I never thought I’d end up here, living under the same roof as my stepdad, Alexander Voss—everyone just calls him Alex. My mom married him when I was nineteen, right before she took that overseas job with the NGO that keeps her gone for months at a time. Alex is forty-four, tall, broad-shouldered, with that kind of quiet intensity that makes rooms feel smaller when he walks in. He’s a private wealth manager, the kind who handles old money and new tech fortunes, always in tailored suits that fit him like they were sewn onto his body that morning.
I’m twenty-two now, home from grad school for the summer because rent in the city is brutal and my internship barely covers coffee. The house is huge, modern, all glass and steel overlooking the bay. Mom’s barely been back since the wedding, so it
