“We’re just having fun,” Tag said. “Peanut can take a little fun. Can’t you, Peanut?”

I couldn’t open my mouth or a primal scream would come out. My nails bit through my flesh and I smiled tightly at my brother as blood trickled from the wounds.

At the head of the table, my mother rose. “Can I get anyone another drink?”

AS USUAL, the family retired to the back porch for after-dinner cordials and dessert. Also as usual, Leigh and Arielle declined dessert and disappeared to watch the children, while my mother fell asleep in her drink and my father and brothers dissected something they read in the Wall Street Journal. As they debated financial terms with which I had no familiarity, I excused myself to the restroom. No one even looked up.

Passing the open door to the family room, I heard Arielle’s nasally voice say, “It’s just so obvious that he’s making it up.”

I halted, veins alighting with anger.

“Oh, come on,” Leigh said. “That’s not fair. Why shouldn’t he see someone? He’s a good-looking guy. I really thought things were going to work out with—”

“Yeah, but they didn’t,” Arielle interrupted. “And his looks will only fool a girl for so long. You know as well as I do that there’s something off about him. You remember what happened when . . .”

Blood roared in my ears and I clenched my fists, briefly indulging in the fantasy of putting my hands around Arielle’s spray-tanned throat and squeezing until there was nothing left in her. I imagined her face turning red, and then blue, as she gasped and choked, pleading with me. Maybe she wouldn’t dismiss me so easily when I held her life in my hands.

But I wouldn’t do that, of course. It was just another totally normal, inappropriate thought, the kind born of healthy resentment. With my head held high, I walked past the family room, past the bathroom, and out the front door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN CAT

I had been eyeing the partnership ever since I first walked through the polished mahogany doors of Barker & Liu, LLP, four years ago. I knew reaching its pinnacle would be no cakewalk; across all offices internationally, the law firm made fewer than twenty partners annually, and only one or two were women. The road to the top was steep and packed with obstacles, but as my father always said, nothing worth having is easy.

“Not easy” was putting it lightly. Being named partner would require an almost inhuman dedication to the job. The hours were so long and unrelenting that I ate most of my meals at my desk and worked through the night a few times per year. Most people couldn’t handle it. They burned out; a lucky few escaped to cushy corporate jobs while the majority moved to government work or smaller firms, taking the substantial pay cut in exchange for a good night’s sleep and time with their families.

That wouldn’t be me. I could sleep when I was dead, and I had no family clamoring for my presence. I had exactly one social obligation: I joined my friends for bar trivia on Thursday nights. We’d been going to the same cheesy sports bar since the summer I graduated from law school, when my friend Priya suggested its trivia night as a much-needed sanity break from studying for the bar exam. The idea of drinking pitchers of domestic beer and thinking about trivialities when I should be studying the rules of evidence made me break out in hives, and so I planned to skip it … until Connor asked if he would see me there.