Blythe said she’d had enough of TV, so they played Monopoly in her living room instead. Strangely, Bellamy had never played it before, though he did pick it up no time. He seemed to have all the luck as well, which irritated Rose to no end because he took delight in teasing her whenever she had to pay him. So, she cheated at every opportunity, helping herself and her mom stay in the game while undermining his almost supernatural dominance in property development.

Her mom knew what she was doing and had to cover her mouth to keep the chuckles in whenever she spotted one of Rose’s sleights of hand. Bellamy, however, didn’t pick up on it until one of his hotels mysteriously got downsized to a green house. When Rose landed on that property, his usual haughty gloat turned into the deepest, most bamboozled frown she’d ever seen. He gaped at his opponents, then slumped into a deadly serious re-examination of the board and everyone’s holdings. The poor guy doubted his own sanity rather than entertain the notion that he’d just been punked.

It was beyond sweet and Rose thought he was painfully cute as he scrambled with his thoughts. And although she couldn’t help blurting out a cackled laugh at his expense—exceeded only by her mom’s infectious belly laugh—Rose actually felt bad when she finally owned up to cheating. It was like she’d let him down somehow and dirtied the rose-colored glasses through which he’d seemed to have seen until now. She was about to reach over and grab his hand to ensure a better apology but stopped when her phone buzzed against her leg in the pocket of her jeans.

“Hey, Marty.” She stepped into the apartment building’s hallway after surrendering her last pitiful holdings in the game and shut the door behind her. The signal wasn’t great. His voice kept breaking up, so she asked him to hang on until she got down to the street for a better cell reception. “Okay, try again. You still there?”

“Yeah. We’ll have to make it quick, though,” he replied. “My wife’ll be here in a few minutes. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

“Gotcha.” Contrary to popular rumor, Rose had never seduced Marty or got him to do any of those hardcore things hinted at every now and then in office gossip. Something about her borderline goth-girl appearance and rebel attitude seemed to convince people that she was some sort of man-eating sexual deviant, which was so spectacularly off the mark that Rose had stopped denying it years ago. At least Marty knew the rumors weren’t true. Unfortunately, his wife Jamie wasn’t taking any chances. She hated Rose with a vengeance, by all accounts hated even the thought of her, whatever that meant.