Somehow, his wife apparently didn’t know about it, either. Which I find hard to believe, but we’re all ostriches sticking our heads in the sand about something.
When he—once again—tried to sabotage a bill my congressman was working on by tacking amendments onto it and refusing to let it pass through clean, meaning it would then fuck up the version Liam was working on in the Senate and delay its passage through conference committee, I simply applied all the accumulated knowledge I had of that Idaho congressman and passed word, via another contact of mine, to local law enforcement.
They are the ones who put together the sting and caught him, investigated him, charged him, and prosecuted him. I had nothing to do with that.
But it sure got him out of office fast, so he was no longer a pain in my ass.
Or Liam’s.
Let me clarify that the gentleman (to use the term loosely) from Idaho would brag to his cronies every time he slowed passage of a bill by doing that. It was a game to him. He didn’t give a shit that he was hurting his own constituents in the process, he just wanted to jam up the works.
It was time for him to go.
It was a bonus that his wife also divorced him and took everything.
A double bonus that it was too late for someone to run for his office and the governor had to appoint someone. A governor who was more liberal than the last one, and who appointed a more moderate and reasonable member of the GOP to take the seat for the remainder of the term.
The cherry on top of that particular cake was the fact that the gentleman from Idaho was yet another rabid “family values” kind of asshole who always voted against any bill that might help someone who wasn’t a white, cishet Evangelical Christian. An obstructionist just so he could brag that he wasn’t beholden to the “DC machine,” whatever the fuck that means.
Everyone’s beholden to someone. Especially in DC.
My latest inroads in the information game come from a certain large religious organization that claims not to be an organization. I have absolutely no fucking intention of Liam or myself getting involved with The Family. We’ve both been approached numerous times about it.
Thank you, next.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know more about who is in it, or what their future intentions are. Because how a particular person acts and how they joined could also mean leverage is being applied against them.
Meaning I might have some digging of my own to do to apply counter-leverage at a later time.
Information.
Little bits and pieces here and there, just laying around like puzzle pieces awaiting someone’s attention to fit them all together.
Ward, however, is the perfect spy to send into that particular lion’s den. He’d be welcomed with open arms. A married straight guy from the South who is friends with a senator they’ve hustled for years to hook? They’d come in their slacks to have him as a member, even if he is in the minority party.
Ward would also give Liam and me plenty of cover to dip in and out of events without being full-fledged members ourselves. Allowing me even more opportunities to gather intel.
I know Liam wouldn’t be too happy if I informed him of my pet Judas goat’s new mission, but he doesn’t get a say in it. Because I’ve got a congressman from Indiana who’s been a pain in my ass lately, and he’s a member. They sometimes confess all sorts of things to each other in their meetings and mentoring sessions. They might put on a good front to the rest of the world as being nothing more than a prayer group, but that’s bullshit and everyone knows it.
The only thing better would be having a source placed in one of the AA meetings that take place on the Hill. I haven’t managed that yet, but only because the person I was trying to leverage into that role got busted for DUI and thrown in jail.
No, that was not my fault.
If you’re scandalized about my callous behavior regarding privacy, just remember that some of these pretentious and self-righteous assholes are willing to withhold crucial federal dollars from life-saving government programs over a “principle” or “moral stand.” Some of them claim to be pro-life, but would happily force women back to the days of coat hangers and back-alley abortions, or kill free school lunch programs for poor kids.
I’m pro-life, but I’d rather lower abortion rates through education and contraception, not shaming people into abstinence. Because, hello, other countries have proved education and contraception work. And I’m also pro-life enough to value an adult woman’s life and health and safety over a clump of cells that can’t survive outside the womb. I’m not judging her for making that decision. That’s between her and God. I’m also for feeding the poor, because, hellooo, Jesus even said to take care of them. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.
Those same “pro-life” assholes, however, are also usually the ones yelling loudest to put people to death, even though DNA is exonerating more wrongly convicted people every year.
Yeah, I don’t get it, either, how they can live with that kind of hypocrisy floating around in their fuzzy little brains.
So if I can find something to use against one of those self-righteous pricks, I’ll obtain it however I have to.
What’s all this have to do with my situation right now, though? Beyond shamelessly using Ward to help me with that?
Oh, it’s me standing in a coffee shop at this very moment as I’m watching Olivia Madison Callahan canoodling in a back corner booth with a guy who is definitely not Ward.
Ward is currently down in Georgia until tomorrow.
She’s facing away from me. I don’t know who the guy is, but he’s maybe twenty-five, if that. I snap a couple of pics of him—including one of them kissing—and I pull up my friend, Facebook.
God bless facial recognition software. He’s an intern at the State Department.
Sloppy, buddy. Very sloppy. Fucking a senator’s wife will have consequences far beyond his ken. Not his fault. At this point, he’s simply another pawn for me to move around and sacrifice, if necessary.
In thirty seconds, I have his home address and other vital info.
Then I pick up my order, head out without Olivia ever having seen me, and I make a couple of phone calls.
I hang out across the street, sitting on a bench there and pretending to read on my phone, so I see exactly when they leave.
Together.
Of course I snap several pictures. Do I look like an amateur?
I make another phone call and then head the opposite direction, toward work. What will happen next doesn’t need my presence. In fact, it’s far better if I’m not there.
Will I tell Ward?
Uh, have you been paying the slightest bit of attention to a damn word I’ve said?
That’s a resounding hell, no, I’m not telling him, or Liam.
Plausible deniability.
I’m sitting at my desk when I receive a text on my secret burner cell three hours later, a link to a Dropbox account.
When I click through, I can view all the pictures and videos my associate took for me of the two lovebirds.
You’d think people in apartments would learn to close their freaking blinds, but apparently not. Even on the fourth floor, drones can obtain footage.
And the kinds of people I know have damned good drones, and can obtain really good footage.
I download everything onto the burner, because I know the link won’t be good for long. My contact and I have a quid pro quo arrangement exchanging information and favors like this.
My husband isn’t the only one who has a secret phone, but I’m smart enough not to keep mine where he can find it. Not that I’m hiding something about me from him. Nothing personal, anyway.
Until this latest development.
Unlike Liam needing his old phone for his emotional security blanket while he struggled for years on his own to work through his pain, I need mine for these types of tasks.
Things Liam cannot know about, because it would invoke all sorts of words bei
ng tossed around.
Like collusion, and extortion.
I’m more insulated because I’m not an elected official and I’ve covered my tracks very carefully. There are numerous people who would step in to help protect me, anyway, because protecting me keeps them safe.
Plenty of people in various places know enough about me that they do not want me in jail, because I will burn down the motherfucking city around me if I am ever caught in that way.
Doesn’t mean I will take stupid risks.
Damn sure won’t expose Liam like that. Or, by extension now, Ward. Not like that.
Using Ward as a tool and protecting him from exposure are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Freeing Ward from the swamp he’s trapped in means I have to be at the top of my game. Mason Rutherford Callahan has several decades of experience and networking and intel gathering on me. He might be an old, wounded wolf, but there’s still likely a lot of fight left in him.
One of the advantages I have, however, is that I’m an unknown to him, a total cipher. That Ward has so preciously guarded his treasured secret of his love for Liam throughout the years works to my advantage, as well. Liam and I are not known weak points for Ward with his old man.
How can we be if we’re just friends?
It means I have the time and freedom to build a strong trap into which I can first back Olivia, and then Ward’s father.
If the man’s even alive that long.
See, I wasn’t at that coffeeshop by coincidence today.
I installed a tracker on Olivia’s cell phone months ago, courtesy of Ward’s help. He thought it was so we can keep track of where she is so she can’t sneak up on us.
Silly boy.
Over the past several days, I’ve seen an unusual pattern emerge in her travels. Today, I decided to wait for her here, wondering why the change in her routine.
I was…hoping it would lead to proof of shenanigans. I mean, she’s living outside of Georgia for the first time in her life, she’s working in a city surrounded by countless people willing to have no-strings sex…
And I might not have told Ward that the software he helped me install is also a keylogger program.
She has secret accounts on several dating sites. This was an inevitable conclusion. Of course I could hand that info to Ward to file for divorce from her immediately. In some timelines, that would be a preferable option, removing one large impediment.
But Olivia’s firm works closely with the firm Stella Woodley works for.
That would be Vice President Elliot Woodley’s little sister. And Stella Woodley is besties with Representative Grace Martin, who has deep ties to The Family.
I would be crazy to cut off my access to that prime information right now.
This indiscretion of Olivia’s is merely the first piece of leverage I will collect on her in preparation for getting her the fuck out of my way so I can finally heal my husband’s soul. Meanwhile, I’ll greedily gather every sliver of intel her conversations with others can provide me with and use it to my political advantage. Because it means I can cut them off at the knees legislatively, outmaneuver them, and make them look like idiots.
That’s a noble cause, right?
Besides, Olivia’s one of those annoying double-standard kinds of people I cannot stand. Especially when they use Christianity as a cudgel.
Like I said, my karma will drive over her dogma.
And back up a few times.
Beep-beep, bitch.
The End
Liam, Daniel, and Ward’s story concludes in Penance.
Keep reading for a preview from Penance (Devout Trilogy book 3).
https://tymberdalton.com/books/series-info/devout-trilogy/
The World of the Governor Trilogy
The world of the Governor Trilogy revolves around rich and powerful men and women who pull the strings of various governmental entities—and each other—in a multitude of ways. There are a variety of romantic pairings and sub-tropes, and all of the books contain varying elements of power exchange relationships.
The seminal trilogy is the Governor Trilogy—which morphed into (as of this writing) five books.
Governor
Lieutenant
Chief
Yes, Governor
Pet
While the trilogies can be read in any order, and characters from various trilogies make appearances in some of the other trilogies, the best reading order to avoid spoilers and to not miss any backstory tidbits is as follows:
Governor Trilogy
Determination Trilogy
Devastation Trilogy
Inequitable Trilogy
Devout Trilogy
Deviant Trilogy
You can always check out the Governor Trilogy page on my website to keep track of any new additions to the world. Yes, there will be more books set in this world coming in the future.
https://tymberdalton.com/books/series-info/governor-trilogy/
Free Preview: Penance (Devout Trilogy 3)
The following is a preview from Penance (Devout Trilogy 3) by Lesli Richardson.
Description
My life has been a series of bad mistakes I’ve let my father make for me—my degree, my career, and my sham marriage.
I walked away from the only person who ever brought love and happiness into my life.
Liam married a great guy, while I’m living a bunch of lies.
When I walked into that Senate chamber and saw Liam, it all came back. Everything.
My promise to Him.
I never broke it—I’m still His, and always have been.
Daniel warns me if I break his husband’s heart again that I’ll find out exactly how bad things can get.
What’s the worst that can happen?
I’m just desperate enough to want to find out.
* * * *
Chapter One
Now — October
Why are you doing this to me?
I’ve reread those words countless times over the years, the opening line of an e-mail Liam sent me the afternoon when I skipped our law school graduation ceremony and fled New York. An e-mail he sent after discovering the note I’d left for him, and he realized I wasn’t coming back.
Every time I read those words, they cut deeply into my soul and make me bleed. This kind of self-flagellation was the only consensual sadism I got to experience after leaving Liam all those years ago.
Although it’s far from the only torture I endured.
Knowing I hurt Liam the way I did has dug deep trenches in my psyche I can never fill, gouged painful pockmarks throughout my mental landscape.
I deserve every one of them.
I thought he’d heal and move on and hate me. When I learned he got married, I felt relieved that he was happy, even as I secretly mourned the loss and felt simmering jealousy over the fact that another man got to be happy with my beloved Master.
Except…
Liam still loves me.
And Liam’s husband, Daniel…
Well, maybe calling what I have with Daniel “a relationship” isn’t exactly accurate, but it’s far more than I ever could have hoped for.
And far better.
I’m definitely in love with Daniel, although I’m not sure if he’s exactly in love with me.
Except from how he talks, it seems like his eventual goal is to have me living with them, once I can finally free myself from Olivia.
I don’t know exactly what to do with that potential redemption, or the temptation offered in their arms.
Why won’t you at least talk to me? Why did you ghost me?
How do I ever adequately explain to Liam that I believed he’d easily move on and meet someone far more deserving of all he had to offer? How do I ever convince him I thought I was the disposable and replaceable one in our relationship?
How do I ever convey to him that it wasn’t a matter of not valuing him enough, but of devaluing myself completely?
How do
I ever justify the wasted years and oceans of tears left in the wake of my terrified retreat from the only true happiness I’ve ever known?
Liam and Daniel have forgiven me…but I don’t know if I can ever forget myself.
At least now they understand how dangerous my father is. Although with my father’s rapidly declining health, he’s far too preoccupied right now to pay much attention to me, thankfully. He had a heart attack late last year that nearly killed him, and he refused to have bypass surgery. A month ago he had a mini-stroke and now needs a full-time caregiver, although he refuses to move out of his home. He can still walk, but he can’t drive.
He might not be as dangerous as he once was, but that’s only because his attention is focused elsewhere. From the way he talks, he is under the impression he will improve and regain his previous health despite everything his doctors have told him and his refusal to heed their advice.
A narcissist’s going to narc, no matter what the truth says.
A knock on the bathroom door startles me and I nearly drop the cell phone as Olivia’s testy tone pierces through the wood and triggers a guilty blush in my cheeks.
“Are you almost ready?”
I protectively clutch the cell against my chest. “Give me a minute. Almost done.”
“You better not be jerking off in there.”
My pulse pounds. “Should I not flush so you can come inspect my shit? Or am I not allowed to even do that by myself anymore?”
“Ugh. You’re so disgusting.” But I hear her footsteps tap-tap-tapping down the hallway in a hasty retreat.
Earns me momentary peace, though. As I expected. Locking myself in the bathroom is a common way I escape her.
Thank god I never wanted kids even before I met her. She would have made a horrible mother. Good luck getting her to change diapers. She can barely deal with her own literal shit, much less anyone else’s. Vomit and snot would send her scampering in a panic, I’m sure.
Profane (Devout Trilogy Book 2) Page 10