s mouth tightens imperceptibly, just enough to give her a single tiny tension wrinkle on one side. Victor looks like he was made to own the world; the rest of the people in here wish they did. Some of them might even think they do. “What’s your point, Mother? Please get to it and quickly, and we’ll pretend you’re not trying to kill my wife or that you didn’t kidnap my brother.”

Vic takes the drink from me and chugs the remainder of it, handing the empty bottle over to Oscar before he takes a step forward. Ophelia’s face doesn’t register a word of what her son is saying, but I notice her eyes stray to the necklace of diamonds at my throat again.

“Don’t melodramatize the situation, son. You sound so unbelievably gauche when you ramble like that.” She swings her gaze from the necklace—which is so very clearly upsetting to her—back to Victor’s sardonic stare.

“If there’s anything more pathetic than a greedy man grasping for more gold, it’s someone who used to have it all, lost it, and is suckling at the dick of the devil for more. Look, I’ll be straight with you,” Vic continues as Tom fidgets behind Ophelia. The way he looks at the boys and at me tells me several things. First off, he’s scared. Second, he’s jumpy. The first chance he gets to hurt one of us, he’s going to take it and he isn’t going to hold back the way I did with Kali. “We’re at war now, you and me.”

“You’re not just at war with me,” Ophelia says, still smiling, raising her glass at friends that pass by. She turns her obsidian stare on her son’s matching one. If Vic and I ever have a kid, I bet they’ll have that same eye color, like the blackest night in winter, when the clouds are so thick they block out all the stars. It’s that savage ruthlessness that’s etched into their DNA, impossible to escape or ignore. “I want you to look around and remember how to keep your mouth shut.”

“About which part of the equation?” Oscar asks, but Ophelia refuses to look in his direction. It’s as if nobody in the world exists but for Victor. Ophelia might hate him, but she wants his attention, regardless of what she has to do to get it. “The fact that you help facilitate the buying and selling of children? Or the kidnapping? The murder?”

“How are you involved with the GMP, Mother?” Vic asks, but Ophelia just sips her own champagne and smiles.

“You’re such a child, Victor. Springfield is nothing. It’s not even a dot on a map. You could be and have so much more. Trinity’s grandfather is a judge. He’s prepared to grant you an annulment on your marriage.”