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I glance around the room again. There’s not a single part of me that wants to be here, and if I’m going to leave by 9:00 p.m., I need at least another bottle of whiskey to see me through the next hour.

“It’s simply incredible. Isn’t it?” Amanda beams, and I struggle to plaster a smile on my face.

There’re your stereotypical socialites here today. The ones desperate for a sugar daddy, the ones married to their sugar daddy, and the billionaires and their mistresses—the epitome of everything I’m not.

They’re dressed to the nines in every designer known to mankind, their makeup done perfectly, and their partners are just as elaborate with thick watches on their wrists and tailored suits.

My shirt stretches over my broad chest, and I stick out like a sore thumb with the tattoos creeping up my neck and into my hairline. The ones on my hands and fingers were gifted to me by my former employers—the Carrera family. Some of the scars marring my body were a punishment, but the others are wounds from my time in action. Each one, I’m proud of, and I hate the fact I’ve come here and agreed to attempt to cover them up with this penguin suit. My hand itches to pull the bowtie from around my neck and burn the fucker.

“Can you at least look happy to be here?” Amanda hisses, holding her glass up in a cheers toward the woman at the lawyer table. I’m pretty sure I see Massio’s father-in-law at the table, with a bimbo tugging on his sleeve.

Dumb fucker.

“I’m elated to be here,” I chide back with too much amusement.

She shoots daggers in my direction. “When I agreed to marry you, this is what I expected.” She waves her hand toward the crowd, then looks me up and down with a scowl. “What I got was totally different.” It’s the same words she’s said for the past five years. She tips the drink down her throat and holds her glass out for it to be replaced with a fresh one.

As soon as she has another champagne glass in her hand, she turns her full attention toward me, and I really wish she wouldn’t. Her lips pucker, and she pulls invisible lint off my jacket. “I have some sad news for you.” Given the fake expression, I’d say the news is going to be anything other than sad. In fact, I bet my life she’s desperate to tell me something that will please her. “Imogen.”

My spine stiffens, and I narrow my eyes.

“She has a mark on her neck.” A smile dances at the corners of her lips. “A hickey, Jensen. Your daughter has a hickey.” She sighs, but I don’t miss the way her lips curl as she takes a sip of her champagne.

My mind races through me gifting Immie my mark, and my cock throbs.

I clear my throat in a lame attempt to snap myself out of my thoughts. “By whom?” My hand tightens on my glass at the way she scrutinizes me. Yeah, the bowtie needs to go.

“I’d say a boy in school, but she doesn’t go to school.” She lifts her shoulder.

I nod along to her words.

“I’d say the one she goes swimming with, though. He’s always chasing after her.”

She’s referring to the little punk I saw eyeing my girl up, the one she took a lift from.

“He’s been around the house a few times, but I sent him packing. I knew you wouldn’t want boys sniffing round her.”

I clench my teeth. This is news to me. Not once has she mentioned the little prick coming to my house, nor has Immie. Anger surges through me. Is she telling me the truth? Is she really as innocent as she led me to believe, or is it all an act?

“You look angry.” She pouts. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble between the two of you.”

It takes great restraint not to call her out on her bullshit, but I’ve been trained to deliver far greater acts than this one. Though they never affected me as personally as this.

“She’s a teenager,” I rattle off. “Teenagers do dumb shit.”

“Well, maybe you should discuss birth control with her,” she points out, and this time, my attention is piqued.

“Birth control?”

She tips the drink back and gestures for another, and the moment it’s replaced, she smiles into the glass with a coy nod.

“You don’t want your precious little girl to get pregnant, do you?”

My cock twitches in my slacks, and my balls ache as arousal spurs through me.

Fuck, I want that.

Though first, I need to get to the bottom of if Immie is on birth control or not.