Page 60 of How to Get Even

Astrid

Hahahahahahahahahaha it’s ingenious. Bella you’re amazing.

BELLA!! WAKE UP!!

Bella’s phone buzzed and buzzed. She’d thought for one rather alarming moment, coming round from dreams about red velvet cake and Chase that she would never admit to a living soul, that it was an earthquake.

But no. It was just the girls. Bella pushed up out of bed, glaring at Delia’s book.

Bella’s thoughts had been too scattered last night from Chase’s ill-timed present for her to be able to fall asleep. She’d tried to turn to Sun Tzu, but he just wasn’t cutting it. So, she’d finally unearthed Delia’s book and started reading. She had thrown the book across the room in frustration at some point around three in the morning. And then at 3.15 she’d retrieved it again.

Her phone buzzed again and she reached for it, fearing something awful had happened. A quick scan of the messages still incoming confirmed that it had. Chester C. Carlton’s piece had finally landed. And it had landed hard.

Bella clicked through the links to find it and… wow. She scanned the piece, her eyes growing bigger and bigger as sentences jumped out at her, her mouth hanging open in shock.

Portrait of the Artist as an Arrogant Man

By Chester C. Carlton

Having lorded his way through the fine art scene, subjecting any and all to such sneering levels of disdain as to all but ruin one’s faith in humanity, Miller – presumably from boredom rather than any genuine desire to bridge the gap between patron and client, and piece and artist, has taken it upon himself to become ‘gallery director’ at large of Tejvir Nayak’s new offering, the eponymous Nayak New York. The well-known property developer, presumably strong-armed into a vanity project for his best friend, seems almost wilfully ignorant of his employee’s behaviour and as such, is playing a very dangerous game with his own reputation.

When rumours of near indecent levels of inappropriate behaviour reached my ears?—

What rumours? Bella asked herself, scanning the rest of the piece.

Miller’s well documented temper could only have been a surprise to an employee who had failed to do their research. He has apparently been terrorising staff, with one all but disappearing without a trace only three months into their job.

And now it appears his ineptitude has cost him the support of another life-long friend and fellow artist Zadzisai. But what could have caused such a rift? Nothing short of the biblical kind of hubris Chase Miller has long since been known for, surely.

Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 09.58EST.

Sienna

Do you think Chase knows? Do you think he’s read it?

Astrid

Oh God I hope so. Seriously Bella, you’re a freaking genius!

Bella looked across her apartment as if she could see through to Chase’s. Biting her lip, she padded her way out of her bedroom and towards her front door, her ears pricked for signs of… well. Anything, really.

Why wasn’t she feeling as gleeful as Sienna and Astrid? Why wasn’t she feeling the thrill of victory sheshouldbe feeling?

Because he’s none of the things Chester C. Carlton said he was.

But he was still a cheating, lying…

A thump and a crash barged their way into her thoughts, pulling her up short about a foot from her front door.

Another loud bang cut through the silence of the early Saturday morning. And then the shouting started, curses strong enough to turn the air blue.

Bella

He knows.

* * *

Ever since Saturday morning, Chase had fielded emails and phone calls from journalists, friends, enemies, artists, buyers, all with varying degrees of self-interest and rabid curiosity, threatening either to pull their current involvement from the gallery, or futurepossibleinvolvement if they didn’t find out ‘what Chester was talking about’.

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