Page 45 of Dissension

Dieter stands up, hands on his hips in false outrage. “I ought to toss the lot of you ingrates over the side of this yacht. Toss you like a kilo of cocaine before the cops sniff you out.”

Kara laughs and shoves at him playfully. With his grin renewed, he swats back at her. Nick’s smirk drips off his face like wax. Gale frowns curiously, pausing to make notes on a page, her lavender rings catching the sun in blazes of purple.

A sliver of embarrassment creeps into Kara’s guts. Gale hasn’t seen her and Dieter interact together in some time. The level of comfort between Kara and Dieter must be…unnerving. Nick, well, Nickalready knowswhat sort of messed up Kara has going on with his least favorite friend.

The driver cruises them around for most of the afternoon while they work and drink, the men taking business calls, enjoying the sun and the view of the water.

It’s midafternoon when the ominous sound of Dieter’s phone going off fills the air, everyone looking at him to see his reaction. Conversations halt, everyone knowing the sound of his work phone ringtone. He doesn’t like being bothered on his boating days. A dark shadow crosses his features as he looks at the screen, answering the call. “Speak, now.” His tone bites, typical charm nowhere to be seen.

Within moments, he swiftly stands and moves away to a vacant side of the yacht. Everyone makes a face and goes back to having their own conversations, occasionally glancing at their mercurial host. His moods can easily swing and if he’s unhappy, he’ll make everyone else miserable as well in short order.

Kara grimaces, watching him.

Oh, lord. He’s cradling his phone between his shoulder and ear, lighting a cigarette. The call must be going poorly. Kara watches him from the distance, taking in the cut of his body, the tension in his shoulders. Dieter’s pale hair blows in the wind as he hisses into his phone, pacing the far end of the yacht with sharp gestures. The cigarette dangles in his fingers. “He’s such a chaotic twat,” Kara mutters, looking away from him, going over to the table full of food, picking at the vegetable platter.

One of his pals, Mallardy, if she recalls correctly, hears her, nudging another guy in their vicinity. “We call him controlled chaos,” he informs her with that rich frat boy manner in full swing.Informing her. “He’s always in control, but it’s always chaotic. He’ll either make you rich, or he’ll destroy you. And it’s completely up to him.”

The chucklehead in the Hawaiian style button-down agrees heartily. “Yeah. Remember what he did to Brax Neilson? I don’t know what he did to piss Dieter off, but damn, that was some scorched earth shit. Dieter went and made it his literal mission to bring down Neilson’s business…and he did.”

“Fucking awful that was. Dumped all those shares and tanked him. RIP Neilson, RIP.”

“It’s why you don’t fuck with a Bittinger.”

Kara feels her gaze shift between both men. “…Rip?”

Mallardy gives her an odd look. “Well, he’s dead. Offed himself after the bankruptcy went sideways.”

Kara blinks in what feels like slow motion. Refuses to think of finding her mother’s body on the ground, surrounded by razorblades and crimson. Doesn’t want to think of how she numbly tried to clean the floor before realizing she needed to call someone about the corpse.

“Like mother, like son,” Mallardy says offhand with a knowing look to Hawaiian Shirt, eating some items off the vegetable platter. The other man lifts his eyebrows in silent agreement. Kara looks between them, trying to understand.

“What do you mean, like mother, like son?”

The look Mallardy gives her says he thinks she’s being dim-witted. “Youdoknow who Saoirse is, don’t you?”

Oh, God. That excruciatingly beautiful woman and her damn portraits glaring down at Kara from various walls of Dieter’s estate. Those wasteland eyes of green, empty of anything resembling a soul. “Of course, I know who Saoirse is-”

Stepping closer to her with a quick glance in Dieter’s direction, Mallardy lowers his voice. “But do youknowthe controversy surrounding her?”

Controversy? Ha, Kara doesn’t know anything aside from what Saoirse looks like. “I admit, I don’t keep up on the drama that may surround international supermodels. Who has the time for such things?”

Once again glancing at Dieter’s turned back, Mallardy whispers, “The camera and the fashion industry loved Saoirse at the height of her career, but anyone you asked who worked with her said she was a witch of the highest magnitude. That you never crossed her-”

Hawaiian Shirt Man waves off Mallardy’s words. “Get to the real point. The point about Paula Barudi’s accident.”

“The Accident. I think it was in the 80s? Anyway. Paula Barudi and Saoirse Bittinger had been having a public modeling feud, but that is tablestakes. The real meat comes when Paula Barudi died during an event due to exposure to peanuts in her meal. She was deathly allergic and all events and shoots were peanut free spaces when she was around.”

Kara frowns. “If she was that allergic, wouldn’t she have had an EpiPen on hand?”

Mallardy widens his eyes, voice still low. “That’s the kicker. Her family said she always traveled with it in her bag. It wasn’t there that day. It was listed as a freak accident, the one day she left without it on hand. My money though? She brought the EpiPen, it just wasn’t there when she needed it. By design.”

Kara digests this, looking between the two men giving her this wretchedly strange tale of model industry drama. Lowering her voice, so as not to be overheard, “Are you saying you think Saoirse orchestrated Paula Barudi’s death?” Madness. That petite woman and her little skinny bones?

Hawaiian Shirt shrugs his shoulders. “Never proven. Big controversy. Also, not the first timeweirdthings happened to those that got into it with Saoirse.”

Mallardy snaps his fingers. “The runway model with the glass in her shoes! Who was that-”

As the men start gossiping again, Kara excuses herself, feeling like she fell into some rabbit hole that she wanted no part of. It didn’t sit well with her, talking about Dieter’s mother like this, behind his back. He never mentioned anything like this when speaking of Saoirse.

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