Page 1 of House Rules
1
Phoenix
It’s right there,staring me in the face, daring me to take it.
Taunting me.
My fingers smooth the skirt of my maid’s uniform, drying the dampness of sweat and nerves, and I swallow past the lump in my throat. My ticket to ride is inches away in a glass case with half a dozen other watches. He probably wouldn’t even miss it. That one little watch could buy my freedom, could buy a whole new life.
I could move somewhere new, somewhere the ghost of my father’s memory doesn’t haunt me—that or my inconvenient, unrequited crush on the four most powerful men in the entire state of Georgia.
The Titans.
One of them is my former boyfriend; the other three his best friends. They’re all the children of my employers—the Titan-Wynn Conglomerate. Their families own a crazy number of resort-casinos around the United States.
Despite knowing how pathetic it is, I’ve been mooning over every one of the Titans since we were kids.
That watch is my means of getting away from them, away from all the people who still call me Pheebs, like they did when I was a scrawny twelve-year-old girl. I can run away, and like my actual name suggests, I can be reborn somewhere new. Maybe Montana or Washington state. Anywhere that bears no resemblance to Savannah and the Titans’ ridiculous floating casino and the people who live here in their resort.
All I need is the courage to reach out and take it.
The watch, with its platinum case framing a dark green face, and all its little dials—I have no idea what any of them mean—along with its dark green crocodile skin band—is a thing of beauty. I have a hard time believing, though, that it’s worth close totwo hundred thousand dollars. It’s just a watch, right? How can it be worth so much? How can a timepiece be worth more than a car—hell, worth more than the homes some people live in?
What parent in their right mind spends that mind-boggling amount of money on a fucking watch, especially when they know their kid is never going to wear it?
It’s ridiculous. Baffling. Irritating. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand the finer things in life, never having had them, but I do know what two hundred thousand dollars means.
Freedom.It’s more money than I will ever see, all wrapped up in one little watch that Conrad Masterson never even wears.
Not because he doesn’t like it, I don’t think. I’ve watched him all these years. We practically grew up together at this resort, after all. It’s a big, fancy-ass place—part of it rising tall on the banks of the Savannah River and the other part a seven-deck casino cruise ship offering a cruise and gambling experience.
There are plenty of spaces to hide, but I was close enough to see things. To see him.
Especially given our brief ‘relationship’ when we were juniors in high school.
Con turns up his nose at just about everything his parents provide for him. Poor little rich boy, he doesn’t like the pretty things Mommy and Daddy buy him.
The thought is cruel and jealous—ugly, my mom would’ve said—and not something I would typically think about anyone. Anyone except the Titans, I guess. It’s not even technically true—Con is anything but a poor little rich boy—but the idea helps me keep my distance.
Soon enough, Con and his friends won’t be my problem anymore. They’ll be just another distant memory of a time that needs forgetting.
I chew on my lip, staring at the watch through the case.
That’s if I actually work up the nerve to take the damn thing.
If I do, I’ll leave Savannah immediately. Go a couple of towns over…no, I’ll have to go to a different state altogether, somewhere no one knows who Con Masterson or the Titans are. Somewhere he’ll never think to look, and since it’ll probably take him a month to even realize the watch is missing, I’ll be long gone, anyway.
I start to reach for it, then jerk my hand back. But what if he notices right away? What if he catches me? The possibility makes my heart pound, and a single bead of sweat traces my spine.
What would he do to me?
I’d be fired, that much was certain, but would he call the police? The watch’s value is enough for the crime to be considered a felony. I don’t have any priors, but that doesn’t matter if a Masterson is involved. I don’t doubt that the Mastersons would pay off any number of lawyers and judges to ensure I never saw sunlight again.
They’d hold me up as an example, use me to show everyone what happens when someone steals from a Titan.
That’s the best case scenario. The longer I think about Con and the way he moves around this town with his friends, the more certain I am that they probably wouldn’t waste their time with a trial.
The worst outcome would see me dead, my body weighed down with bricks and tossed in the Savannah. Or maybe they’d take me out on their private boat and simply push me over the side once they hit the open sea.
