Page 188 of Dirty Damage

DREW:If he doesn’t pay me off for those sex tapes, then I’ll release them to the public and get the price I want anyway. But if you just listen to me now, no one has to see them. Except us, of course. ;-)

My stomach roils with disgust.

Somehow, he’s got me backed into a corner. A corner I might have cowered into if he hadn’t just ordered me to get rid of my baby.

I will not do that.

Not for him.

Not for Oleg.

Not for anyone.

Stumbling over to the kitchen sink, I run the tap as cold as it will go and splash water onto my face. It helps a bit, so I do it again, and again.

When I finally lift my gaze to the window, my eyes fall on a familiar Ford Mustang parked across the street.

Flying upright, I realize that I’m staring right at Drew. He’s leaning against the passenger door of the Mustang, staring right up at my window.

We make eye contact.

He smiles.

Then he starts typing into his phone.

DREW:What’s it gonna be, baby?

DREW:I’ll wait for your answer out here. Don’t take too long.

I’m far away from the window but it still feels like he can see me, whatever I do. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do or where I go—Drew Anton will follow me like a bad smell.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try.

I have to—for my baby’s sake.

I sneak downstairs to the ground floor of Mara’s apartment building. Then I take the back way out, painfully aware that this is the second time in a week that I’ve been forced to leave my refuge.

Maybe that’s my lot in life.

Maybe I’m destined to spend it running.

55

OLEG

It was a mistake taking the boat out.

Everywhere I look, there’s a freshly minted memory of Sutton.

The bow where we’d fucked for the first time. The railing I’d bent her over. The suites where we’d spent long nights sitting up and talking.

The whole yacht even smells of her.

I actually find a fine, blonde hair curled around the railing on the stern. Instead of doing the rational thing and throwing it into the ocean, I unwind it from the railing and keep it curled around my finger.

I’d call it a new low.

But when you watch the ocean swallow the lives of the two people you care about most in this world, nothing ever that ever feels quite so low again.

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