“I told you you’d thank me for all of it someday, Natalie.”

Her pupils are out of focus as she fingers the row of white pearls around her neck like some sort of Tiffany’s rosary. They’re new, of course. The identical ones she wore before have long since been seized by the FBI as collateral evidence, along with the Malibu house, the Manhattan penthouse, both yachts, and the bank accounts, of course. Luckily for her and her predilection towards strands of expensive pearls and the lifestyle she’s become accustomed to, my mother has already been shacking up with Dad’s VP since week two of the trial.

Money does NOT buy class, by the way.

By “all of it”, she of course means all the grooming - all the “finishing classes”, all the private tutoring in everything from polite conversation to classical piano. The diet I’ve been on since I was twelve; the nose-job I had when I was sixteen.

And by “thanking” her for it, she means that I’m “prepared” now. I’m groomed, primped, and ready to marry off to some other reckless man with money, like her to my father, or his vice president after the arrest.

So, yes, that’s how I get to a place where I’m of course saying yes to a slick, moneyed, philandering, and lying prick like Vince Capra when he asked me to marry him. Because my life has been determined for me before I was old enough to know any better. Because my place as arm candy - as an accessory - has been predestined from three or four generations back of prim, shrewd, demure women of high birth.

My hands tighten to white knuckles on the steering wheel of the Bentley - Vince’s Bentley, that I’m allowed to drive - as the thought of my pre-determined fate gets my blood boiling. My mother would push this aside if she were in my shoes, I know that. She’d pour an extra finger of gin, maybe go on a shopping spree, and then compartmentalize the whole thing away. In fact, she did exactly that - many times, actually - when my father’s indiscretions with a secretary, or the nanny, or whoever else came to light.

“It’s different for men, honey,” she’d say, straightening her shoulders and holding her neck high. “It’s just different.”

Bullshit.

And it’s there in that car, roaring into downtown LA with the anger billowing up inside of me, that I know unequivocally that I am not my mother. I am not going to just push this aside, or tuck it away, or shrug and let it slide. I’m not going to “let it go” because “men will be men” and somehow fucking his secretary is Vince’s Goddamn birthright or something for being born rich and a guy.

That’s where my mother and I are different.



I don’t even know where I’m going until I pull up in front of the entrance to the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard.

Fuck it.

I smile at the valet as I breeze luggage-less into the lobby of the thousand-dollar a night hotel. I mean, I’ve got Vince’s credit card in my clutch, and I’m sure as hell not going back to our place tonight, not after-

I feel ill as I suddenly wonder if he’s ever fucked her there. The idea of them screwing in our bed has my skin crawling as I smile thinly at the concierge and sign for the penthouse suite Vince will be paying for tonight.

All I want to do is shut myself away - forever if need be - and drown whoever this version of me is that I never wanted to be in booze.

I crack a thin, cold smile - there’s one way my mother and I are the same, at least.

The door shuts behind the bellhop, leaving me alone with the screaming in my head, the fury still pounding through my veins, and the minibar, of course. I grab two nips of gin from it, dumping them sans-ice into one of the crystal tumblers from the table and stalking across the room to drape myself across the bed with a groan.