Morbid, Elle. Really effing morbid.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she gritted when she finally got the box open.

My mind scattered, trying to come up with another topic. Before I’d settled on one, my phone buzzed from its place on the counter. A text.

Lord? I wondered.

I grabbed it, nervous energy thrumming through me—until I saw the screen said Mother. She was lucky it didn’t say Queen Bitch of the Bottle.

The text was succinct: I expect you at Sunday dinner.

The day my mother learned to text was not a good one. Before, she’d just call, and I could ignore it and not listen to the voicemail. But with her damn texts, I couldn’t avoid reading whatever normally angry message she sent. I’m sure that was part of her plan.

I thought about replying, but didn’t. Apparently she knew what I was thinking without me tapping in out on the screen.

He’s out of town. You have no excuse not to be on time.

The he in question was my stepfather.

I never went to the house if I knew he was going to be there. Everything about the man rubbed me the wrong way. From the way he cut my mother down to the way she hit the bottle even harder when he was around, and then there was the way he still tried to control me, even after I’d made it perfectly clear I was outside of his influence. Just knowing how much he disapproved of my “disgracefully ambitionless lifestyle” made me more determined to piss him off.

“You gonna stare at your phone or finish untangling that jewelry?” Yve drawled, picking up the ball of chain.

I flipped my phone over on the counter and met her eyes. “Hand me that clusterfuck. At least that’s one thing I can attack and destroy.”

Dinner was just as miserable as I’d expected it to be. Miserable, as in, if my stepbrother, DJ, made one more not-even-trying-to-pretend-not-to-be-a-dick comment, I was going to use my butter knife to commit murder. He opened his mouth, and I mentally promised myself he’d never make it to his twenty-sixth birthday without at least losing a limb.

Being in my mother and stepfather’s home made me stabby—and that was putting it nicely. But considering the alternative was to take a cue from my mother, grab a bottle, and find the bottom as quickly as possible, I’d take the slightly homicidal tendencies.

My mother had married Denton obscenely fast after my father had passed away. Why? Because she’d gone from being a high society wife to dead broke in the time span of a heart attack. No death of a loved one could be well timed, but my father’s was particularly bad. He traded stocks heavily, on margin, which could be great if you knew what you were doing, but if you happened to die just before the stock market tanked and the margin calls came in and no one knew how to respond, it was the set up for a perfect storm. It took me years to understand how millions could disappear so fast. With no one responding to the margin calls, his broker started selling off the stocks in his account to increase the equity … but my dad had favored tech stocks, and they were all in the toilet. It quickly became a vicious cycle: stock was sold at a loss, the proceeds didn’t cover the margin call, and so the broker kept selling.

If my dad had been alive, he would’ve just thrown more cash in the account to stop the hemorrhaging. That would’ve at least given the investments a chance to bounce back … but once they were sold, there was no way to recover.

Within weeks, my mother went from being a wealthy widow to unable to make the mortgage payment without asking for loans from friends. The only money that could have been helpful was what my father had left to me—but it was trapped by the terms of a trust until I was twenty-one, and my mother had no way to circumvent the ironclad restrictions to give her free access.

And then she met Denton. Two months. It’d been eight weeks since my father had passed away, and she’d had a ring on her finger and a healthy new bank account.

I’d wanted to vomit at how quickly she’d moved on, but I guess desperation made people do things they’d never expect. Denton had been her way out of a situation she hadn’t been equipped to deal with. Part of me felt guilty that maybe the money in my trust fund could have saved her, but there’d been nothing I could do. It’d kept me in college, and that was about it.

“You know, Elle, I’m sure I could put a good word in for you at the firm. Maybe they’d take you on as a file clerk,” DJ said, standing and crossing the room to refill his tumbler with his daddy’s booze. My stepbrother was only dumb when it came to common sense and controlling his drug habit. Because apparently you could do coke and still remain gainfully employed as a smarmy lawyer. He’d been licensed for all of a few months, and yet from the way he talked, you’d think the dick had his name on the building or something. Oh wait—he did. Except the Fredericks on the building belonged to Denton Sr., not little DJ. And that good word he could put in for me? I’d rather he choke on it. The day I put myself under Denton’s control was the day I turned in my self-respect—because the man sure as hell didn’t respect anyone but himself.

“Not necessary. I’m quite happy where I am.”

“Working a street corner might be the oldest profession, but that doesn’t mean it’s a real profession, Eleanor.”

He called me by my full name and called me a whore in one sentence. Does that earn you bonus points, asshole?

“Actually, I’m fucking for free these days, Denty Junior. I’m working at a pawnshop though. Maybe it’s one you’ve heard of, since you’ve been frequenting them to pay for your coke habit? I hope Mother Dearest has the silver locked up, or we’ll be eating with our fingers soon, won’t we?”

DJ bared his teeth, and my mother lifted her head and stared. “A pawnshop? Really, Eleanor? It’s time to grow up and do something with your life.”

Like she was?

I didn’t reply, just stabbed into my poached salmon.

The table went blissfully silent for a moment—until DJ opened his mouth again.

“Yeah, Eleanor, aren’t you a little old—”

I cut him off. “Aren’t you a little old to still be living at home, DJ? How about you worry about you, and I’ll worry about me.”

“Enough,” Mother snapped, reaching for the bottle of wine near her glass. “We’re going to enjoy this meal without any further bickering from you two.”