“Excuse me?”
“Just wanted to see your face as you read this. You still love me.”
“Still?” I shook my head. “I never said I love you.”
“You did. Not with your words, but with your actions. You put so much weight in words, but sometimes, the things you do say more than the things you say. See you tomorrow, Little Tiger. Shit’s about to go down.”
I stood there, slack jawed, clutching my door. He pressed a kiss to my temple and left. His whistles echoed down the hallway.
Ceiling: See? I told you he’s not avoiding you. You shouldn't have written him that note. You can be such an asshole sometimes.
Delilah walked into the penthouse, midway through my conversation with Chantilly. I spared her a glance and returned to the psycho sitting across from me.
She tucked a red strand of hair behind her ears. “We’ve been working closely the past two weeks.”
“Yes,” I dragged out. “You, me, and four other people.”
She spread her legs, an invitation. Did she really think I didn't remember her trying to accost me?
Her fingertips ran across her collarbone and circled the cross necklace around her neck. “I see you staring at me.”
“Only when I’m appalled at how quickly you’re able to run through millions of dollars in budget money.” I leaned back in my seat and drew up some documents, fucking exhausted with today. “Also, I won't ask you again to close your legs. I have to sit in this office for another three hours, and your pussy smells like a fish market.”
What she didn’t understand was, I had no use for someone who nodded every time I did. I have a shadow for that, and I sure as hell liked it more than I liked her.
Delilah cleared her throat and set Rosco down. He sprinted to his four-poster bed.
Chantilly tilted her chin up, cheeks flamed red when she noticed the company for the first time. “I have to check on something, um, on another floor.”
“You do that.” I motioned her to shoo.
She darted around Delilah and slammed the door on her way out. Rosco jumped, yelped, and pawed at Delilah’s leg to be held.
Bending, she scooped him up. “You look like shit.”
Yeah, and you know why, asshole.
I’d told her through email last night, sparing her any incriminating details but enough that she got the gist.
“Shut up.” I lied, “I’m sick, you cold-hearted monster. Chantilly cornered me this morning to talk about budgets. She had a cold, Delilah. She coughed in my mouth, Delilah. I ate her cold, Delilah. I ate it. Do you know what that is like? I could demonstrate.”
“I feel like you’re saying my name a lot.”
“I feel like you’re not listening.”
We skirted around the elephant of the day, because I'd been fucking held in federal custody for the maximum forty-eight hours allowed by North Carolina law. If I had a working phone, I would have called Delilah to get me the fuck out of there.
I hadn’t.
So, I sat through Brandon's incessant questions without speaking a word.
“Did you know about the Winthrop Scandal before the F.B.I. and S.E.C. announced our formal investigation?”
“What is your involvement with Virginia Winthrop, Balthazar Van Doren, and Eric Cartwright?”
“We spotted you at Balthazar and Virginia’s engagement dinner. Her daughter was your date. Would you say you are close with her? Did she know about the Winthrop Scandal before it began?”
“We don’t have to be after you, Nash. Strike a deal with us. What do you say?”
If it were just me, I could deal with the pressure from the S.E.C. Fika had done a good job of covering my tracks, and insider trading cases could be difficult to prove. But the fucker went after Ma and Emery.
Instinct urged me to fight with my fists, but that had never worked out well in the past. Good thing I had something better than a fist. A Harvard-educated lawyer on payroll.
I spit it out, “Delilah, I need a favor.”
“How desperate are you for it?”
Sighing, I closed my laptop and clasped my fingers together. “What do you want?”
“Hmm…” She tapped a fingertip to her lip. “Tell me how desperate you are first.”
I stared at her until she fidgeted under my attention. Even then, she didn’t relent.
“Desperate,” I seethed, knowing she'd toy with me as revenge.
I deserved it for making her do all the work on Singapore for nothing. Didn't mean I had to enjoy it.
A smile consumed her face. She looked like the less green offspring of the Grinch. “I want you to kiss Rosco on the lips and tell him you’re sorry for being an insufferable asshole.” She held him out to me. “Also, tell him you think he’s cute.”
I didn’t budge. “I'm not doing that.”
“You can do the favor yourself.” She made a show of shrugging and shooting me a sympathetic grimace. “I hear self-care is all the rage these days.”
“You’re an ass, and not a nice one.” I transferred Rosco to my grip, brought the rat up to my face, stared it in its beady fucking eyes, and said, “You look like someone shaved a teletubby baby and glued a used wig to its head”—Delilah coughed—“and I guess you’re cute. Sorry, dude.”
I leaned forward, wondering if I’d entered a different dimension disguised as hell. The things I did for Emery Winthrop. Goddamn. As if he had a sixth sense, Rosco leaned forward, too.
And then He. Bit. Me.
On the nose.
For a tiny thing, he had razor-sharp teeth. Blood trickled down my nostrils. I released the rat, letting him fall to my lap and hop off. He ran to his bed, circled the doggy blanket, and curled into a ball.
When I stared at him, he barked. Twice.
I gave him the finger and focused on Delilah. “Now that it's established your rabies-ridden dog and I dislike each other, can we move the fuck on?”
She yanked a few tissues from her desk and tossed them to me, not hiding her amusement in the slightest. “I know I’m supposed to look serious right now, but I’m not worried at all. Frankly, the worst part is that you kept this from me all these years. I could have helped you out earlier.”
I read between the lines and saw her question, but I ignored it. Instead, I broke everything down for her, from stealing the ledger to burning it to building this company off money obtained through insider trading.
Delilah sighed, sat at her desk, and booted her laptop. “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“The bad news.”
“Of course, you do,” she muttered, clicking a few times with her mouse. “The maximum sentence for insider trading is twenty years.”
“I know. I have Google.”
She ignored me. “The good news is, the average sentence actually given is just over one year, usually in a cushy country-club facility if you’re rich enough. The time served is often half of that on good behavior. So, about six months we're dealing with.”
“I can do six months.”
“You probably won't have to.” She shut her laptop and peered at me. “I think you can get the six months waived if you agree to testify and pay the maximum fine, which is five-million dollars.”
Worth every cent if it got Brandon off Emery and Ma’s backs.
“Done.”
She pulled out her phone and penned a text as she spoke, “I have a friend who specializes in fraud cases. She can attend the meeting with you as your lawyer. I can be there if you want.”
“I do,” I cut in.
Her soft smile made me roll my eyes. “For moral support?”
“For catering. People are less inclined to lash out when fed.”
“Sure,” she dragged out. The smile never left her face. “Let’s go with that excuse. We can outline terms of agreements before the meeting, including confidentiality, so the company doesn't get bad press.”
“How are you so sure I’ll get off?”
“You’re really looking at six months max. That’s your negotiating point, so the S.E.C. has little to lose and a lot to gain. Besides the logistics, Brandon is motivated and ambitious. He’s looking to go places bigger than the S.E.C. He won’t do that arresting North Carolina’s golden boy, but he will do that with the testimony of an anonymous whistleblower.”
“I’ll make that fucker’s career,” I muttered.
I’d pay a five-million-dollar fine.
Brandon Vu would get the career bust of a lifetime.
I should have cared more, but I didn’t.
He was just another step to getting Emery back.
I laced my Chucks beneath a gown, feeling like a knock-off Cinderella. The same floor-length dress I wore at the masquerade, because I refused to make another for a soft opening, which was really just an excuse to throw a party.
Ida Marie popped her head into the office. “We need an extra set of hands down there. Mr. Prescott never attends the soft openings, and no one can find Delilah, so we’re short some mouths to talk to the press.”
Talking to the press appealed to me as much as ingesting a banana stolen from a porn set. I considered forgoing the event entirely. Nash wouldn’t care.
Nash.
Every time I tried to push him out of my mind, he popped back in. If I was a storm, he was hail, and he came down harder, faster, and did more damage.
Ceiling: Funny. That's how I feel about you.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” I promised, adjusting the slit of my dress.
She rifled through Cayden's drawer and handed me a safety pin. “Hannah downed two cocktails. She’s tipsy and getting loose-lipped. You can take her spot in front of the centerpiece. Have you seen it yet?”
“No.” I latched the ripped seam together with the pin, hiding it beneath the fabric. “Why is Hannah pissed?”
“You didn’t hear? Chantilly has been ranting all morning. Prescott Hotels pulled out of the Singapore deal.”
“What?!” I squeezed the pin too hard. It pricked my thumb and drew a bead of blood, but I ignored it.
“Delilah sent Chantilly a memo, informing her that Nash would leave for Singapore for two months. Then, all of a sudden, they both returned from Singapore, and Delilah told Chantilly they're no longer building a hotel there.”
I swallowed, reading between the lines. Two months gone? Did Nash give up Singapore for me? The timeline made sense if you excluded the part where I’d seen Delilah a day before Nash. He arrived with that note, left me reeling, and mentioned shit was about to go down.
Straightening, I marched to the elevator, hoping to catch Nash in the lobby. I’d checked the penthouse earlier, but he’d already left. I didn't want this conversation to happen through the phone either.
Ida Marie followed me. “You should see the centerpiece. Not even that. You should read the placard. It’s insane. The press has been all over it. Technically, we probably don’t need to talk to them. They're hungry to learn more about the centerpiece, which none of us know anything about.”
I tuned her out the second my feet hit the lobby, careening to a halt. Shock bloomed from my toes to my head.
The centerpiece.
A waterfall stretched the seven-story height. Shards of metal cascaded down from the ceiling. When I peered closer, I noticed the pieces had been welded from car parts, including his old Honda and the used junker I’d sold Virginia’s Birkin to buy. She had Hank drive it to the junkyard. Nash must have kept it.
Rising from the water, the shape of a tiger emerged. Almost like a bird with raised arms, painted the same color of the starless sky. It stood on a bed of geode crystals. The rock shells had been cracked open. Thousands of crystals spilled out in blue and gray waves of all sizes.
The sight wrecked me.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” A reporter shoved her way up to me, regarding my name tag. “Do you work here? Do you know who the Little Tiger is? Who is she to Mr. Prescott?”
I struggled to avert my eyes from the statue. “I’m sorry?”
“From the placard.”
That caught my attention. It stood at the base of the centerpiece, mounted to the floor. A monument of its own. I could barely see it through the crowd.
Giving the reporter my back, I asked Ida Marie, “When was the placard placed?”
“Umm…” She cocked her head and tapped her lip. “The day we went to pick up the couches for the lobby.”
Before our fight. Before Virginia’s wedding. Before that night in the pool. Before everything.
I didn't fully understand why it mattered, but it did. Maybe because I knew it wasn't an apology. Whatever he’d etched onto the placard would be a revelation before the apology was ever needed.
Shoving my way through the masses, I stood in front of the placard, words engraved into thick stone.
“Moira”
by artist Anders Bentley
Dear Little Tiger,
You wear black and white, but you are a rainbow.
It’s the first thing I noticed about you after I really noticed you. The realizations spiraled from there. I noticed all your fucking minutiae (I bet that word gets you wet), without ever realizing it.
Your damn pride cripples you, but it also proves you’re the most determined person I’ve ever met. You are somehow both fire and the water that extinguishes it. You fixate on words, but your actions are what gut me.
I want to do all the things I've never done with you—and all the things I've already done again, because fuck, I know they’d be better with you.
When everyone else saw the angry kid with the busted lip and the bruised knuckles, you simply watched me. When my employees saw crass behavior, you saw my humor and returned it. When I didn't see myself, you still did.
I hope you're looking at the centerpiece. I hope you're staring at the geodes, the cascading waterfall, and the tiger. I hope you’re overwhelmed by it. I hope it fucking shatters a piece of you when you stare at it. I don’t hope you want to fuck the shit out of it, but for the sake of this analogy, let’s say I do.
Because that’s what it's like for me when I stare at you.
In case it’s not blatantly obvious by now, I fucking love you.
Nash/Ben/Yours
Nash’s version of a love note.
Littered with profanities, yet still charming.
And on display for photographers, press, and guests to fawn over.
All of North Carolina, who idolized him, would see this.
Ceiling: He didn’t break your heart. He cracked it open. Remember?
“Like a geode,” I whispered, shaken by the realization. “Geodes need to shatter for their beauty to be seen.”
Around me, the room shifted. Nash appeared near the alcove of elevators, flanked by Brandon Vu, Delilah, and a few more people. Shock slowed my breathing before panic took over and turned my heartbeats into a pop song.
Blood coated Nash's fist and smeared beneath Brandon’s nose. They’d been in a fight, and now he was being led outside, accompanied by his lawyer and what was probably more agents.
Oh, Nash.
What have you done?
I was a snitch.
A rat.
Officially, no better than Rosco.
But sending Virginia, Eric Cartwright, and Sir Balty to prison fucking fueled me. Biting back a smug smile, I signed the contract where Francine, Chantilly’s lawyer friend, told me to. No jail time. Not even the full five-million-dollar fine.
Truthfully, I’d rather be up here, making deals with the S.E.C., than down there.
Soft openings.
I hated them. I’d avoided every one for the past four years. They dowsed me with memories I refused to remember. Each body-slamming into me harder than the next.
“Nash? Your dad had a heart attack. He fell off the building at the construction site. They called the ambulance. You don’t look so well. I can drive you there.”
“Are you the family? Mr. Prescott died before he arrived. I
’m so sorry for your loss. We have a grieving room to your left and a chapel down the hall. Please, feel free to use either. If one of you can identify the body…”
“I’m going to remove this sheet, and it will be a shocking sight. All you have to do is nod your head yes or no. Is this Hank Prescott?”
The day Dad died, I’d attended a soft opening for Felton Hotels near Eastridge. I shadowed their C.E.O., knowing I'd buy the hotel and eventually merge it into the Prescott Hotels empire.
The day had begun with a round of drinks and celebrations and ended with me staring at my father’s dead body, because no way in hell would I put Reed or Ma through that.
I hadn't been to a soft opening since.
“We have to drive you out to the office to write a statement and answer some questions.” Brandon slid his seat back and nodded to one of his two coworkers. “It will probably take the rest of the day. I know you have a party going on. Is there a rear entrance?”
“Not yet accessible. Doesn’t matter.” My head jerked to the other two agents. “Tell Thing One and Thing Two to take off the windbreakers.” I stood after Brandon, the picture of serenity. “Hey, Brandon?”
He turned back to me.
I swung. Once. But it was enough. Blood spilled from his nose, dripped to his white button-down, and splattered onto the fresh carpet. Delilah didn't react. To her credit, neither did Francine. One agent moved for me, but Brandon held up a hand.
“It’s fine,” he spit out and clutched his upper cartilage. “I deserved it.”
Damn straight.
It was one thing to bother me. An entirely different one to harass Emery.
I also realized he'd only said that because an assault charge would fuck up my credibility as a key witness and, thereby, ruin his career-making case.
Brandon rubbed at the blood with his hand, smearing it. I didn't offer to show him to the restroom or bother to apologize. Frankly, I'd do it again, but jail time didn't appeal to me. Plus, I needed to see my girl.
Devious Lies: A Cruel Crown Novel Page 46