Page 54 of The Challenger

After a long beat, I ask, “Is that a threat?”

After a much longer beat, he asks, “Are you recording this?”

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise. He knows damn well he’s overstepped the boundaries. “Go ahead and write a tell-all. My lawyer will make sure it’s the last book you ever publish.”

Me saying lawyer twice is an irrevocable laying down of the gauntlet. The phone clicks to speaker, and he’s out of his chair, pacing around the desk that I once sat on the other side of while he played footsie with a twenty-one-year-old too unsure of herself to stop him.

“Can we rewind, in case you’ve forgotten how this works?” he yells. “Iturned your piece-of-shit manuscript into a bestseller.Igot you everything you have.Youclearly have no clue what you’re doing because if you really wanted to tap into the Latino market, there are better ways than fucking a Mexican.”

I sit down hard on the toilet seat, my stomach roiling. “How can you even say that? You’re disgusting.”

“Says the lady diddling a fifteen-year-old.”

“He’s twenty-five!”

“Tell that to the fly-over states who will see you next to him and truss you up as everything wrong with immigration and the morals in this country.” He laughs morosely. “Forget aboutmybook blowing up your world. You are sprinting down the road of career suicide all by yourself. And if you think anyone will represent you after I kick your ass to the curb, guess again. Good luck out there, Miss Mystery.”

Five seconds pass before I realize he’s hung up. And just like that, the second-longest male relationship in my life is over. Despite the dizzying wave of uncertainty, I know I did the right thing. In public, Nathaniel virtue signaled out the yin-yang, but behind closed doors, in his safe circle, he spewed that kind of garbage on an alarmingly regular basis. He is no better than Earl Anderson. I should have recorded our conversation, although none of it would be admissible in court. And I know we will end up there. Nathaniel will not go down without a fight.

But he has never gone up against a Flynn Dryden who is channeling Truth #5 like there is no tomorrow.

Change is power.

Get ready to rumble, you stone-aged clown.

ChapterTwenty-One

“Earth to Flynn.”

I flash Chavez a guilty smile across the bistro table. He was talking about how well he played and that I should hit with him tomorrow, and I briefly lost my train of thought again. My mind was winding all afternoon, like the famous staircases we climbed, and it continued to wander as we strolled through the porticos that define the bustling university town of Bologna. With every minute that passes, the barely contained mess from this morning keeps ballooning in scope. The repercussions with Nathaniel. That I replied to Brandon, and he texted back immediately.

And maybe, I texted back.

“I’d love to come tomorrow,” I say, gushing a bit too hard.

Chavez fills up our water glasses with a furrowed brow. “You seem a little out of it. And you can’t blame wine because you haven’t had any. Talk to me.”

He is nothing but observant, always watching me. But unlike the interested gazes of my fans, his penetrates beyond my skin and fake smile. I’m conscious of being careful. Nathaniel’s cheap blackmail shot will not incite a riot, but if I tell him about Brandon reaching out, our Italian paradise will go up in flames faster than the 498 wooden stairs we climbed in the Asinelli Tower.

But I have to tell him something.

“I fired my agent today.”

“What?” He sits back, stunned. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s all good,” I assure him, brushing it off. “It was high time.”

Chavez shifts his chair to allow a group of chattering Japanese tourists to squeeze past. It’s packed in here, far livelier than my mood.

“You have to tell me these things,” he says, the bottle of San Pellegrino wobbling as he leans onto the table with a stung expression. “Here I am, wondering if you’re having a good time or if I’ve said anything wrong. You’ve been with that guy your entire career, right? That’s pretty big news. You mind me asking what the issue was?”

“Oh…” I can’t help the nervous flit of my gaze. “Just this and that. A bunch of things.”

He gives me a long look. “Whenever I ask you for details, you never give them. You ever notice that?”

“What details am I not giving you?”

“A bunch of thingscan mean anything.”

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