Page 55 of How to Get Even

Give them something they want.

Get what you want.

GTFO.

Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 23.40EST.

Bella

See, I’ve done my research.

Sienna

Where did you get that?

Bella

Psychology USA

Astrid

Hahahahaha.

Bella

No, seriously. It was in their November issue.

Astrid

You’re still scary.

Bella had stayed up all night running through her plan. Whatever Chester C. Carlton wrote, it needednotto come back on her. Otherwise, it would look likehermistake and Chase would wiggle out of it. So, the article needed to very specifically be about him and not about a failed interview thatshehad set up. In fact, he needed to not mention her at all.

In all of Chester’s hit pieces the main running theme was that his negative expectations were always met; he wanted to like something but he suspected it was going to be awful… and it was. It was his brand. And here was the perfect opportunity. He suspected she was nothing but a nepo-hire socialite with two degrees bought by daddy and nothing between her ears but Prada and Versace.

So that was what he was going to get.

She’d video called Astrid the day before, wanting her input on what Bella had planned to wear. Thankfully Astrid had forgiven her for what was now being referred to as ‘the hedge incident’.

She’d decided to go for monochrome. She needed to look likemoreof herself, not a caricature, so more jewellery than she would wear, more labels than she would like, more make-up and higher heels.

‘Oh my God, it’s perfect,’ Astrid had screamed. ‘I don’t quite know how you’ve done it. I mean you look like you, but you look like… super annoying. Like the kind of person who would eat three quarters of a plate of food and send it back to the chef.’

‘I would never.’

‘I know you wouldn’t, babe, but you look like you would, and it’s perfect.’

The chat had descended into laughter at that point and they spent another forty minutes on the phone just catching up, despite how tired Bella was leading a double life. Because seeing how much Astrid needed this had pushed Bella’s conscience deep down to a place where it couldn’t disrupt their plans.

She shook off that thought and stopped outside QT, the trendy bar she’d arranged for the ‘interview’. Paige had called in a favour from a friend so that the venue wasnotunder the impression that it would be actually used for an interview in case they got stroppy because it didn’t end up being featured in the magazine. And it was absolutely perfect. Just the right side of chic to not be too trendy. Near enough the gallery to make it absolutely unconscionable that Chase couldn’t make it, far enough away not to raise any suspicion from Nayak staff.

Bella braced herself. She could do this. She would do this. And then the dominos would soon topple on Chase Miller’s career.

She pushed open the glass door by the fake elk horn handle that was, in Bella’s opinion, a little macabre, but would probably appeal to Chester C. Carlton’s style of literary assassination. At 11.30a.m. the bar was eerily empty until a tall attractive blond with hair cut close to their head greeted her with a smile.

‘Are you Bella?’ they asked.

‘Campbel?’

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