The Corrupt Trilogy

by Penelope L'Amoreaux

  Simon had her, hook, line, and maybe even sinker. Paige wasn’t interested in destroying Roger. As much as the news hurt her, she was mostly hurt by his silence. The sheer amount of himself that he held back from her was a noose that was silently tightening, strangling more with each thought.

  “I should go home.”

  “Did you read it?” Simon was trying to sound uninterested, but his eyes gave him away. Blue and twinkling, they were so much like Roger’s. The man she’d have to face as soon as she went home and cleaned up.

  “You know I did.”

  “...And?”

  She grabbed her purse and one last piece of toast. “Thanks for the drinks and for breakfast.”

  “Let me drive you. A cab from here will be ridiculously pricey to your home.” She didn’t question that he knew where she lived. A man who had such an intimate knowledge of her life would undoubtedly have followed her there many times. She waited as he disappeared.

  When he came back, he had on a simple button down shirt, managing to look effortlessly gorgeous. They hopped into his car and he began to drive her home in silence.

  She took the time to call the office. One of the interns picked up the phone.

  “Senator Taylor’s office, how may I help you?”

  “Hey, this is Paige, I’m running--”

  The intern interrupted her. “Hold on, Miss Summers, I’ll transfer you to the Senator--”

  “You don’t need to do that, just let him know I’m going to be--”

  “He insisted that if you called, we were to transfer you right away. One moment.”

  Music abruptly began playing through her phone speakers. Her finger hovered over the disconnect button. Yes, she’d have to talk to Roger. They had a huge conversation coming up, one she was decidedly not looking forward to.

  “Where the fuck are you?” Roger picked up on the other line.

  Paige winced and snuck a look at Simon. If he heard, he didn’t show it. “I’m heading to my house, and then I’ll be in the office.”

  “That’s not an answer! Do you know how worried I’ve been? You ignored my calls, you didn’t come home last night, you’re running late--none of this is like you!”

  Paige snarled a little. “Yeah, well last night you weren’t like you, either. I’ll see you when I get there. Don’t forget about your Committee Meeting at 11.” She hung up and turned off her phone.

  Simon was smiling. He’d heard everything, and he seemed to be reveling in it. “Trouble in paradise?” He mocked her.

  “Fuck you.”

  His smile and eyes softened. “So, this is completely inappropriate but since you aren’t seeing Roger anymore, do you want to get dinner sometime? I promise not to take you on a table.”

  Paige’s heart skipped a beat. What? WHAT? “Are you seriously asking me out? Now?”

  He shrugged, his eyes stealing small glimpses at her as he drove. “Sure. Don’t think I don’t know how creepy this sounds, but I’ve been watching you. Studying you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, and you’re independent and sassy. Those are qualities I like in a woman. Since you are finished with Roger, I figured I might try and be the rebound.”

  Her mouth was gaping open. It took her a moment to recover. “I don’t know if Roger and I are finished.”

  They had arrived at her apartment. The car sat, engine still running. Simon turned to her. “After all his lies, you’d stay with him?” There was a touch of acid in his voice. He really had it out for Roger.

  “He’s not just someone a client hired you to ruin, is he?” She asked in wonder.

  Simon’s eyes narrowed. “No, he isn’t just someone a client requested.”

  “Who is he to you? Who is your client?”

  “Are you going to go out with me? Dump that uncaring son of a bitch and watch him burn?”

  She shook her head. She was overwhelmed and furious and hurt by Roger, but she wasn’t going to betray him. Her hand grasped the door handle. Before she got out, Simon sighed in exasperation. “Fine. It was a pleasure to finally meet you, Paige. If you change your mind, you know how to find me.”

  “Through your whore?”

  He laughed. “I’m not her pimp. Anastasia sees a lot of high profile clients. She and I have a mutually beneficial relationship. I introduce her to men with money and she pays me back.”

  Understanding dawned on Paige. “In information?”

  “You got it.”

  She didn’t know how to end it. Here was the mysterious “S,” looking not so mysterious now. With his just-woke-up hair and button down, it was hard to remember that just his shadow had terrorized them for months. “I’m going to go now.”

  With that, she left the car and went inside, unsure what her next steps were.

  Chapter Seven

  Paige marched into Roger’s office. It was the only way-- she knew he was planning on bulldozing her as soon as he saw her. This way, at least, she could remind him that being an aide was not the same as being a doormat.

  She expected a yell, since he had cussed at her on the phone earlier. Instead, Roger was sitting at his desk, his hands steepled, and his eyes blazing.

  He didn’t look well. Instead of his sharp, polished look, he was still wearing his tux from the night before. The coat was hanging over his chair and his shirt unbuttoned at the top and wrinkled. The skin under his eyes was dark and puffy. She’d never seen him so unkempt. Somehow it was worse than him screaming at her.

  Paige didn’t know what to do. The secrets she had learned about him weighed her down like rocks in her pockets. She wanted to yank them out and hurl them at him until one connected. She wanted to make him hurt, because he had hurt her so much. Yet seeing him there, looking exhausted and worried made her ache with longing. She didn’t want to be the cause of his anguish.

  She still loved him, after everything.

  “Where were you?” He asked, breaking the silence.

  “Simon Stills,” she replied. His eyes grew wide in confusion. He pushed back his chair and started to rise, then sank back down again.

  “How do you know Simon?” His voice was tight. “Did you… did you spend the night with him?” Roger choked a little, and Paige heard fear there.

  She straightened her shoulders, preparing. “Roger, Simon is ‘S.’ I found him.”

  Roger’s face blanched. “Impossible. Simon wouldn’t hurt me; I haven’t seen the guy in over fifteen years!”

  Wait--Roger knew Simon? Paige’s mind whirled. The animosity in Simon’s voice and the glee he had in ruining Roger clicked. Of course they knew each other. This was personal, and Roger didn’t even know it was happening.

  “Get Dallas in here.”

  Roger hesitated; their conversation about where she had been and why she hadn’t called hadn’t been covered. But Paige was sitting on big information and, for better or worse, she would help him try to fight it to the end. He must have seen her resolve, because he picked up the phone. In moments, Dallas and Mariel came in.

  “In three days a story is going to break,” Paige began. “It is going to say, with facts to back it up, that Roger fathered a child in his teens and then abandoned the mother.” She looked pointedly at Roger, waiting for his reaction.

  It wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d thought he’d look ashamed, or angry, but the way his eyebrows pushed together-- he was confused.

  Dallas laughed. “This is what you’re worried about? What facts? Roger never had a baby. This ‘S’ guy is trying too hard.”

  Paige and Roger weren’t laughing, though. “He isn’t trying too hard. ‘S,’ or Simon Stills, has the birth certificate with Roger’s name on it, and your father’s. The mother was Jessica Farmer.”

  At that both men went silent. They looked at each other. Paige saw the years of working together, of being each other’s back up, show itself in their silent communication. It was a punch to the gut; they knew the names. It wasn’t fabricated. Simon was telling the truth.

  Roger
had abandoned a child.

  The storm that had settled a little since first reading the documents began to build again. Anger and betrayal whipped inside of her, but at the eye of it was Roger. He still looked like the man she knew. He truly wasn’t sure of what she was saying.

  Can it be abandonment if you didn’t know about it?

  Dallas broke the silence. “I thought she broke up with you.”

  “She did,” Roger moaned. “I mean… God, it’s been over twenty years since I last saw her. She left a note with Dad, and he gave it to me and--”

  Her heart skipped a beat as Roger wrestled with this new possibility. “So you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

  He shook his head violently. “No! God, of course not. Why wouldn’t she tell me? We could have taken care of her, helped with the baby-- with my baby! How could she not have told someone?”

  Dallas, though, was in full brother bear mode. His face was dark with menace. “Oh, someone knew. And he hid it from both of us.”

  Understanding broke over Roger’s face and he shoved his chair back, rising and slamming his hands on the desk. “No! He wouldn’t dare, not something this big!”

  Paige was at a loss. And judging by Mariel’s face, she was lost, too. “Um, who are you talking about?”

  Roger picked up his phone with a grip so tight she thought it might crush in his palm. “It’s time to visit dear old Dad.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Events were crashing in like a tsunami, and yet there was a distinct feeling of déjà vu as well. Roger and Paige were in a limo with Mariel and Dallas, being driven to Walter Taylor’s Virginia estate. The plan was to confront him, verify that Jessica had, in fact, borne Roger’s child. It hadn’t been so long ago they’d all been in the car heading to Roger’s house for another confrontation. That one had ended in tragedy.

  There was a flood of questions she knew Roger must have, because she was thinking them, too. Did he have a son or daughter? Where were they? Did they know who he was? Why had Jessica hidden it from him? Why had Walter?

  At least one thing was easily cleared up--how Roger and Simon knew each other. Simon was the son of a lifelong employee of the Taylor’s, Marta. She’d borne him around the same time that Roger had been born. Their mom had loved and depended on Marta, claiming she was the best cook and housekeeper she ever met. So when Marta tried to quit when Simon was born, Walter put a stop to it.

  “Your dad made her stay?” Paige asked.

  “He insisted. My mom was agreeable and claimed she couldn’t live without Marta. Besides, mom’s always pictured herself as a bit of a philanthropist. Marta wouldn’t say who the father was. When mom heard he was out of the picture, I think she and Walter were convinced they were saving this poor, abandoned woman.”

  Dallas laughed. “Yeah, never mind that Marta was the only reason they had a functioning household! She treated us well but damn-- she knew how to run a house.”

  “I don’t understand,” Paige ventured. “It can’t be that lucrative of a job--how’d he convince her to stay?”

  It turned out Walter had offered her a substantial salary, a place to live in near the home, and he even sent Simon to boarding school with Roger and Dallas. Marta had accepted. Apparently the father of the baby had run out on her, and Walter Taylor offered Simon a life she couldn’t have given him otherwise. For Roger, Simon had been a best friend. At the time, he and Dallas were so busy being groomed for their futures in politics that he’d been grateful for a friend who wasn’t covered by his family’s looming political shadow.

  They’d been attached at the hip as boys, and later roomed together at boarding school.

  “It’d been like having two older brothers instead of one,” he said.

  “Brothers is a good term for it. That’s what it felt like.” The nostalgia in his voice made Paige feel guilty for having spent the night with Simon. While nothing sexual had happened between them, Simon had definitely let it be known he was far from being Roger’s biggest fan.

  “Simon is the one who’s releasing this to the press, Roger. He’s the one who manipulated Ellen into embezzling the campaign funds. He isn’t who you remember.”

  Roger shifted in his seat, unable to look her in the eye. “Yeah, but you said he’s working for someone. I can’t believe he’d do that, but, I don’t know… maybe he needed the money.”

  She remembered the luxury SUV, the high class escort employee, and most of all his fabulous, swanky house. No, he wasn’t looking for money. A memory of his sneer, the angry twist of his beautiful features-- Paige knew Simon was in it for revenge.

  Explaining that to Roger was difficult. Mostly because he focused on the one aspect she’d hoped he’d gloss over.

  “You spent the night. With him.” The hard edge of his voice made her shiver. Dallas and Mariel were looking out the window, at each other, everywhere but at herself and Roger.

  “No,” she corrected, “I spent the night at his house.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about semantics,” he retorted, his shoulders so tight and erect that his suit tugged at the seams. “You left me after a particularly intimate moment and ran to another man. For the whole night.”

  The tension in the car was high. Roger should give a fuck about semantics. After all, what she had done truly was different from the picture he was painting in his mind. If he’d only realize that she’d spent the night locked in torture, reading his hidden past. It wasn’t just the baby, of course. She’d just left the other part out. The part Ellen had hinted at, that had been eating her up since she’d first questioned it. We both know your tastes can be a bit… eclectic.

  The part about the sex clubs.

  Now it sat on the edge of her tongue, an insult waiting to be hurled if he kept pushing her buttons. Except that wasn’t who Paige was. She didn’t want to be the girlfriend who threw past transgressions into her lover’s face; it had happened long before she’d met him. He couldn’t go back in time and fix what he’d done.

  And that was the burn of it, too. She didn’t need him to fix what he’d done. The truth of it was, the depraved acts he’d committed with those faceless strangers were… enticing to Paige. Things she’d have been willing to let Roger do to her. The thought would have excited her but for the fact that Roger clearly did not wish to do them with her. He’d lied to her, closed a huge part of himself off to her, and that was what made the knowledge an insult, a way to hurt him back.

  She tried so hard to squash those hurt feelings down. To focus on the present dilemma. Roger’s accusing eyes were making it difficult. “I find it interesting, Roger, that you are ready to trust in Simon’s integrity and devotion to you, yet are questioning my honesty about what did or did not happen at his home last night.”

  Oops. That was a bit snarky. His eyebrow lifted in disbelief. Paige didn’t mind standing up to him, but she was never condescending or rude. Well, there was a first time for everything, she supposed.

  “I’ve known Simon for my whole life. You’ve known him for a night.”

  “I’ve been fucked by you, Simon hasn’t. What exactly are you trying to prove? We’re heading to your father’s house because you must believe me about Jessica. So why don’t you believe me when I say that nothing happened?”

  He rocked back into his seat, her words a blow to him. There wasn’t a chance for him to reply; they’d arrived. Paige practically leapt from the limo, jumping out before the driver could come open her door. Tears were stinging in her eyes and she didn’t want anyone to see.

  Roger gave her a wide berth as he exited. He and Dallas marched toward the house, their voices low and already discussing whatever battle plans they needed to when confronting their father.

  An arm, warm and soothing, draped over Paige’s shoulders. Mariel. Not too long ago, it had been Paige comforting her. Well, her mom had always said a little kindness would pay itself back. Her friend’s protective embrace was certainly proof of that.

  “What’s going on?” Ma
riel pulled her closer. “Besides the obvious, of course.”

  Paige sniffed back her tears. “I shouldn’t tell you--not because I don’t want to, but because it isn’t my secret to tell.”

  Mariel nodded. She was Dallas’ girlfriend. Only girlfriend didn’t seem like a good enough term to Paige, because when she watched them she felt happiness, and she felt envy. Dallas and Mariel were pulled together, uniquely fitted in the most delightful puzzle of a couple. Paige had been delighted to watch it happen, hoping against hope it would happen for her and Roger.

  She’d been so sure it had. “I--I just wish Roger trusted me more. Gave me more credit.” Her throat tightened and she stopped speaking, not wanting to cry any harder than she was.

  “You were the one who warned me about the Taylors. Roger does trust you, but think about what happened with his last aide.”

  “That’s just the thing! I really thought he knew me and knew I’d never betray him like Ellen.”

  Mariel gave her a quick, friendly peck on the cheek. “That isn’t what I meant. I don’t think Roger is keeping you at a distance because he doesn’t trust you. I think he wants to protect you. You coming to him with this news from ‘S’, or Simon, and his dad-- I bet he’s going crazy right now, afraid of what will happen to you!”

  They reached the front door. Mariel released her after giving her one final squeeze. “Be gentle with Roger; he’s a lot like Dallas. They put up a tough front, but if they think they’re losing control, they can crumble.”

  Oh, hell. Mariel went in first while Paige stood, chewing her lip. Thinking. Of course Mariel was right. All along Paige had been so selfish! She’d thought Roger wasn’t letting her in because he didn’t trust her. But he’d always come to her first, even when Ellen had been his aide. Wanted her opinions. Hell, he’d trusted her with two campaigns and his public image and speeches. He did trust her, implicitly.

  And after watching both Roger and Dallas react after Ellen’s sabotage attempt, she’d seen their ruthlessness when it came to protecting the ones they loved.