Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(37)

I hadn’t been in the best of moods since, and the more I thought about it, the more paranoid I became that she was going to find out without me telling her.

The whole thing was complicated and messy as fuck. When Dad had come home from a weekend in Vegas married, I’d been pissed. It had been five years since it had happened, and I’d only gotten more angry about it since. Luli Wang, I’d never give her our last name, was a bitch who had seen my dad placing big bets with his friends, and decided he was her ticket. They’d gotten drunk, the alcohol had made Dad do stupid things, and they’d gotten married.

Her view of him changed when they got back to Houston though. Seeing that he lived in a normal house, had a normal car, worked a normal job as a police officer, and lived a normal life had shattered the fantasies she’d built when she’d seen the money being placed on the table in the casino. He wasn’t poor, far from it because he lived life within his means and didn’t waste what he earned, but he wasn’t what she’d expected.

Then she’d met me, and the look she’d gotten on her face as she looked me up and down and told me to call her ‘mommy’ – fucking no – had led to one of the biggest arguments I’d ever had with my dad. I still wasn’t sure we’d fix what had been broken by his stupidity, something he knew he’d been now seeing as how his ‘wife’ had made it her mission to make his life a living hell. I’d also told her it would be a cold day in hell before I’d call her mom, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t overreach for mommy ever.

As if that wasn’t enough, two other massive things had happened thanks to that marriage. She had a daughter, Rita, who was well known to police officials throughout the country. Nothing major, just cat fights, being caught in women’s beds, and stealing money out of a guy’s wallet as he slept off their fuck fest. So, I had a new ‘stepsister’ who like her mother did her best to get into my bed. I’d eventually changed the locks at my house, added extra security, and had a security company come and wire the place up with the orders that if they saw either of them trespassing, they were to call the police. One night, both of them had tried breaking in, stupidly wearing nothing but their underwear, and it had been Dad and his partner who’d attended the call.

Learning what I’d been going through and faced with exactly how shitty his decision had been, hadn’t been all that had come from it. Oh no, the cherry on the top of that sundae had been the fact Luli, not Rita, had been involved in a scam going on throughout the States, run by a man in Athens, Greece. The women involved contacted men via social media, using games or groups on them to find what they were looking for. They would initiate contact and strike up a relationship with the men which they’d then progress into a more cyber-sexual one. If the man was married, they subtly convinced him to file for divorce, offering him promises of a perfect life together, heavily motivated by sex. Seeing as how the men they chose were either of an advanced age, or not what modern society would deem as ‘good looking’, a majority of the men fell for it and ended their marriages. If they didn’t, screenshots of the conversations would wing their ways into the wives email accounts, meaning they ended the marriage instead. Once the man was free, the woman in question swooped in, and after a couple of weeks of sex, left just as quickly with as much money as they could get.

Luli had intended to do this with Dad, but when she’d met him she’d suspected the police were investigating her involvement in it, so she’d gotten him drunk and married him in Vegas, hoping it would confuse them into thinking she was innocent of the crimes. The irony that she married a police officer wasn’t lost on any of us when this all came out.

Plot twist time – and this still blew my mind – faced with the evidence, Dad had agreed to work undercover on the case, being introduced to Luli’s acquaintances and getting access to her online accounts via a piece of software installed on his Wi-Fi, not his computer. Putting it on his internet connection meant that regardless of what device she used, they would have her login details stored for them to use to monitor what was being said. I’d been so pissed off by it all, that I’d moved shortly afterwards, so I didn’t know what information they’d uncovered since.

What I did know was that four months after I got here, none other than Rita fucking Wang had driven into town, dropped her panties, and created mayhem since.

So yeah, Rita was my ‘stepsister’ if you could call her that. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone if I could, even if it meant potentially losing both balls to an axe. This meant that the woman who’d attacked Jose while she was pregnant, screwed her husband in her house, tried to attack Tabby, and a whole lot of other shit, was technically related to me.

The night she’d been in the cell next to Tabby’s, I’d threatened her with making a phone call – that was to her mom and my dad. Luli hated when Rita got into trouble, probably because it made her paranoid her own tales of deception and crime would be found out, and always found a way to make Rita pay. After Tab had left the building, I’d gone back and told Rita that if she targeted her or Jose again, I’d make her life a living hell and involve her mom. She’d looked scared enough by the double threat to stay quiet, but who knew with that woman.

I knew that she had a court date coming up though because of what she’d done to Jose. And yeah, I’d been heavily involved in making sure that happened and that she didn’t get out of it this time. I was hoping she’d finally get what she was due, time behind bars where she could make plans to disappear out of my life as quickly as she came into it.