Ruining Hattie

A man with no limits is the most dangerous kind of threat. When Trent Clarke caught me picking pockets at eleven, he didn’t turn me in. Instead, he took me under his wing and taught me that in this world, you take what you want and never look back. He might have shaped me, but I built my empire of the most successful string of strip clubs on the West Coast. Now that I have everything, it’s time to track down my deadbeat mother and remind her who she left behind. That is if the drugs didn’t kill her already. But I don’t find the worn–down shell of the woman I remember. Instead, she has all the things she never managed to give me—the white picket fence, a family dog, even church on Sunday mornings. The real kicker? She replaced me and raised the perfect daughter with all the care and love she never gave me. A twisted need for revenge roars to life inside me, and I aim it at my mother’s precious stepdaughter—sweet, sheltered Hattie Sinclair. At first, it’s purely about vengeance, pulling Hattie into the darkness to watch her innocence unravel piece by piece. But she becomes something more. Something dangerous. Something I can’t resist. Until she becomes my obsession.