The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(59)

I groan. “Mom, do you have any idea what efforts he’s made so that you wouldn’t see me? He’s spent over a decade trying to cut you out. I don’t understand how you can be so forgiving.”

“I’m forgiving, honey, because I see so much of him in you.”

I know she isn’t wrong, but it hurts anyway. “That’s pretty much the worst thing you could have said.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult. You’re brilliant like he is, but you’re also more stubborn than is good for you, and you’re so busy looking for the worst in people that you don’t always see the best. Instead of thinking he tries to control you because he’s punitive, is it at least possible that he loves you also? Couldn’t it be both?”

“It’s easier just to write people off,” I whisper.

She clasps my hand. “I know, Peaches. But that’s not a reason to do it.”





My mother and I exchange gifts and spend Christmas Day watching Hallmark movies I don’t pay much attention to. I used to love them as much as she does, and now…I don’t know. It’s all well and good, throwing a Christmas dance in a haunted mansion with the ghost you’re in love with, but I think I sort of prefer wandering the aisles of Target with Ben, arguing about Nerf guns.

The next morning, I hug my mom goodbye and take an Uber into the city, back to the house where I grew up. The car pulls into my father’s driveway, and resentment for Stephani flares anew. She’s torn out my mother’s willow trees in front. There are cheap planters there now, a showy mailbox. As I walk to the door, I consider subtle ways to let her know her taste sucks, but they’re all some version of you can’t teach an old whore new tricks, and that’s probably not in the spirit of what my mother is asking me to do here.

I ring the doorbell, and my father answers with Stephani lurking a few feet behind him, her smile strained and wary. As it should be—the only thing I hate more than a homewrecker is the husband who cheats in the first place. I’ve never been especially nice to her.

“Gemma!” he shouts. “Come in, come in.” He ushers me toward the family room, as if I didn’t spend the first fifteen years of my life here. “Steph was just whipping up some mimosas.”

I nod reluctantly, and Stephani goes to the bar my father installed across the room. The cabinet is full of new glassware while my mother is still using the same shit she left with over a decade ago. I’m irritated all over again.

Stephani sets the drinks in front of us. “I’ll let you two talk,” she says.

My father barely notices her, as if she’s a servant quietly ushering herself out. And that’s why you don’t sleep with your married boss, Steph. Because eventually you’ll be the wife he’s bored by too.

“So how are things at FMG?” he asks.

“Great. Busy.”

“I saw you’re taking on Fiducia.”

I stiffen. He always wants something. It’s entirely possible Fiducia or their counsel has asked him to lean on me a little.

“I am.” My voice hardens. “But I’m not discussing the case with you.”

He sighs. “I wasn’t trying to get you to divulge secrets. For Christ’s sake…can I not even ask you a simple question about work? What’s it going to take for you to forgive me?”

“Well, you could stop asking me for things that will hurt Mom, for starters. You could stop making everything you offer contingent on something else.”

“Is that what I was doing?” he demands. “Because I thought I was just asking my daughter about her job, in the hopes she’d finally realize that working for me would be far better than working for FMG.”

I set my glass down on the table, intentionally ignoring the coaster. Let Stephani go buy a brand-new table for ten grand because this one now has a water ring. Maybe it’ll help make up for the fact that her husband no longer notices her. “Is that what this is about?” I ask. “Convincing me to join your firm?”

“No,” he says heavily, and for a moment he looks his age. I can see who he’ll become over the next decade or two and it almost makes me sad for him. Except my mother will age, too, and she won’t get to do it here, with a full set of plates, an extra cabinet of glasses, and the man who promised to cherish her for as long as they both lived. “I’m asking what it will take to make you forgive me. If you don’t want to join my firm, fine, though God knows why you’re so hell bent on remaining in LA. Tell me what it will take for me to ask you a simple question without you jumping down my throat.”

Time travel. Go back in time and don’t screw my mother over.

It’s the petty answer of an angry teenage girl, though, and pragmatism wins out: if he’s willing to strike a bargain, there’s definitely something I want.

“Give Mom the money you should have given her in the first place.”

“The court—”

“Are you seriously going to try to convince me that it was a completely impartial decision?” I explode. “That she had a chance against the fleet of sharks you hired to crush her? I do this for a fucking living. It’s insulting you’d even try to pretend otherwise with me.”

He’s completely unperturbed by my outburst. As an attorney, I admire it. As his offspring, it makes me want to kick him in the face.