“Madam President,” the old senator said, taking Jessica’s hand and bending over to kiss it.
“Stop buttering her up, John,” Marjorie said as she reached them.
“I’m not buttering her up. She’s my damn daughter. I get to use her title if I want,” John senior growled at his fussing wife.
“You two stop,” Jessica interceded, smiling at them. “Do you want tea? Coffee? Snacks?”
“No, we’re fine, thank you, dear,” Marjorie said, casting a look of warning at her husband.
He grumbled, then shook his head. “She won’t let me eat anything but hippie food. You serve hippie food in the White House now?”
“We serve anything you want, Senator,” Jessica answered, using his title as well, because she knew it made him happy.
“Well then, he could have an iced tea. But no sugar. No more sweet tea for him.”
John senior narrowed his eyes but acquiesced.
After Jessica called for the refreshments, they all took seats in the sitting room of the residence. When her in-laws came, they stayed in one of the guest rooms in her residence rather than the official state guestrooms in other parts of the White House.
“Now, tell me how you’re feeling, Senator.”
“I’m good. But I don’t want to talk about my health. I’m sick to death of the damn topic, and Marjorie talks about it enough for both of us.”
Jessica threw a look of sympathy at her mother-in-law, who pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow in response. Jessica didn’t envy the woman right now. The senator had always been a bit gruff, although not with Jessica, but his illness was obviously making him even grumpier.
“I want to hear about the race next year.”
Jessica swallowed and took a deep breath. She’d known it was coming, but for some reason, that didn’t make it any easier. When John senior had called first thing that morning and announced that he and Marjorie were coming to stay for the weekend, she’d known why, but it still made her freeze up to face them over this particular topic of conversation. She briefly wished Kamal was by her side. His calm, measured presence would make this so much easier. Except for the fact that John’s parents were bound to view it as Jessica cheating on their son.
“What exactly do you want to hear?” she asked, trying not to wring her hands in her lap.
“When you’re going to announce and who you’re going to bring on as campaign manager,” John said, sitting back in his chair and looking at her expectantly. “I would have loved for you to use Derek Ambrose, but that’s out of the question now.”
Her eyes shifted to Marjorie, who also waited, excitement perched on her face like a pair of spectacles.
“Well, you remember the conversation we had over the summer. I’m not going to run again.”
John senior scoffed, and Marjorie gave a strange little hiccupping sound. “That was all fine and good when Melville was around, Jess, but now that he’s gone and botched the whole thing, the party doesn’t have any other strong contenders.”
She listed the names of several congressional representatives and a governor or two.
“No,” John senior said sharply. “You know none of those people can win this thing. You can’t expect the party to give up the highest seat in the land when they have a beloved representative holding it and eligible for another term.”
Jessica sighed. Yes, she knew all the qualities she brought to the occasion. But it didn’t matter. She was thirty-seven years old; she didn’t want to run the country. She wanted a nice town house somewhere with a flower garden and no bodyguards. She wanted to teach law at a university. She wanted to be able to go shopping with Fiona, eat dinner out with Kamal, and maybe, if it wasn’t too late, even raise a child. She felt certain that if anyone could qualify for an adoption as a single parent, it would be her, and the mere idea was so enchanting, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it in days.
“I’m sorry, John,” she said, trying to infuse as much determination into the words as she could. “I care about the party, and I’ll be happy to support and campaign for the next nominee, but I don’t want to serve another term. I need you to understand that.”
“Understand that?” John senior blustered. “Understand that you’ve been given the nation’s most prestigious position—hell, the world’s most prestigious position—something that people throughout history have lost blood, sweat, and tears for, bankrupted their families for, laid down their lives for…” He paused, his faded denim-blue eyes clouding over briefly.
“Senator,” Jessica interrupted before he could take the conversation down the road to John and his death, which always ended in Marjorie crying and Jessica choking on guilt. “Trust me, I more than anyone understand the amount of sacrifice that goes into being president. And I am honored that I have been given the opportunity to hold this office. That the people of this great country have entrusted their sacred pact to my supervision is awe-inspiring.”
“But,” Marjorie said, disappointment saturating the one simple word.
“But I’m tired, and my youth is in the process of walking out the door. There are things I still want to do with my life, and I won’t be able to if I stay here four more years.”
“What sorts of things, dear?” Marjorie asked, looking befuddled.
Jessica sighed. How much she could or should tell them about her personal desires was a concern. She wasn’t sure how they would take certain things.
“I would like to teach law again. It was something I had a passion for, and I think I was good at it.”
“No reason you can’t do it in four years. You’ll be a former president. They’d want you teaching at Harvard if you were a hundred. There is no such thing as too old if you’re a former president of the United States.”
“There is if you want to be a mother,” she answered quietly.
Marjorie’s gasp of breath was sharp, and John senior cleared his throat gruffly. “A mother? I thought that after the miscarriage…” Marjorie’s voice faded away as the memories washed over them all.
Jessica had been carrying John’s child when he died, and in the two weeks that followed, she had told her in-laws, and it had been the thing that kept the three of them going. It was as if God had given them all a consolation prize to take away the soul-crushing pain of losing John. But then came the day that the general discomfort that she had attributed to early pregnancy had exploded into a pain that forced her to leave the Senate floor in the midst of a vote and go to an ER. And it was there that she discovered her pregnancy was ectopic.
In the sterile, cold surgical wing of Walter Reed Hospital, Jessica lost John all over again, and the last embodiment of the Hampton legacy died before ever really living. But along with it died Jessica’s ability to have a child, her fallopian tube so shredded, it had to be removed, and her uterus scarred, leaving her unable to bear children.
“Adoption,” Jessica clarified for her mother-in-law. “I want to adopt a baby, and I don’t want to be in my seventies when that child is grown, so I need to get on with it soon.”
“And who would be this imaginary child’s father?” John senior demanded.
“I would be,” Jessica answered, a spark lighting inside her that had never been there with her in-laws before. “There are many successful single mothers in this country, and I feel confident that with the resources I have available to me, I could handle it as well.”
Marjorie’s face was awash in sadness. “I guess I just never imagined that you’d do anything like that without John.” Her voice grew soft. “He would have loved to be a father so much.”
Jessica steeled herself against the grief. Yes, he would have, but he’s not here, and denying myself everything I want in life won’t bring him back, she reminded herself.
“He would have. But I will too, and because of that and many other reasons, I don’t want to serve a second term in office.”
John senior cleared his throat before standing somewhat unsteadily. “I
think the travel has made me tired,” he said. “I’m going to go lie down for a while.” He patted Jessica’s cheek. “We’ll talk more about all this later.”
She nodded, dreading a fresh assault but resigned to it all the same.
After he left the room, Marjorie came and sat next to Jessica on the settee.
“You’re sure this is what you want? There’s no chance you’ll change your mind?”
Jessica shook her head gently as she clasped her mother-in-law’s hands in hers. “This wasn’t ever what I wanted—at least not like this.”
“You would have made a wonderful First Lady,” Marjorie said, tears in her eyes.
“And he would have made a first-rate president,” she answered. “I’ve tried to do his memory justice.”
“And you have, dear,” Marjorie said emphatically, the tears falling now. “No one could have worked harder than you to protect and further John’s legacy. He would be so proud of you.” Marjorie sobbed, and Jessica got that all too familiar ache in her gut. She knew how this worked. The ache would bloom, growing until it virtually consumed her, and then John senior and Marjorie would approach her again, and the defenses she had shored up would already be weak, cracked by the pain that was slowly eating up her insides. And that was when she would give in—agree to take John’s Senate seat, agree to run for president in John’s place, agree to make her life a shrine to John and his ambitions.
“I need to go do a few things in the office,” she told her quietly weeping mother-in-law. “Do you need anything? I can have the staff bring up some food. There is a whole new list of movies on the server. You remember how to work the TV, don’t you?”
Marjorie nodded, dabbing at her eyes. “Of course. We’ll be fine, dear. And I’ll just ring the kitchen if we want anything.”
Jessica nodded and kissed the older woman on the cheek before quickly exiting the room and nearly running down the stairs to the Oval Office. And it wasn’t lost on her that the same place that kept her prisoner was now the one place that set her free, because in the Oval Office, there was no time for guilt or pain or regret. There was only time for work.
Chapter 13
Kamal had thought he was free and clear. And it was true that his money was. He was now an independently wealthy man with a well-padded set of Swiss bank accounts that no one could touch and that were in no way tied to his father.
However, the fallout from Teague’s master manipulations wasn’t going to be short-lived. Approximately thirty-two hours after the very last dime he could legitimately take was transferred, his father was on the phone, the video conference line, email, and even text. And his fury was substantial.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice thundered across the computer monitor in Kamal’s office, where he sat in his sweats at four a.m. because his father had called the overnight embassy staff and insisted they wake his son for a family emergency.
Kamal stifled the urge to defer to his father. Thirty-plus years of doing as he was told didn’t fall away easily.
“Good morning, sir. I assume you’re in London since you’re dressed and there’s daylight outside your window. Maybe you forgot that it’s four a.m. here?”
Kamal took a sip from the cappuccino his housekeeping staff had been kind enough to provide when they heard he would be taking a video call before the crack of dawn.
His father’s face turned an interesting shade of purple, and the vein on the side of his neck throbbed erratically. Kamal briefly worried that his actions might cause the old man to stroke out, and while he and father weren’t close, and he was happy to be free of the man’s machinations, he also didn’t want to be the one to kill the family patriarch.
“I don’t give a bloody shit what time it is. I want to know what you think you’re doing?”
Kamal cleared his throat. “I’ve taken the funds that are legitimately mine and put them in independent accounts.”
He could nearly hear his father’s teeth grinding through the Internet connection. “And why in the name of all that is holy to our family would you do such a thing?”
“Because I have reason to believe that both you and our esteemed President Abbas are involved in this mess with the Bratva that resulted in an assassination attempt on President Hampton while I sat a few inches from her.”
His father hadn’t become a billionaire by having a poor poker face, and his expression hardly flinched at the accusation.
“I would never be involved with an attempted assassination. Nor would I approve of any such attempts that put my own flesh and blood at risk—although I’m currently rethinking that policy.”
Kamal had to chuckle. He knew no matter what—even if he was cast out of the family forever—his father would never tolerate Kamal being harmed. But that assumed his father had any say in the matter, and Kamal highly doubted he did.
He leaned closer to the monitor, pinning his father with his sharp gaze. “I know you would never order something like that, but I don’t think you had any say in it, and I don’t think you have much control over the whole thing at all. I know that it’s Abbas’s freight trains that are taking those drugs to the Middle East, and I know that you’re in bed with the Bratva. I’m the ambassador to the US. I can’t be anywhere near this mess when it blows up in your face, and mark my words, it will.”
Mr. Masri made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Please. Even if I were involved in something that you find unacceptable, you’re an ambassador. You have diplomatic immunity. The worst the Americans could do to you is to send you home.”
Kamal twitched at the mention of the word home. What was home? He’d grown up in England, playing football, spending weekends in London and Cornwall. He’d come to the US for college and been here ever since. He really had no idea where home was for him at this point in his life. He knew he was more comfortable in the US, but did that make it his home?
“You really think diplomatic immunity will protect me if you or your money is tied to the attempted assassination of an American president? Especially this American president? She’s their darling, and a woman. If you think that doesn’t affect how they view what happened in the White House gardens, then you’re very out of touch.”
“Whether they want to or not, there is nothing they can do to you.”
“Bullshit,” Kamal spat out, using an Americanism he knew his father hated. “They will hunt me down like an international criminal, and I would deserve it. If you’re tangled up with the Bratva to the extent I think you are and I allowed myself to continue to be anchored to you, then I probably belong in Guantanamo. However, as of now, I am tied to you by DNA only, and whatever mess you’ve created is yours to fix.”
“And I suppose you are telling the US about your suspicions?” his father asked, fishing for information in an effort completely lacking in subtlety.
Kamal sighed, because here was the juxtaposition of the whole thing. He didn’t want to be associated with his father’s misdeeds, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell the US about those misdeeds either. He couldn’t bear to be disloyal to his country. And the fact that he slept in the bed of the president and still hadn’t told her that he thought both his father and the head of state of Egypt might be part of the clusterfuck that had gotten her shot at was reprehensible at best.
“I haven’t—yet. And I’m hoping I won’t be forced to.”
“You won’t, because there is nothing to tell,” Mr. Masri blustered.
Kamal shook his head. No matter what, his father would never admit to any wrongdoing. He would never tell Kamal the details of what he was involved in. It was the way he’d run his business as long as Kamal had been old enough to remember. And for just as long, Kamal had heard the rumors, things whispered in the dark corners of prep school hallways, the back rooms of congressional committees, and the snatches of gossip at high-end cocktail parties. Since he was seven years old, he’d heard it—your father does business with criminals.
At som
e point in his years in college, Kamal had decided they were rumors he couldn’t worry about. If things like that did go on, his father did an excellent job of keeping it from Kamal. And since Kamal had never been tapped to work for the business itself, he’d never known the internal operations. He wondered if his brother Amir knew more. He hoped not, but somehow he guessed that Amir was given access to a side of their father that Kamal had never seen.
“The bottom line is that I don’t trust your judgment, and I’m not willing to risk my career and my freedom on your word that none of this will rebound to me,” Kamal said.
His father gave a sharp nod and a grunt. “Then you’ve decided that your life there in the US is more important than your family? You’ve decided that you’re more concerned with the opinions of the Americans than you are with the opinion of your own father?”
Only one American, Kamal thought.
“I’ve decided that doing the right thing is always the better course of action to pursue.”
His father rubbed his hand across his jaw, and for a brief moment, Kamal saw that his cantankerous, virile, overbearing father look tired and lost.
“I let you stay too long,” Mr. Masri said softly.
“Father…”
“No, it is my fault. Your mother told me I left you alone too much, sending you off so young, allowing you to stay there after college. I should have had you take a seat in parliament instead of letting you live in the US. And now you are more concerned about yourself than your family, more interested in impressing the Americans than you are in impressing your own father. I see that I did you a disservice, and now I must pay the price.”
Kamal sighed. “I didn’t make this decision because I don’t love the family or you. I simply don’t want to go to prison.”
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