When that happened, trust me, it was no fun, it hurt, loads, so I stopped it before it could start and didn’t let anyone get close.

No one.

Ever.

That was until Daisy. But that didn’t work out.

When Daisy hit the Denver social scene, I thought she was aces. She was not brittle and fake like everyone else of my father’s (and thus my) acquaintance. She looked like Dolly Parton. She dressed like Dolly Parton. She had a voice with a country twang. She had a tremendously cool giggle that sounded like jingling Christmas bells.

And she was real. And she liked me too.

But Nanette Hardy was ripping her to shreds at Monica Henrique’s garden party a couple of years ago, really laying into Daisy like only vicious, catty Nanette could do. Monica was giggling and I was quiet and waiting for my chance to get in a good shot. My chosen topic was Nanette’s husband getting rear-ended (literally) by the pool boy which only Nanette didn’t know about, everyone else knew all about it and was laughing behind her back when Monica’s face went pale and she was looking over my shoulder.

Nanette quit talking and I looked behind me. Daisy was there.

I caught the pain in her eyes before she looked at me like I was slime.

Then she walked away.

I knew why. I’d been nice to her; I’d been hoping she’d be my friend. She thought I was talking behind her back which was worse than what Nanette and Monica were doing. Everyone knew Nanette and Monica were bitches, it was expected.

I called Daisy half a dozen times and went over to her house twice. She wouldn’t see me, or at least that was what her husband said when he turned me away from the door.

In the end, her husband Marcus had come to visit my father. My father had told me under no circumstances was I to try to communicate with Daisy Sloan again. He explained it was crucial, it was duty, it was business. Bottom line, Marcus was a powerful man, nearly as powerful as my father and my father couldn’t have Marcus as an enemy so I needed to back off.

Ever the dutiful daughter, I didn’t try to contact Daisy again.

I didn’t blame her for thinking what she thought of me though I would have liked to have the chance to explain. Even though I didn’t blame her, it hurt all the same.

I never spoke to Nanette or Monica again. Well, that was, I never spoke to them again after the “incident” a couple weeks later when I outed Nanette’s husband at a cocktail party at an art gallery, he took that opportunity to share he was g*y, he divorced her and was now living in Miami with his boyfriend, Pedro, but how would I know all that would happen?

Nanette and Monica had been “friends” for years. I didn’t miss them.

Daisy had been a semi-friend for a couple of months. I missed her.

“Is Hector here?” Ally asked Shirleen and I just stopped myself from sucking in my lips. Instead, I stared at the plush carpet in the offices.

“Ally.” It was a male’s deep voice, I was guessing Luke Stark’s as it was coming from his direction. His voice held a warning.

“I’m just asking,” Ally said.

I gave the impression that this exchange bounced right off my armor too but my stomach clenched.

God, I hoped Hector wasn’t there. That would be awful.

I knew there was a chance I’d run into him as he worked for Nightingale now but I was hoping he was busy doing private eye stuff, gallivanting around town bringing down perps and taking photos of cheating husbands in the act and whatever else private eyes did.

Even though Hector worked for them, I chose Nightingale Investigations because they were the best. Better than the best. My father said Lee could move his operation to New York or Los Angeles and corner the market on investigations, security and bounty hunting, he was that good.

One of the things my father taught me was always but always get the best.

“He’s here all right,” Shirleen answered Ally’s question and even though I felt my heart beating faster, I allowed myself to lift my chin and look calmly and coolly at Shirleen.

She was pretty, middle-aged and hitting it well. She had beautiful mocha skin and the biggest afro I’d ever seen, but it suited her perfectly. She had magnificent eyes.

I knew she once was competition for my father in the drug scene but she’d pulled out and gone straight. I admired her for that. That must have taken a ton of courage and it said a lot about her.

Still, it didn’t stop me from staring her down. My cool blue eyes locked with her arctic tawny ones. We had a stare down and even though she was very scary, I won.

Then again, I always won. I was good at the stare down. I could hold a cool, calm, unaffected stare for hours. It was something else I had loads of practice with.

Once she looked away, I aimed my composed glance at Ally then at Indy. They had attitude (the good kind), I could see it and sense it. Regardless, they were also no match for me and both looked away before I did.

I knew I was not making friends and winning allegiances. That was the point.

These people would never want me to be their friend.

I looked down at my toe again and thought about Hector.

When I knew Hector, he’d been a man in my father’s army. My father liked him a great deal. My father told me Hector reminded him of… well, him. Smart. Sharp. Good instincts. Loyal. Skilled. Hungry, but in a good way, an ambitious way.

My father had a high opinion of himself.

Hector was one of very few men my father trusted and respected, totally.

It was a mistake.

What we didn’t know was that Hector was also an undercover DEA agent. In fact the undercover DEA agent that brought my father’s empire down.

What neither Hector nor my father knew was that I helped him.

The Feds took everything, my father’s house, his cars, his condo in Boca, his furniture. They froze his bank accounts. They even tried to get my trust fund but since it had been set up for me by my grandmother before my father was a Drug King, they couldn’t touch it.

I was glad they took all my father’s stuff, it was tacky and ostentatious. My father had been a nothing, a nobody and married a rich girl. He’d come up from nothing the hard way, the dirty way, the vile way and he’d proven himself to my mother’s family, to the world by becoming rich, powerful and very, very frightening. He’d driven my mother to leaving us that was how frightening he was. She left me behind. She left everything behind. Didn’t even take a suitcase.

She just disappeared. Poof. Gone.

And she never looked back. Not once.

I’d been eleven.

I didn’t dwell. I’d lost a lot by then, a lot of friends, a lot of servants I’d tried to make into friends (a mistake I learned early not to make again), my grandparents were all dead. Losing my mother was just another in a long string of loss. I was used to that too and it didn’t faze me. Or, I should say, it fazed me (truth be told, it destroyed me), I just never let it show.