Page 79 of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friends
“You did good.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Good?”
I smirk. “You walked into the night as a scandal and left as a myth.”
She huffs. “Yeah, well…that wasn’t exactly the plan.”
“You improvised.”
“I panicked.”
“Same thing, if it works.”
She doesn’t laugh. Just exhales and looks around. “I keep thinking she’s going to sue me,” she murmurs. “Or press charges. Or show up on TikTok tomorrow with a broken tooth and a sob story.”
“She won’t.”
“She might.”
I shake my head. I know Vanessa too well for all that. “She’d have to admit what she was doing in that room. Admit she was spying. Illegally recording us. She’d have to explain why she didn’t press charges immediately, and why half the people in this building watched you ‘help’ her off the floor after she ‘tripped.’”
Her lips twitch. “So that’s what we’re going with?”
“Legally, morally, emotionally, and literally? She tripped.”
Parker presses her hands to her face. “Jesus. If I were smarter, I wouldn’t have done it,” she says. “I knew I shouldn’t. Themoment I moved. But I had this second—this one second—where I saw her face and thought,I can’t let her leave.So, I didn’t.”
“You calculated it.”
“I did.”
“And you helped her because?—?”
“Optics,” she says. “If she wanted to turn it into a sob story, I wanted an audience to see me do the right thing. A little theater goes a long way.”
Nothing could stop the pride from making me smile. “You’re terrifying.”
“Only a little.”
“You sure you’re not the one running this company?”
Her little smirk sends me. “Maybe just tonight.”
We find a quiet spot on the edge of the main ballroom—what’s left of it. Half the tables have been broken down. The centerpieces are being wheeled out two at a time. Staff move around us like polite ghosts, pretending not to overhear the cleanup crew of one of the city’s most scandalous PR firms decompressing after a night that shouldn’t have worked but did.
Parker takes a seat on the edge of the dais where the swing quartet had been earlier. Her shoes are off, heels tucked under one arm. Her hair’s come loose in a few places, and her lipstick’s mostly gone. She looks better now than she did at the start of the night. Like herself.
I sit beside her.
“You really think she won’t come after us?” she asks.
“Legally? No. She’s not stupid.”
“But she’s vindictive.”
“She’ll lick her wounds. Try to reinsert herself in the market. She’ll spin it however she can.”
Parker winces. “Vivian.”
