“You intentionally lied to me and went and did what you wanted to anyway,” Keegan said, pausing to give Jessa wide-eyed stare.
“There are two of us, Keegan, so you don’t have final say either,” Jessa said. “I never agreed but refuse to argue with you about it.”
“So you lied?” Keegan inserted.
“No, I let you have a one-sided conversation about a topic I was done with,” Jessa said, very matter-of-factly.
Keegan’s expression became incredulous. “Please don’t pull on your big bitch boots about this, Jessa,” she said.
“What the hell does that mean?” she asked.
Keegan leaned back against the wall. “Sometimes you can be a bit of a bitch, darling.”
“Says pot to kettle, darling.”
They fell quiet.
Jessa was the first to break the silence. “Keegan, you knew going in that my intent was to help those who are being betrayed by their spouse—mostly women, but sometimes men, too. Mrs. Sachs was not a client, but she was not only betrayed by having her health put at risk because the man I assume she screws sans condom likes to rub his dick in shit to get off. So, Keegan, I’m so sorry if you’re not in agreement with hipping his wife to his freaky side-life, but I felt I had no choice.”
Keegan began pacing again, pausing at times to look at Jessa with her mouth open as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t.
Jessa crossed her arms over her chest and watched her.
“So just fuck the consequences,” she finally said.
Jessa applauded. “Good job. I really thought you went mute.”
“Bitch boots,” Keegan reminded her.
Jessa sighed, trying to keep down her steadily rising level of annoyance. “When you insisted on joining in on this business, I assumed it meant we had the same goals in mind,” she began, moving to lean against the front edge of her desk. “Now, if it isn’t what you want and you’re doing some heroic shit here, then I’d rather buy you out and continue on alone. But I won’t be judged or treated like a child because your opinion differs from mine.”
“What Jessa wants, Jessa gets, huh?” Keegan asked, her voice tinged with sarcasm.
She thought of the child she’d never raised and the one she was currently raising alone.
“Not always,” she said.
Keegan walked over to the window behind Jessa’s desk. Jessa glanced over her shoulder at her before facing forward and lifting her hand to lightly press against her ring in her brassiere. My good day was just shot to hell.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, trying to transport herself to the night before when Hammer proposed and then to when Hammer undressed her in her bedroom, planting kisses all over her body until he settled his head between her thighs and kissed her clit until her back and buttocks arched off the bed and she cried out in hot release.
“I have to admit that for the last year or so, it has felt like this is all one big powder keg waiting to blow.”
Reluctantly, with the bud nestled between the lips of her core throbbing to life, Jessa pushed away her sultry memories. She sat down on the desk and shifted around enough to eye Keegan as she crossed one leg over the other. “So, you don’t think this is about helping people anymore?” she asked. “Hell, did you ever?”
“Honestly?” Keegan asked, looking back over her shoulder. “Sometimes it makes me go home and take a bath in steaming hot water, trying to clean away the filth we encounter when we watch those videos. Some of the things these husbands say to women who are complete strangers are total mind-fucks. Some of them are nasty and sick in the head. I mean, who really offers to eat a woman’s cha-cha on the first night. Like hel-lo.”
Jessa smiled in spite of herself. “For one, you’re snooping and dipping into shit that doesn’t concern the numbers and the fiscal management of Mistress, Inc.”
“True, but it’s like watching Maury Povich,” Keegan wailed, throwing up her hands. “You just can’t look away. You feel like you have to know if that guy is the kid’s father or not.”
“But it’s not like that for me, Keegan,” Jessa stressed, her tone intended to be serious. “I really am just trying to help people. I’m trying to get into heaven. Fix the bad karma I put out in the universe. Do some good because I did so much fucked-up shit. I really am. Maybe that’s the difference between us, but I need you to understand that.”
Keegan focused her gaze back out the window. “It looks like rain,” she said, looking up at the gray, shadowy clouds dominating the sky.
Jessa nodded as she rose and moved around the desk to take her seat. “Yes, the weatherman called for rain,” she said, hiding her annoyance at their politeness as she retrieved her tube of matte nude lipstick and compact to touch up her mouth.
“Did you really say heroic?” Keegan asked as she came back around to stand in front of the desk.
Jessa cut her eyes up to her as she put the lid back on the tube. “Yes, my name is . . . um . . . Captain Catch a Hoe,” she said, with a wink, smoothing stray flyaway hairs as she looked at her reflection.
“Wait a hot donkey-shit minute,” Keegan said, squinting as she pointed at Jessa’s hand.
Uh-oh.
“You had a ring on. I noticed it when you were milking the weirdo, but then I forgot,” she said. “Now it’s gone, and it just kicked in that I saw it. What happened to that big diamond?”
Her perfectly wonderful day was over. Traffic on her commute into the city? Bearable. It was the same as any other day. The mild flirtation with the stranger on the elevator? Amusing. Warren Sachs’s mental breakdown in his birthday suit? A pure shit show—pun intended. Tackling Keegan about the engagement? This blows, and not in a good way.
She glanced at the time on her phone. It was just noon.
What else, Lord? What else?
“There is something I wanted to share with you,” Jessa began. “Last night . . . Hammer asked me to marry him, and I accepted.”
Keegan’s range of emotion played out on her face. Surprise. Doubt. Suspicion. Hurt. Doubt again. Envy. Sardonic amusement. And finally, anger.
Jessa missed not one bit of it.
She grabbed one of the club chairs to jerk it back and drop down onto its seat. “I guess you both got a nut and a good laugh behind my back,” she said, both her tone and eyes hard and unrelenting.
Jessa unintentionally licked away some of the lipstick she’d just applied as she looked down at her desk and released a sigh. “The nut? Definitely,” she admitted. “The laugh at your expense? Never, Keegan.”
“And just how long has this been going on right under my nose?” she asked.
Jessa met her eyes with her own. “Long enough to know that I love him,” was her reply.
Keegan flung her head back and released a lengthy laugh filled with sarcasm. “Long enough to make sure he took his boots off beside your bed and not mine,” she said.
Bitch, please.
Jessa pressed her teeth softly into her bottom lip to keep those words from slipping off her tongue. “Keegan, I apologize for lying to you and breaking the promise we made to each other to keep it nothing but business with Hammer.”
“And speaking of business, where does this leave me? Am I booted off the island because you two have an alliance?” she quipped.
“Nothing about me and Hammer affects you, just like always,” Jessa said.
“Except now I know.”
“Right.”
“Probably were in heat right in this office,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Sometimes,” Jessa admitted smoothly.
Keegan jumped up onto her feet and looked down to study the chair.
“Now you’re just being an ass,” Jessa said, leaning back in her chair. “Besides, I never wasted a drop.”
Keegan rolled her eyes. “Good one,” she admitted begrudgingly, resuming her earlier pacing.
“You know, I made apologies for it all,” Jessa began. “Regardless, I am a woman who has been
through some shit. Some you know about. A lot of it you have no clue.”
She held up her hand when Keegan opened her mouth to speak.
“See, I am in love. I am at peace. I am happy,” Jessa stressed, her eyes filled with her emotions. “And I also need my friend who just figured out I’m getting married to be happy for me. I’ve been wanting to tell you all morning, but I didn’t want this to ruin my day.”
Keegan eyes were wide and filled with exasperation as she walked to the door. “You are the high priestess of guilt trips, and I am not falling for your shit today, Jessa,” she said over her shoulder before she jerked it open and stormed out.
Jessa rested her chin in her hand and looked upward. Lord, she tested me, but I did good. Right?
Keegan came to stand in the doorway again, leaning against the doorjamb. In the distance behind her, Jessa could see Felisha peering at them over the red rim of her spectacles from her seat at her desk. She gave her a wide-eyed stare and then chuckled when the young woman literally jumped in her seat before lowering her head, pretending to be busy reading something on her computer screen.
Jessa now shifted her eyes up to Keegan’s face.
She stepped farther into the room and closed the door securely. “I have two more things to get off this big chest of mine,” she said, moving to stand before Jessa’s desk.
Her annoyance stiffened her spine. She spread a smile across her face.
“This hurt me more than anything,” Keegan admitted. “Being sneaky like this just made me wonder if what everyone used to say about you was right.”
Jessa frowned.
“Oh, come on now. Don’t get your britches in a twist over something you already knew,” Keegan said. “But I didn’t listen to the warnings to stay clear of you. I went on my own gut and the changes I saw you make. But this slick shit here made me wonder if I wasn’t the one wrong, instead of everybody else.”
Jessa opened her mouth but remained silent when Keegan raised her hand.
“One more thing,” she said.
Jessa arched a brow. “Just one? You promise?” she said unable to contain the hint of sarcasm.
Keegan gave her a withering look before sitting down.
“Sorry. Go ahead,” she said, with a long, drawn-out sigh.
Keegan extended her hand. “Let me see the rock,” she said, with a begrudging smile.
That surprised Jessa as she genuinely smiled as well. She pulled it from inside her brassiere and slid it back on her left ring finger before extending her hand to set it inside Keegan’s.
“Not bad at all,” she admitted, looking up at Jessa as she rubbed the back of her hand with her thumb.
Jessa softened. Her stance in her seat. Her eyes. Her annoyance.
“I’m really starting to believe I have my happily-ever-after, Keegan,” she said, her voice soft.
“Finally,” Keegan stressed.
Jessa nodded, shifting her ring back and forth on her finger as she looked down at it and let everything it stood for swell in her chest.
Finally.
Interlude
I guess I should be grateful to my adoptive parents.
They didn’t have to choose me, but they did. That already made them better than the bitch who bore me and the man who fucked her to make me—whoever the hell he was. They gave me a good life and they were nice people. Good people. They loved me the best they could.
I was the one unable to properly receive it.
I was the one fucked up.
I sat parked in front of my family home. My life lately had been all about pausing and reflecting on shit a lot. The two-story brick colonial was the epitome of upper-middle-class Connecticut. Beautiful. Grand. Prominent.
My grip on the bottom arc of my steering wheel tightened a bit.
Like a fool, I would placate myself into thinking my mother had to be struggling with a low-income job and gave me up so that I could have a better life. Jessa Bell’s house was more beautiful and prominent than this. Her life was golden. Her and Delaney. There was no room for me.
There was no excuse for there not to be room for me.
I climbed from my car and made my way up the stairs to unlock the double doors.
“Hello,” I called out. “Mom, Dad, I’m here.”
I paused, waiting for my mom to come from whatever room she was in to hug me and kiss my brow or my father to yell out for me to come to him in his man cave and hug him before sitting to watch sports with him.
Neither happened.
I closed the front door and made my way into the kitchen to open the side door leading into the three-car garage. Both of their vehicles were gone, leaving just my father’s speedboat.
I felt relief.
The all-too familiar façade of pretending to love them as I knew they loved me went away.
None of it mattered to me anymore—and maybe never did. Even with their love, their money, and the good life they provided, they still were unable to fill the deep well of inadequacy within me.
My need to reflect led me back out to the hall where the family photos were arranged on the wall. And with every step I touched a photo of myself, trying to connect with the sad little lost girl putting on such a good front to cover up the fucked-up thoughts in my head. Thoughts I began to have from the first time they sat me down and explained to me that I was so special that they chose me to be their little girl. That was at four or five, and even then, I skipped over the good of being special and went to the question of why I wasn’t special enough for my real mommy and daddy.
After that conversation, everything changed for me. I didn’t know it then, but it was a defining moment in my life. They didn’t mean it to, but the truth fucked me right on up.
I began to feel unwanted even with all of the love and affection they gave me.
“Fraud,” I whispered to the pictures capturing the moments of my life.
Every year in private school up until my graduation, posing in my uniforms for chess, fencing, debate, and swimming. Behind the wheel of my first car at sixteen—a brand-new cherry red Toyota Solara. In designer gowns at all of my school formals. Posed in front of international monuments from my summers abroad.
Even with all of their love and attention, they still didn’t see me.
I started getting high at the age of thirteen, foolishly trying to fit in with the rich and privileged kids. They smoked weed, I smoked it, too. They laced their blunts. Me too. They snorted powder. I fell right in line.
And not once did my adoptive parents catch on. They were still clueless that I overdosed and almost died. Hiding shit from them was so damn easy.
I stroked my neck, feeling the familiar urge to get high. Even a blunt would do me good right now. I fought off the urge, though, like ignoring hunger when there was no food to eat.
I pulled my iPhone from the back pocket of my jeans. Swiping through the photos, I enlarged the one of Jessa sitting at her desk at the office, gazing out the window with a faraway look. She never even saw me standing there. Never noticed me watching her.
Nothing new.
One day she would see me. She wouldn’t have a choice. I was just sitting, taking notes, and making plans. It wasn’t quite time. Not yet.
I swiped again.
Another photo of my mother and her chosen daughter. Delaney, I think is her name.
I was at the office when her nanny brought her by to visit our mother.
It doesn’t matter. Fuck ’em both.
The front door opened.
I erased the lines of anger on my face with a welcoming smile as my parents entered. My mother with her blond hair and cobalt blue eyes. My father, tall and broad with brown hair and hazel-green eyes. They were nothing like my mother and they looked nothing like her—or me, for that matter. The root of my feelings of not belonging. Not fitting in. Wanting to belong.
It wasn’t their fault at all.
This was all about Jessa Bell, and I was going to make her pay.
Chapter 7
Two months later
“Your engagement ring is beautiful, Ms. Bell.”
Jessa paused in writing notes on her iPad, her stylus pen in hand, as she cut her eyes up to look across her desk at Charli. The young woman smiled at her before shifting her gaze back to the jewelry. Jessa did the same, raising her hand from where it lightly rested against the desktop. “Thank you, Charli,” she said with a polite smile that was forced, before turning her attention back to her iPad.
“I guess congratulations are in order?”
Jessa looked at her again, looking beautiful as ever in a bright red leather peacoat. Her skin was blemish free, her makeup perfection—and not overdone. Sleek hair. Stylish diamond jewelry.
A fucking mini-me. And in the seven months since she joined the firm she’s now my top agent. Of course.
“Thank you,” Jessa told her.
“Hammer, right?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes, Hammer and I are getting married. We are happy as hell. The date is all set. And none of that has anything to do with why you are sitting in my office right now,” she said, raising her brow and giving her yet another forced smile.
Charli’s eyes dulled and she licked her lips before clenching her jaw.
“So, it’s nearing the end of the year, and I like to meet with all of our agents and make sure we have all open cases closed out and to see if you have any insight on a particular case or suggestions for how we can improve things here at Mistress, Inc.,” Jessa said, ignoring the woman’s obvious hurt feelings. She looked back down at her iPad. “Any insight?”
Charli shifted in the seat before crossing her legs as she looked contemplative. “I really like the work, the hours are great, and the pay is decent.”
Decent?
Jessa remained silent.
“I really think it’s helping me with my acting,” Charli added.
Jessa nodded in understanding. “Any suggestions?” she asked, making notes on Charli’s digital file on the tablet.
“I think the agents need to spend more time with you, Ms. Bell,” she said frankly.
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