Page 50 of Power Games

“Not my mother’s. They suck. She can’t bake for shit.”

She’d sent a smiling face, before adding, “Did you check social media?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t.”

And every few hours, they’d kept at it.

Charles had left Annapolis the previous evening. He’d used Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to come to terms with the situation, understand it, rage and vent about it. Tuesday night, he was lying back in his hotel room and making decisions.

First and foremost, he’d find out who had killed Izzy and make them pay. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been in love with her. If anything, it only served to make him feel guiltier. He’d find them. Charles called in a favor to get on the books of Knightly Security, the best investigator he knew, and hired him to look into it, whatever it took.

Secondly, he resolved to fight for Jacobs Enterprises. They’d try to take it from him. He wasn’t having it.

And lastly…there was Vanessa.

For so long, he'd curbed his desire, his need for Vanessa because he'd seen her as a perfect, pure angel come right down from the heavens. But she wasn't. She had agendas, secrets, dirt. Her eyes and her smiles hid lies better than anyone else’s. Her wings were filthy. Like his.

He'd been looking forward to her return.

He was going to take what he wanted now.

Her knock on the open door was almost shy.

He smiled.

"Come in. Close the door."

19

Power Games

Vanessa never wore black. He hadn't noticed until today, but seeing her with without so much of a stitch of color from head to toes made it abundantly clear. She almost made a mockery of mourning, in her knitted, knee-length skater dress, with shiny black Mary Jane pumps and a black headband. The ensemble was too striking.

"Good morning, Vanessa. I didn't know you'd get in so early."

"Charles," she smiled. "Me neither, but I finished signing my albums and Marina offered to handle the rest."

He'd unconsciously started to memorize the names of everyone in her life a long time ago. "Your agent?"

She sat down on the chair Detective Walton had left vacant moments ago. "Yes. She can be a hardass, but she was strangely understanding this time. I'm off-duty for six weeks, although she mentioned that I'd get brownie points if I managed to write a song in that time."

Six weeks. Then what? Although they'd exchanged no words about it, they seemed to have mutually agreed not to discuss the future since Saturday evening. It wouldn't do to leave a trail of texts.

"Six weeks," he repeated.

"Yes, we'll be busy but it'll have to do. Our campaign starts tonight."

"Our."

She shrugged. "Kaia has a radio show. Everyone is talking about us, so they'll bring us up at some point. She'll say she sincerely doubts I'm your mistress, given the fact that I'm a total bore. That kind of thing, suggesting that her dear boyfriend Rob said I don't put out." She rolled her eyes. "Then Rob has a TV thing. They'll definitely mention me, and he will confirm that he's never had sex with me, and he doubts that I would have done anything reprehensible, given my values. In the meantime, I think Ryn King, Sophia Lewis, Paula Franklin, Buffy Powell, Joseph Hunt, Viktor Kristoff—”

"Basically, every single A-lister currently amounting to anything?"

She smiled. "About that. They have my back. Some will make fun of me, others will say they're in my corner, but the bottom line is, they'll be saying I'm Mother Teresa between now and next Friday. In the meantime, I'll be clearing your apartment, packing Isabella's stuff, helping you make lists of things you want to give away to family members and others you want to keep, looking into buying a new place, supporting Isabella's addiction clinic...and on Friday I'll say that I've finally pulled my head out of the daze and that I'm appalled at what I've read online. That I never would have thought for one moment that my actions could be interpreted as reprehensible. Yes, we were together, but we're friends. We met by chance, my grandmother was there. You'd just come to an agreement about divorcing Isabella, you wanted to share; we watched a movie and crashed. End of story."

He could see it all unfold. "Do you really think they'll believe that?"

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