I made sure Mom and the twins got home safe—Emma hanging out the passenger window like a fucking puppy, shouting something about how the estate had better WiFi than our shitty apartment, but Mom was having none of it.

She'd gotten this look on her face, this absolutely not expression that I've seen exactly three times in my life: when I tried to explain cryptocurrency to her at age twelve, when she found out I'd been skipping school to code, and when Dad—well. When he left.

She was scared of being alone in that big house. That was the truth underneath it all. Scared of the silence, the echoes, the way the hallway would feel too long and the rooms too empty. With Charlotte basically living at the estate now, working with me and Anastasia and ARIA, Mom only had the twins for company.

Emma and Sarah, her built-in chaos agents, the two person wrecking crew that kept her from going full empty-nest existential crisis.

She couldn't let Emma go. Simple as that.

So Emma hugged me goodbye, her mouth pressed right up against my ear in that way that was either intimate or conspiratorial or both, and whispered: "What are you waiting for to fuck Mom? Then we can all be in the estate together."

I choked—actually fucking choked—and she just giggled that unhinged Emma giggle, the one that says I'm joking but I'm also absolutely not joking and we both know it.

I kissed them both goodnight, Mom's cheek warm and soft, Sarah's forehead where she likes it, and watched them disappear into Mom's GLE, the taillights vanishing into LA's perpetual golden haze like two red eyes blinking out of existence.

Then Antonio—god, Antonio—insisted on drinks. Like, insisted. He had the energy of someone who'd just discovered his entire life was curated by a seventeen-year-old and needed to process it through expensive whiskey.

"I'm a minor," I'd joked, but he just waved that away like it was a particularly persistent fly, and next thing I knew we were heading to this VIP club opposite my restaurant—because apparently opposite my restaurant.

Apart from Marcus Webb—that sad, drunk bastard I'd gotten shitfaced with to extract information like pulling teeth from someone who'd already had them knocked out—this was only the second time I'd shared drinks with another grown-ass man who wasn't trying to kill me or steal from me.

And honestly? The bar was not high, but Antonio was about to limbo right under it.

See, Antonio was a popular man. Had an image to protect. VIP clubs were his only safe drinking spots outside his home—can't have the real estate mogul getting sloppy at some dive bar where TMZ might catch him face-down in his own vomit, right?

Image is everything when you're building empires. I'd learn that lesson eventually, but right now I was still in the "buying my mom a mansion and hoping she doesn't ask questions" phase of my villain arc.

We entered Elysium—because of course it was called something pretentious as fuck, something that sounded like a nightclub in a Greek myth—and the vibe hit different immediately.

The place looked like someone had fucked a spaceship and a luxury bordello, then raised their beautiful bastard child on EDM and old money.

Deep purple and electric blue LED lighting bathed everything in this otherworldly glow that made you feel like you'd stepped into Blade Runner's VIP lounge.

The floors were polished black marble with geometric gold inlays that pulsed with the lighting, creating patterns that seemed alive—like the building itself was breathing, or maybe just had really good drugs.

Massive crystal chandeliers hung from ceilings traced with purple neon in honeycomb patterns, casting fractured light everywhere.

The VIP lounge we claimed was pure sinful indulgence—plush velvet couches in deep purple and royal blue that formed these intimate seating pods around sleek tables with gold rims that probably cost more than most people's cars.

Everything sat on raised platforms with blue LED strips underneath, making the furniture appear to float in this sea of electric luxury, like we were all just hanging out in some billionaire's fever dream.

Behind us, a backlit bar stretched the length of the wall, bottles arranged like a glowing altar to excess, top-shelf liquor lit up like holy relics—and every single one probably cost what my family used to make in a month.

The walls were textured dark panels with integrated purple LED strips creating that honeycomb effect everywhere, vertical gardens with purple uplighting adding organic elements to all the tech and luxury, living walls breathing in a space designed for beautiful people to make terrible decisions.

The whole aesthetic screamed "we have so much money we don't know what the fuck to do with it, so here's some lights"—and I was absolutely here for it. Like, genuinely. It was so over-the-top it crossed the line into art, then crossed back into tacky, then pirouetted into somehow being sexy again.

We sank into the leather couches, and the soft, sensual music hit us—that low-key shit that makes you think of silk sheets and worse life choices, probably Sélène's latest track or something she'd made specifically for this vibe after an ayahuasca retreat in Joshua Tree.

Most guests here were millionaires who didn't need volume to prove they were winning. Just quiet conversations, deals being orchestrated over whiskey that cost four figures, strategic backstabbing happening with smiles and subtle hand gestures.

An hour later, Antonio was completely wrecked. Completely. Fucking. Wrecked. The man couldn't handle his liquor for shit—like, at all.

I had to help him stumble out to where a designated driver waited in a black Mercedes and I watched them disappear into the LA night, Antonio's head lolling against the window like a broken bobblehead.

With him gone, I walked back into the club and sank into the couch, my Château Margaux 2015 sitting mostly untouched—because unlike Antonio, I knew how to pace myself, knew how to keep the walls up and the thoughts organized.

Empty bottles that had been his littered the table like casualties of war, little glass soldiers who'd died for his midlife crisis, and I called a waiter to clear them away, leaving me with only my bottle and glass and this weird ringing silence that wasn't really silence at all.

I sat cross-legged, leaning into the plush leather, watching the nightlife unfold around me. The club was quiet in that specific way expensive places hush. No one needed to shout.

No one needed to prove anything. Just wealthy people being wealthy while pretending they weren't absolutely falling apart inside, their perfect faces masks over the same existential dread that kept me up at night.

Perfect environment for thinking.

Time to reflect on this absolute clusterfuck of a week.

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