by Meli Raine
“Your entire life is a security risk!” I lob back.
“Now you’re starting to understand.” Harry sits down on one of the chairs at my dining table. I only have two. Marshall gestures for me to sit, too.
“Why are you here?” I remain standing.
“We need to talk to you about what’s really going on.”
“You think I’m not experiencing reality? Have you looked at the news, lately? I’m real, all right.”
Deep discomfort seeps out of Harry’s pores. “That’s bad enough, but we’re here for other reasons.”
“There’s something worse than having my naked body exposed to the world and the tabloids covered with pictures of Silas and me kissing at The Grove?”
“Yes,” Marshall says without irony. “We know your mother was innocent.”
“You what?”
“And we know you are, too.”
“Okayyyyy....”
“We also know that someone in the inner circle is sabotaging us. And you. It’s someone very, very close.”
My father looks at me. “We’ve narrowed it down to about eight people. You’re not one of them.”
“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“But Silas is,” he adds as if he’s ordering a side of bacon with his breakfast.
“Silas? You think Silas is behind all of this? You’re crazy. Legitimately, certifiably crazy.” I start laughing. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop.
“Think about it,” Harry says, eyes intense and full of determination. “He knows explosives. You’re tracked by him. He’s your main conduit of information. Drew’s focused on you. I think he’s blinded by loyalty and can’t see Silas for what he might be.”
“Which is?”
“A deep-state operative.”
I can’t stop laughing.
“What about Silas’s sister?” I finally manage to choke out.
Harry’s face tightens. “A junkie who overdosed? What about her?”
“Someone gave Drew an anonymous tip that I was behind her death.”
“What?” Harry looks genuinely shocked. He gives Marshall a displeased look, as if Marshall isn’t doing his job properly. Hope rises deep within me. I want to quash it. There is no way Silas will ever come back to me. None.
I can’t let go, though. Hope springs eternal, right? But killing hope, even if it’s unrealistic, is a kind of soul death I just can’t handle.
“First I’ve heard of it,” Marshall defends, giving Harry an earnest shrug.
“The heroin she took was laced with fentanyl. It killed her quickly. And now my entire life is being ruined–again–by someone telling your security team that I made her die.”
“That’s crazy,” Harry exclaims.
“My entire life is crazy, Harry. Has been since before I was born.” A yearning for my mother rises up in me.
“That’s not true,” he says softly. “We gave you a good life.”
“We? We? We, who? You and my mother? You gave me twenty-four years of nothing but lies!”
“It was the best we could do.”
“STOP SAYING THAT! It’s just another lie! You could have divorced Monica and married my mother!”
“You’re right. I could have. But Monica was pregnant, too. I wasn’t about to leave my wife in that condition.”
“But you’d do it to my mother? You sick, sick bastard.”
“I’m not proud of how I handled everything. But I had a very difficult choice to make.”
“And you chose Monica.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Because you love her more than you loved my mother.”
“No. That isn’t true.”
“Then why?”
“That is personal.”
“We’re talking about my life here! You can’t claim it’s personal when your decision changed the course of my entire life!” I challenge.
“I can, and I am.”
“What are you hiding? What makes you use people like this? Only someone with a disturbing secret would manipulate so desperately. What is it? What did you do?”
If Harry could flip the dining table, he would.
Instead, he stands, visibly shaken, running an angry hand through his hair. I can’t look away, watching every move, trying to find myself in his gestures, his features, his emotional reactions.
“I’m only here to protect you. Drew told me you threatened to stop allowing the protection we provide. You can’t do that,” he tells me.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I don’t need you anymore. Alice’s estate means I’m independent financially.”
“That will take months, maybe a year, to trickle in to you.”
“I don’t care. I’m done taking ‘help’ from someone who doesn’t believe me.”
“I do believe you. I said so.”
“If you believe I’m innocent, and you also believe someone in your inner circle is sabotaging you, you’re missing the obvious.” I want to say her name. I do. I’m about to, just as Harry’s phone buzzes. He looks at it.
Abruptly, he leaves. Just like that. Poof! My front door shuts with an efficient click.
“Jane,” Marshall says, his voice surprisingly casual and kind. “I know this is hard.”
“For someone whose entire job is to spin, you are doing a bad job of it right now.”
“How about I take off my spin suit and we’ll just speak in blunt truths. Off the record.”
“My entire life has been off the record, Marshall. Go for it.”
“Your father loved Anya. Deeply. But he loved becoming president more.”
“And he chose Monica because divorcing a pregnant wife for his pregnant lover would have ruined his political career?”
“Yes. But it’s deeper than that.”
“How?”
“Monica is... ambitious.” He clears his throat, a pink flush mottling his neck. Marshall is fair in the way of Irish men, with skin flushes and thinning blond hair. He looks at me as if I’m supposed to decode his nonverbal signals to find some unspoken truth.
“Hard not to notice.”
“And becoming president is all about building the right team. Making compromises to move up. Leveraging assets and relationships. Knowing when to be tough and when to back off. People have those skills–they’re innate. You have them or you don’t. And Anya didn’t. She loved Harry for who he is. Wanted a quiet life with him. Was holding out for that. She didn’t understand.”
“You mean she wasn’t a predatory, power-hungry bitch like Monica.”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t kidding about the blunt part.”
“I never kid when it comes to work,” he says with a pointed smile.
“It really comes down to that? Monica was a better fit when it came to rising up the political ladder to become president? She was more of an asset as potential first lady?”
“That is a very watered-down version. I’d go much further. She has made Harry. He would be a state rep piddling away with quid pro quo contracts and private corporate payoffs if she hadn’t worked tirelessly to get him into the U.S. Senate.”
“Why?”
“She wants to be first lady.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. I know very little about her. She’s not the friendliest of people.”
“Where is she from? What’s her history?” It dawns on me that I’ve never asked this question before. I need to research her. Dig into her past. Understand more about her, because it turns out she’s my enemy. Has been since I was conceived.
And I had no idea.
All these years.
“Why are you telling me this? Why now?”
“Because you know. We know.”
“Did you know I was Harry’s daughter before all this?”
“No. Rumors abounded. But the blood test confirmed it.”
“Why did you make me go through that awful medical exam? You could have just asked fo
r my blood.”
“Orders from a different agency.” He shrugs, as if that violation I faced were just another bureaucratic procedure.
“There are a lot of orders about me. Anonymous tips about me. But where is the evidence I’ve done anything wrong?”
“None exists. Trust me, we’ve looked.”
“If Harry knew all along I was his biological daughter, why has he consistently tormented me like this? What kind of father orders a medical exam like that one?”
“It wasn’t Harry who ordered it. Like I said, an agency. Acting on a tip.”
“A tip.”
We stare at each other, neither willing to break first.
“Marshall,” I finally say, “there’s a reason you’re telling me so much about Monica, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” All the air in me runs away.
“Be careful, Jane. Be very, very careful.” He slides a small box across the table. It’s black molded plastic, the size of a laptop. As I touch it, the edge feels cold and unyielding.
I look at him, puzzled. He lifts one finger to his lips in a shhhhh gesture.
And with that, he stands up, plucks a pink peony from my vase, swallows the rest of his glass of water and gives me a somber nod good-bye.
“But I–”
My door snaps shut on my words. I jump up to click over the deadbolt. Duff is out there, so it’s just a precaution, but one he’s drilled into me.
I practically sprint back to the table and look at the black case. It has thick click-locks on it. I pop all three sides and open it.
It’s a gun.
Tiny, with two boxes of ammunition. I’ve been to firing ranges before. Mom taught me how to shoot when I was a teenager. We always had a gun in a locked box, ammo stored separately, for home invasion protection.
But this? This is different.
Marshall has given me a gun.
The man acting on behalf of my father, Senator Harwell Bosworth, candidate for president of the United States, has given me a mysterious firearm after warning me about the future first lady.
Talk about blunt.
Chapter 25
My apartment is all an illusion of privacy. Every bit of it. Because within a minute of Marshall leaving, there’s a knock on the door.
“Marshall?” I call out, my hand on the closed gun case, the heat from my palm making it feel like a hot poker.
“No. Silas.”
“Damn!” I mutter, grabbing the case. It’s heavier than I expect and I wrench my injured arm, dipping down but maintaining my grip.
“Hold on!” I call out, rushing into my bedroom and shoving it under the mussed covers of my blow-up cot. Racing to the door, I answer it to find a nearly nuclear man standing there, his face red, veins bulging.
Without asking permission, he comes in, closes the door behind him, locks it, and whips around.
“What the hell were Marshall and Harry doing here?”
“Playing Euchre. We need a fourth. Want to join us?”
“Damn it!” He slams his hand on the table. I jump, flinching enough to make him take deep breaths. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he assures me.
“I know that.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he commands.
“But you did. You hurt me.”
“I did. It was a mistake. I am sorry, Jane.”
“I think coming here was a mistake, too, Silas,” I say quietly, the words fighting with every part of me that wants to be in his arms again.
“No. I’m here because I need to be here.”
“Why?”
“Too many unanswered questions. Too much conflicting evidence. Drew’s convinced again that we can’t trust you. But then the senator comes here for a confidential meeting with you. Why?”
I throw the same words he’s said to me right back at him. “I can’t share that information.”
“Of course you can.”
“Then let me clarify: I won’t.”
“Why not? Because it implicates you?”
“Nothing implicates me.”
“Plenty of evidence sitting in Drew’s office does, Jane.”
“Rumors. Tips. Show me the evidence. Not someone’s plan to turn into Iago.”
“Throwing Shakespeare at me? We’re not playacting Othello here. You think we’re being manipulated?”
“Of course. I know you are. Why aren’t you looking at Monica the way everyone else is looking at me?” I have to be careful. No one can know what Marshall told me.
Or gave me.
I expect Silas to tell me I’m crazy.
He doesn’t.
“We are. But the proof is... sketchy.”
“Of course it is–she’s smart! Savvy. Covers her tracks.”
“Drew thinks you’re the same.”
“What do you think?” The words are so much more than that simple question.
“If I knew what to think, I wouldn’t be so angry.”
“If you weren’t so angry, what would you be feeling?”
His look is caustic, ragged, yearning, dangerous. In those eyes I see how wrong I’ve been.
Being apart hurts him, too. Not knowing who to believe is causing him so much agony.
The fact that he can’t be sure about me hurts more.
“I want to know! Tell me you’re honest! Tell me with every fiber of your being that you didn’t do any of this! That you’re not working with the deep state. You’re not colluding and feeding The Grove’s security codes to Harry’s enemies. That you didn’t use your contacts to kill my sister, or that you don’t report to people who killed Paulson’s and Foster’s parents. Tell me I can flip the switch inside me that stays on guard, flip it off, sink into you and know to the core of me that you are true. Tell me, damn it.”
He looms over me, staring down, as if I haven’t been saying all of that since the day I was accused.
I give him the one true answer: “No.”
“What do you mean, no? No, you’re not honest? No, you’re not innocent?”
“I am honest!” I shout, panting. “I am innocent! I’ve been screaming it from the rooftops, you jackass! No to your demand. No to your requirement. No to your rant. I’ve been saying everything you just asked for, Silas, and it’s not my fault if you can’t hear me!” I have to be closer to him, to make sure that this time the words make their way into whatever center of his brain processes anything I say.
I move, drawn into his space, not from allure but from the simple position of trying to reach him. Leaning in, I move my face within inches of his, standing on tiptoes to do it.
“This is not about me, Silas. Not one bit, and you know it. It’s about you and loyalty.”
“Loyalty? You expect me to be loyal to you, even when the evidence–”
“Rumors! Tips! And no. I don’t expect it. But I do expect you to be self-aware enough to see that your loyalty to Drew is making you miss the truth. And it’s not my fault you’re missing it. So get your big head in the game again, Silas. There literally aren’t enough words I could possibly say to you to make you trust me. Not one. That’s on you. You have to do it. Quit putting the burden on me.”
“Burden! The burden? Since when did the truth become a burden?”
“When you created an impossibly perfect version of the truth that no one–including me–can ever meet, which is so convenient for you, isn’t it? If no one can meet your standards, then you never have to let anyone in!”
“I let you in!”
“And then you kicked me right back out because Drew told you something that made it easy. Made it safe for you again. You only feel safe when you suspect the woman you’re with is going to betray you. And then you get out before she has the chance to love you.”
He goes pale. “Love? I know we said it before but – is that really what this is for you, Jane? Are you sure you’re not just adding the promise of love to your bag of tricks?”
I let his words hang there
, like a cliff diver at the top of a waterfall.
And then he dives, kissing me hard, his lips brutal, his hands harsh and everywhere as I kiss him back, pounding on his chest with my fists, not wanting him to stop but also needing to hurt him. It makes no sense, but nothing in my life makes sense.
If life is chaos, might as well kiss Silas in an angry fit as part of it, his mouth demanding that I give him the truth, his hands extracting a promise I shouldn’t have to give yet again.
“Stop it!” I push him away. If he needs me to declare my honesty until he believes it, he doesn’t deserve my kiss.
I might, but he doesn’t.
“You–you have to be telling me the truth!” he shouts, inches from my face, the taste of him on my tongue.
“I am! Why can’t you believe me?”
“Because if you’re lying, I’ll have to kill you!”
For a few seconds, I stop breathing. Sound ends. All of the lines between my body and the world lose definition.
And then Silas walks out my front door, slamming it.
I drop to the floor, falling in the space between the kitchen and the living room, his last words ringing in my ears.
Because if you’re lying, I’ll have to kill you.
I stand and walk into my bedroom, pulling back the covers to find the gun case. It’s a Beretta Nano, similar to the kind I used at gun ranges with Mom.
Someone has done their homework.
I load it, undo the safety, brace my stance and steady the sight. One trigger pull.
I’m just one away.
I redo the safety.
Marshall warned me about Monica. Harry thinks Silas is the culprit. Silas and Drew think it’s me.
Muscle memory makes me imagine the sequence from trigger pull to discharge. It’s like giving birth. Loading the weapon is like conception and pregnancy. Removing the safety is like water breaking.
And pulling the trigger? That’s when we birth a new self.
Pow.
Chapter 26
I’m running in a big meadow around a lake, with mountains surrounding me, a circle of natural wonder that takes all the colors and uses them with mathematical precision to create the greatest beauty for the greatest good. The grass feels like silk against my bare legs, and I’m aroused. Naked and flushed, the wind turning my nipples to pearls, my inner thighs brushing against soft, warm water as I’m suddenly in a stream made of hot spring water.