The Kingmaker (Powerplay #1)

by Selena Laurence

  “See? Glass half empty,” she said, licking a bit of chocolate from her fingers with her own mouth half full.

  “I’m being serious—”

  “So am I,” Jo declared. “He. Loves. You. I know that doesn’t fit with your view of yourself as so terribly unlovable, but that doesn’t make it any less true. He’s given those things up, of his own free will, because you’re more important to him. You didn’t force him, he wasn’t coerced, he chose you.”

  London’s eyes filled and she had to look away, biting her bottom lip to stem the well of emotion.

  “I know, but there are still things, things he doesn’t know…”

  “So you’ll tell him, and he’ll get over those things too. It’s not finite.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Love,” Jo said as she took another, smaller bite of the croissant that lay forgotten on London’s plate. “It’s not a cup filled to the brim and when you’ve consumed it all it disappears. Love is a well, dear. It refills constantly, it’s there for you to drink from. It’s what keeps us all alive.”

  London nodded quickly, swallowing down her fears.

  “Did you say it back?”

  “No. I pretended I’d fallen asleep. I was so scared, Jo. I’m still so scared.”

  Joanna reached across the table and patted London’s hand. “I know you are, darling, but it’s time to grow up, to stop running. You’re ready, and he’s the right one. Just go get him already, will you?”

  London’s fears turned to laughter, and once again, that little seed of hope grew larger, ready to sprout, ready to flourish and bloom and turn London’s heart into a garden.

  If only a deadly weed weren’t laying in wait.

  “Fuck,” Derek muttered as he hung up the phone. It was the third time in as many days he’d tried to reach Kamal and been rebuffed. His cell phone went straight to voicemail and calls to his office met with the brick wall that was the Embassy secretary. No, the Ambassador wasn’t available. Yes, the Ambassador received his last three messages.

  And he wasn’t having much better luck with his brother. Marcus was talking to him, but barely. The kid was miserable, Renee wouldn’t see him, and he was heartbroken. Derek had to admit that he’d gotten it entirely wrong. Marcus was in love with the sweet girl, and Derek had severely underestimated Marcus’s capacity to commit to someone. He had to believe that all of this would work out, but it was tough when he felt so isolated.

  Since coming to D.C. Derek had lived a hustle and bustle life. He was in the middle of the action, snapping up new clients, making political deals of one sort or another, hiring staff, building up the Powerplay club, helping Kamal set up the Embassy as a new Ambassador. He’d always been surrounded by people, people who could give him something, people who wanted him to give them something. Now, overnight, he was alone. No one banging on his door, no one needing his advice, no one caring one way or the other about him.

  He sighed and looked around his desk. It was clean. And the only reason for that was because the eight clients he currently had were small state level candidates whose campaigns were managed by their local staff. His role was as strategist and policy advisor. The irony wasn’t lost on him at this point—he was too important to get personally involved in those small campaigns, but no longer important enough to be hired for the bigger ones.

  His phone dinged with a text.

  London: Are you still coming to my place to meet my mother?

  Yes, he replied. It was amazing to him that London had been to see her mother twice this week. After ten years of estrangement. But it seemed to be going well, and he wanted to do whatever he could to facilitate the relationship.

  London: Thank you. I’ll see you there at seven.

  Derek checked his watch and realized that he’d better hurry if he was going to make it. Grabbing his briefcase and jacket he looked around his empty office and shook his head. Tomorrow was another day, and at least he knew he’d be getting laid by a beautiful woman tonight. He grinned to himself. Life wasn’t all bad.

  Derek nodded to Owen who was on duty at London’s door when he arrived. He thought they could dispense with the security in the next couple of weeks, but there were still the occasional paparazzi hanging around and he didn’t want to risk London being harassed. She’d been going out to restaurants and stores some in the last few days. So far she’d only had to endure a few whispers and stares, this was D.C. after all, a scandal a week, and Derek and London were last week’s news.

  “Ms. Sharpe’s not home yet,” Owen said.

  “Okay. I’m sure she’ll be here soon, and if her mother arrives, please let her in. Farrah Amid.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Ambrose.”

  Derek went inside and set his belongings down in the foyer then headed to the kitchen where he’d stashed a bottle of scotch the last time he’d been over. He poured himself a couple of fingers in a tumbler and was about to sit on the living room sofa when he heard a commotion outside.

  He opened the door to the flash of a camera, and raised his arm in front of his eyes to ward off the blinding light.

  “Mr. Ambrose!” a man called out.

  “You’re trespassing on private property,” Owen called out.

  Derek lowered his arm, and looked around. There was a reporter with a photographer standing on the sidewalk in front of London’s small front yard. On the walk leading to her front door were Owen and a dark-haired middle-aged woman who he knew in a moment was London’s mother.

  “We’re on the public sidewalk, asshole,” the reporter said in response to Owen.

  As the shock wore off and his vision cleared, Derek’s temper flared. “Listen, I don’t care if you’re in the middle of the damn street, if you don’t back off I’m going to have the cops out here and charge you with harassment. You need to find someone else to bother.” He stepped off the small front porch and walked down the sidewalk to Owen and Farrah.

  “Please come on inside,” he told her smiling.

  She nodded at him quickly. “Thank you.”

  He could smell the sweat coming off of the reporter a couple of feet away. The guy had greasy hair and an untucked plaid shirt that looked like it had been worn for a few days straight. The photographer snapped another photo and the flash lit up the faces of everyone around like ghosts in the night.

  “Get her inside,” Derek instructed Owen. Owen took Farrah’s elbow and moved to take her up to the house.

  “Is this the first time you’ve met your girlfriend’s family?” the reporter said, sneering at Derek.

  “You need to go,” Derek responded, arms crossed, feet spread in a wide stance.

  “Farrah!” the guy shouted as she moved away. “Do you keep in touch with London’s father?”

  Derek heard a gasp and turned to see Farrah with a look of shock on her face. He pivoted back to the reporter just as another question shot out through the dusky night.

  “Does he write letters to your daughter? Maybe call her?”

  The insensitive ass. Derek fought the urge to punch the fucker and be done with it. “What the hell are you talking about?” Derek scowled at the guy. “Her father’s dead.”

  “That’s not right though is it, Farrah?” the reporter shouted. “Your daughter’s father isn’t dead, is he? In fact, he was just indicted last month in an international court for war crimes for the tenth time, wasn’t he?”

  Derek’s stomach lurched. He turned to look at Farrah. Her hands were over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror as she shook her head. His thoughts spun in confusion and he rotated back to the reporter, but instead his eyes fell on London standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, her face was pale, but her mouth was set in a grim line. She stared at him without blinking. His heart beat once, twice, then stopped for a long breath before it started up again, and in one burst of the camera’s flash he knew that it was true. It was all true.

  “Please, Derek,” London cried as she followed him out of the house. He kept his steady
but highly determined pace and proceeded down the sidewalk toward his car.

  “Derek, let me explain.” She jogged to keep up with him, thankful that she had worn flats and jeans today instead of a business ensemble.

  Her heart raced and her skin itched, as if it were going to split and things would start spilling out of her. He reached his car and placed his hand on the driver’s door just as she caught up to him.

  “Derek!” She grabbed the lapel of his jacket, hanging on for dear life as she looked up into his icy stare. Yes, those ice chip eyes were back, and she realized with stunning clarity that it was only her Derek who had warm eyes. This was the other man, and she was terrified her Derek had left for good. “Let me tell you how this happened, about what I know and why I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  He stood stock still, as if he were made of stone, and in that moment she would have believed his heart too was stone, like the rest of him. His gaze held nothing—no affection, no regret, no yearning. It was as if his love for her had drained away while he stood in her front yard and listened to the last secret she had to guard.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded rapidly, several times in a row. “We’ll make sure to tell them you didn’t know, that it’s all my fault and that I’ve never even met the man.”

  “Is that true?” he asked, his head tilted slightly to one side as if he were assessing her answers. “Is it true you’ve never met him? Because I’m having a hard time understanding what’s true here and what isn’t.”

  “I’ve virtually never met him,” London corrected. “I was only two at the time.”

  “So you have met him then.” Derek shook his head in disgust. “How could you not tell me? How could you let me stake my entire life on you, and not mention that you’re the daughter of a man who’s been called the Hitler of the twenty-first century?”

  She cringed.

  “I’m in politics, for God’s sake. In a nation under siege by Islamic terrorists. My entire adult life has been dedicated to institutions that enact democracy, and protect freedom. I’ve been in the inner circle of some of the greatest leaders the Western world has ever known.”

  His arm lay across the roof of the car and he hung his head, the pose weary and defeated. “In my world, my patriotism, my allegiance to this country, is everything. No one has ever doubted my love for this country.”

  He took a breath, and London watched him, warily, fear throbbing through her veins.

  “If and when the day ever came that my love for this country did come into question?” He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine it. I can’t fathom what it would feel like to have my entire life’s work laid to waste like that. To have the very core of everything I do, the very core of me, in doubt—by an entire nation. My nation.”

  “Derek,” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I gave you everything.” His voice was rough now, as broken as his posture. “And I did it willingly, happily. I did it because I love you. But when three hundred and twenty-million Americans wake up tomorrow and read the news that I’ve been fucking Mohammad Rouhani’s daughter?” London jerked back at the vehemence in his voice and the bitterness of his words. “You will have destroyed the only things I had left. My love of this country, and my love of you.”

  He swung open the door of the car then, and she sobbed. “No, please no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have told you. I should have. And I’ll tell everyone you didn’t know. I’ll hold a press conference or give an interview—whatever will work the best.”

  He looked at her sadly, and she knew it was because he pitied her desperation. How could he not? She was a prostitute, and a liar. She was a woman who destroyed—reputations, trust, love. She was pathetic, and they both knew it.

  He reached out, stroking one finger along her jaw. Then he shook his head slightly, because he was out of words, and so was she.

  He got into the car and shut the door, never looking at her again as she sobbed alone in the street and he drove away, out of her life, but not out of her heart.

  Chapter 16

  Derek looked out the window of his office, watching the rain fall on the cars and concrete below. He sighed and turned back to the computer screen on his desk, rereading the email, although he had it memorized at this point.

  Dear Mr. Ambrose: This correspondence serves as my thirty day notice of termination of your consulting contract with my campaign for the Sixth District Congressional seat in the Great State of Florida. While I consider myself an open-minded man, and I was prepared to stand behind you when you made it known that you were personally involved with a paid sex worker, I’m afraid that her relationship to a known international criminal has crossed a line that I cannot. Dating a former prostitute is a far cry from dating the daughter of an enemy of the United States. I cannot, in good conscience continue my working relationship with you under these circumstances.

  Derek had seen exactly eight versions of the same email over the last week. His eight remaining clients, all gone. Every contract cancelled, every account closed, every back turned. Even before that, the Department of Homeland Security was at his front door, and while they’d seemed satisfied with his very truthful answers to their questions, he still noticed a plain dark car parked near both his office and his home each day. He had to assume his phones were tapped and his Internet monitored as well.

  It had taken forty-eight hours for the national party to send their email, detailing that he was being pulled from the exclusive list of preferred consultants. They’d also been just petty enough to revoke his VIP pass to the national convention the next year. He was now persona non grata. Congressmen wouldn’t take his calls, donors wouldn’t sign checks they’d promised to his candidates months ago, and the President had respectfully withdrawn his standing invitation to monthly White House policy luncheons. She’d contacted him personally, explained that she supported him privately, but that she couldn’t court the ire of the opposition and the Congressional leadership by hosting him at the White House. He assured her he understood, then hung up the call and threw his thirty-pound desk chair across the room.

  But no matter how much his guts twisted at the loss of his business, his reputation, and his influence, they twisted more when he thought of the loss of her. At night he woke, dreaming of her hair, her skin, her eyes. He could almost feel her silky touch on his cock, almost taste her tart sex on his tongue. Her voice haunted him in his head, and her face haunted him in his mirror. Try hard as he did, he couldn’t hate her, he could only miss her.

  Every morning he woke, exhausted from sleeplessness, wracked with doubt, and bruised both inside and out. He ran his body and his mind ragged, working out at Spar for hours at a time, staying at the office late into the night, looking for new clients, composing emails to old contacts, searching for new and better ways to spin the story of him. It was the only way he knew to deal with the pain, the aching pit that had lodged inside his chest when she stood on that sidewalk in Dupont Circle and told him with her eyes that she’d lied about the only thing that really mattered, her loyalty to him.

  “Are you ever going to talk about it?” Kamal asked as they bounced around the sparring ring one afternoon a few weeks after he’d learned the identity of London’s father. The two men had been gradually making their way back to one another. Kamal made the first overture, asking for Derek’s advice on an Embassy matter. Derek reciprocated by inviting Kamal to their favorite sports bar to watch the U.S. Men’s soccer team play a World Cup qualifying match. The soccer had helped, the alcohol had helped more, and now they were on their third ‘date’ as Teague had teasingly called it. It was, however, the first time they’d broached the subject that had come between them.

  “What is there to say? You were right, she lied to me. You win.”

  Kamal’s fists dropped and he ripped off his head gear. “Dammit!” he snarled. “Do you think I’m getting some sort of enjoyme
nt out of this?”

  Derek shrugged.

  “Well, I’m not. Not even close. The last thing I would ever want was for you to get your heart sliced out. Not to mention the crucifixion in the press. You can’t really think I’d ever want you to endure being called a traitor and a national security risk, do you?”

  Derek pointed to Kamal’s head gear, motioning for him to put it back on, then began bouncing around, looking for an opening to take a shot.

  “It doesn’t matter now anyway,” Derek said. “What’s done is done, and I’m ready to go back to my life and forget all of it ever happened.”

  “And how does that work?” Kamal asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “You always do.” Derek made a face as Kamal got him with a left jab to the shoulder.

  “It may be true that she deceived you, but it was an entirely different kind of deceit than what I thought was going on.” He feinted right and dodged one of Derek’s famous uppercuts.

  “She didn’t lie to you because she was trying to take advantage of you. She lied because she was afraid of losing you.”

  “Well, she was right. She’s lost me. But I think you’re exaggerating how much she cares about that.”

  Kamal shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

  Derek fought off a stabbing pain in his midsection. Kamal hadn’t touched him there, so he knew it wasn’t from the sparring.

  “There’s too much water under the bridge. Whether she loves me or ever did, I don’t know, but I do know that she ruined the campaign we’d been designing for eighteen months. She ruined my spotless reputation, she ruined Melville’s chances of ever moving past the Senate. Hell, he won’t even get reelected to his Senate seat now.” And silently he thought that she’d ruined him for any other woman as well.

  Kamal stopped bobbing and weaving for a moment. “I think Melville and his father-in-law had a little to do with that.” He took up the dance again, catching Derek by surprise with a jab to the biceps that truly hurt. “Doesn’t she deserve a second chance?”