But that can’t be. We sabotaged and sabotaged and sabotaged. Bridget should look as appealing to Halo as a year-old piece of gum stuck beneath a school desk. She should have almost no score. Jessica has been flexing her memory, bedding Trevor like a champ, displaying everything we’ve decided Halo wants in our avatar. She’s smart and remembers everything; she’s beautiful and adventurous. Every man will want her. They’ll model Jessica inside and out. With the help of the board’s quiet partners, ten years from now they’ll have a product — some sort of product, though I shiver to think of the form it might take — that will make the entire porn industry obsolete. Porn fills an evolutionary need, mostly for men, but it does so clumsily. Porn succeeds because thus far there’s been nothing better. But that will all change once Eros stocks the shelves with Porn 2.0, after all they learn from Jessica.
Jessica. Not Bridget.
Welty is laughing — a cultured, no-harm chuckle — the kind that comes from a man in an expensive armchair over a glass of brandy or port.
“Oh, that’s right,” he says.
“What’s right?”
“There was some conflicting data. Now I remember. This must have been what he meant.”
I don’t bother to ask who Welty means. I already know he means himself. His little performance, pretending someone else discovered an amusing kerfuffle in the process, makes me want to stick a boot down his throat. Of course he knew what was in the envelope. It’s clear as the threat on his face.
Across from us, Bridget looks lost. Like a frightened little girl. I want to go and take her in my arms. But I can’t. I’m pinned here by circumstance, just like my proxy power at Eros. It’s my company. My fortune. But the thing is a shell game, until you wake up one day and realize you couldn’t move if you wanted to.
“I don’t get it,” Trevor says. “Is it Bridget, or isn’t it?”
Trevor’s face says, Daniel, tell me it’s not Bridget. Tell me Welty is wrong. Because we both know what this means, if Welty has his way. Behind the scenes, the woman who makes it through Halo’s gauntlet becomes the model on which Eros-brand sexuality may forever be based. But Eros has a public image as well, and that face belongs to Trevor. The winner will become his wife. Entitled to half the fortune once the prenup is fully vested. Entitled to live in Eros homes, enjoy the Eros lifestyle I’ve spent a lifetime building. She’ll travel with him everywhere. Sleep by him, if not with him, in his private residence. She’ll be very busy. And because the investment in Trevor’s wife is so significant and her value is so high, care will be taken that she never strays. Trevor’s wife can’t have affairs. She’ll be with Trevor, or no one. And to keep things fair, the same will be true of Trevor.
Trevor and the winner, together forever.
In sickness and in health.
Forsaking all others.
Until death — or the company — do they part.
Welty shifts, looking casual, clearly enjoying the way his gambit has pinned the four of us in place.
“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “There was the matter of the conflicting data.”
Trevor says, “What does that mean?”
“It means that our technicians, once alerted to a possible fault, found that a large amount of raw data into Halo seemed to have been … corrupted.”
Welty’s eyes clarify, Meaning: deleted. Tampered with. Cheated — by you, Daniel.
“At first, we thought the winner was Jessica.” He pauses, looking at me meaningfully. “But once the missing data was reinserted from the backup drives, Halo seemed to change its mind, and selected Bridget.”
I swallow.
Welty says, “Halo chose Bridget as Trevor’s bride.”
Welty looks at Jessica, then Trevor, then Bridget. He lingers on Bridget for several seconds then returns his ugly eyes to me. And when he does, all the conviviality is gone. The cordial, polite man who got off the helicopter has gone missing, and in his place is a monster.
“Unless,” Welty continues, “you can shed some light on our data confusion, Daniel — and know a reason she shouldn’t be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bridget
The back of Jessica’s hand taps mine. I look over and see her pretty face clouded with worry. There’s no way to stick our faces into pillows now, or pretend to make out while discussing strategy. But everything’s falling apart.
“What do we do?” she whispers.
I don’t know how to answer, so I shake my head, fixated on Daniel. He’s still holding the envelope, and the paper with my name. The longer he waits to answer Welty, the guiltier he seems. He should say, No, I don’t know anything. But I can see the decision chasing its tail in his mind, and each second expired speaks for him.
“Bridget!”
“We can’t do anything,” I whisper back.
“We have to say something!”
“What can we say?”
I know what tempts me. I want to raise my hand, shout to Welty, and take all the responsibility on myself. Who cares if I’m kicked out? It’ll hurt, but in the big picture what does it matter if they take all my money? Caspian handled my mother and sister’s situation, and something tells me that nobody tells him which gifts to rescind. I won’t get my studio. Eros will hate me, maybe even blacklist me somehow. But I grew up with nothing. I’m a survivor, and always will be.
But anything I say will reflect on Daniel. I can’t assume all the responsibility even if I want to. So I keep my mouth shut, and wait through every agonizing second.
“Well … ” Daniel starts.
Don’t say it, I think at him. Don’t confirm what he suspects. If Welty knew for sure that we fudged the data, he’d have acted already. He’s hoping to trap you. To make you admit it. So keep your mouth shut, Daniel. Let it happen. Let Halo choose me.
If I win, I’m sure they’ll make me sign a contract and about a thousand nondisclosure agreements. I won’t be able to refuse the paperwork any more than I’ll be able to refuse what’s sure to be a legal marriage to Trevor, because doing so will indict Daniel as surely as if he blabs right now. But it’s okay. I can be a billionaire’s wife.
Except that Trevor isn’t the real billionaire.
My Daniel is the billionaire, and Trevor is the socially acceptable public face.
And if Daniel admits to rigging this competition in my favor, they’ll take everything from him. He’s already told me about the legal shell game that’s all but stolen his fortune — still accessible, but under board control. They can’t kick him out. Not yet. But if Daniel were to do something underhanded? If he were to break his contract with the company?
Well, then they could probably do whatever they wanted.
I watch Daniel face Welty’s silent ultimatum, knowing there’s nothing I can do or say. Right now he’s by himself. And the choice is his alone.
He can insist he knows nothing. Let the results stand, and I’ll become Trevor’s bride.
Or he can admit what we did and let the board bankrupt us both. Possibly all four of us.
Welty is watching Daniel, clearly enjoying his torment, waiting, not saying a word, practically licking his lips. Kicked back to enjoy the show as Daniel twists in the wind, perched on the tip of an impossible decision.
Say nothing, and we all survive.
Admit our crime, and the house falls to rubble.
I can do this. I can live with Trevor. I like Trevor. Daniel’s silence breaks four hearts, but the alternative shatters our lives.
Daniel’s mouth finally opens.
Stops.
Opens farther.
And then he speaks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Bridget
“And this is the kitchen,” I say.
Daniel looks over the space. There are four feet between my refrigerator and the cabinets. It’s not even an island. Just a wall. When the complex designed my Inferno Falls apartment, I’m pretty sure they forgot the kitchen entirely. And then, right as buildin
g was about to commence, someone noticed the error: 4-F had no kitchen. So some genius said, “Just shove it next to the living room.” Which would also explain why my living room is the size of a studio bathroom.
“Very nice,” Daniel says.
I watch him. He’s still in his suit. A suit that could surely cover the rent for years. He looks so out of place. I’d be tempted to call it adorable if it wasn’t so awful. I know he owns normal jeans and tees, but we came here, after the plane back, in a cab. Apparently, Eros didn’t even want to give their black sheep a limo into town. We have my bags and a tiny valise for Daniel. It seems to have papers in it, not even a change of underwear. He says his stuff is being shipped. But I wonder if it’s that simple — or if there’s a fight happening somewhere to decide whether Daniel’s clothes and personal items belong to him or the company.
I take Daniel’s square jaw by the cheeks. Now that I’m in tennies instead of the heels I’ve practically lived in for the past few months, I’m a fair bit shorter than him, even as tall as I am. I reach up to touch his face, my fingers and thumb prickling with unattended stubble. I turn his eyes to mine.
“Liar.”
“What, liar?” he says, affecting innocence.
“Such bullshit, about my kitchen being ‘very nice.’”
He looks it over again. “Okay, you’re right. This kitchen sucks.”
I can’t help laughing, even though it hurts my heart.
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“Don’t be.”
“But I am. Whether you want me to be or not.” I let go of his face. I wrap myself around his arm instead. I feel the fine fabric against my cheek, knowing it will unravel in this place like a proud animal kept in a cage.
“No,” he says.
I look up. No?
“Do you love me, Bridget?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then don’t be sorry. That hurts me. I only want you to be happy.”
It’s a puzzle. He’s broke because he chose me, but the only way I can make it worse is to accept the blame I rightly deserve. I’m torn between what I feel and what I’d rather feel, to please him.
Then he says something worse: “I’m sorry.”
“You’re here because of me.”
“No. I’m here because of me. And you’re here because of me. I shouldn’t have brought you into any of it.”
“I’m glad you brought me into it.” I squeeze his arm and see only dark blue fabric, knowing he’d rather I didn’t meet his eyes. And I think, Did I really just say that? Did I really admit to enjoying my near abduction — my half-forced journey into hedonism, perversion, and mind-fuckery? My, my, how things have changed for the little girl from places and parents unknown.
“I should have left you alone. It wasn’t fair.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave me alone.”
Daniel sighs. Gently extricates himself from me. It’s clear he’s not moving away because he doesn’t want me next to him — he doesn’t want him next to me. As if he’ll soil me, and I’ll catch his disease.
Daniel moves to my dirty living room window looking out on the back of Stuffy’s, a small dive bar that I insist “isn’t as bad as it looks.” Three blocks beyond, visible as an upward-facing triangle like an architectural mishap, is the building I so recently imagined buying to build my dream studio. We drove by it on the cab ride in. It’s still for sale. The sign even read, Price Reduced. Too bad I can barely afford Ramen, and Daniel — on paper, at least — can afford less.
I watch his broad, strong back, clad in such a fine garment. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s entitled to what he earned, what he built … and what the Eros board, circumstances, and Bridget Miller conspired to steal.
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Bridget.”
I walk closer. I want to touch him, but his voice is hard to read, and he hasn’t turned to face me.
“I’m supposed to be strong for you. Even when this began, there was a part of me that only wanted to help. What you saw, when it seemed I loathed you, wasn’t true hate. It was pain. A lifetime of scars torn open. You caused a few of those scars, sure, but only a few. My parents did a lot of it. Other kids did more. And then I did the rest to myself. I was weak, inside and out. I decided I was worthless. I ate and got fat because that made me feel good. And by the time you met me, I was only a victim. Of course you mocked me. I deserved it, I hated myself so much.”
My hand finds his shoulder. Tentative.
“You didn’t deserve any of it. I had my own problems, and I took them out on the world.”
“And I’m glad you did. I’m a better person today than I was. I hated you so much. I hated you because I loved you and I couldn’t have you. So after I was done feeling sorry for myself, I made myself better. I decided to never let anything hurt me ever again. I cleaned up. I got in shape. And that confidence bled into everything else. I took risks. I started businesses. I always wanted to show you, somehow, wherever you were, that you’d been wrong about me. I was worth something. Everything I built, I did it with a grudge. Everything I have, I created, deep down, for you.”
Everything I have.
Have, not had.
His incorrect use of the present tense puts a lump in my throat.
I wrap my fingers around his shoulder. It’s too big. I can only grip part of it. He turns to face me, his face different than I’ve ever seen it before.
“The experiment was Alexa’s idea. She’s searching for something that doesn’t exist. But I didn’t care. I’d read and read and read, trying to better understand myself and the world. Filling my head with knowledge that, on some level, I intended to impress you. Or seduce you, before making you pay. I learned about psychology. I studied the art of pickup — not lines for the sake of lines, but the triggers and mental scripts behind them. A lot of it was trash, but some of it meshed with what I’d learned about the mind, about evolution and the way men and women evolved to respond. Even the garbage attracted me. These were men who attempted to interest women by ignoring and insulting them so they’d seek validation that you could provide. It didn’t matter if it made sense. I wanted so badly to insult you. To hurt you.”
I rub my hand across Daniel’s cheek, a bitter smile on my lips. I want to interrupt, but I can tell this is a speech he needs to finish. It’s a burden he’s held for too long, and needs to unload.
“I have three degrees. I’ve studied with some of the best scientists and experimental psychologists in the world. It was easy, once Eros started rolling off money like the US Mint. Cash opens doors. It buys freedom to do what you want, when you want. But it was all aimed at that first time I found you. I had an advantage. I’d studied you like a reference manual. I knew how to hit all your buttons. Then, in the club, I hit the rest. Having you was a rush. I had all the money in the world. I could buy and sell you. You had nothing. I knew you were in trouble. So I applied my levers, and pushed. The experiment was highly researched, and the subjects were carefully selected, but I had sway — or at least, the board let me believe I did. So you became our twelfth.”
“It’s okay, Daniel.”
Finally, he turns, and takes my hands in his.
“What I did to you was horrible. Unforgivable. But I want you to know, as twisted as it is, that I wouldn’t have been able to hate you so intensely if I hadn’t loved you all along.”
“It’s okay,” I repeat.
“Even when I was hurting you, I wanted the best for you deep down. You needed money; I made sure you got it. You were as broken as I once was — as I still was until my true feelings for you stopped hiding behind the hate, I suppose — and so I tried to force a change on you as you forced on me. I know you, Bridget. I know you think you’re worthless. I know you think you’re mediocre to look at, boring to talk to, off-putting in relationships. I know you wonder how any man could want you. And so, by trying to break you … ” He trails off, sighs, then forces himself to finish the thought. “I suppose
I hoped I could do you the favor you once did for me, all those years ago — of slamming you to rock bottom, and forcing you to see yourself as the beautiful thing you truly are.”
I want to tell him that it’s okay, but I know how it will sound. I know he’ll think I’m pacifying him. He knows me best, and that I won’t roll over and let myself be insulted or abused without a fight. So I say nothing, letting the strange feelings stew inside me.
There’s anger.
There’s shame.
There’s sadness.
There’s plenty of pain.
But lately, I’ve felt hope in there, too, and that’s a new emotion for me. I feel it even now when I shouldn’t.
And of course, there’s love.
“Scream at me,” he says. “Hit me. Hate me. Leave me, if you must, but know that I’ll follow. But don’t you fucking dare feel sorry for me, and don’t you dare regret anything that happened. I made my choice at the mansion, and I won’t flinch. Nobody tells me what to do, nobody. And nobody takes what’s mine.”
A shiver runs through me. Anyone who knew our story would say that the Eros board just took everything from Daniel, and that he’s deluding himself by defying it. But he doesn’t mean money or cars or planes or stock or an empire rich enough to nudge the world. He’s talking about me. His mate, to use the scientific language he’s used so often. According to Daniel, the worst offense one can commit against any male animal is trying to poach his mate. That’s how blood spills, wars start, and nations are overturned.
But I can’t help myself. “Choosing me cost you everything. I’ve ruined you.” I hear the self-pity in my voice. The words are about me and my damage, not Daniel and his.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he says, pulling me into a hug. “That’s my woman you’re insulting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Daniel
Apparently, my cell phone was on the company plan because it goes dead while I’m driving Bridget’s loud little car out to the wholesale club to pick up toilet paper. And when it does, I learn that there’s something more humbling than being forced to buy bulk off-brand toilet paper after growing used to haute cuisine and bespoke suits after all. Worse than my errand, it turns out, is losing the GPS signal and getting lost on the way to run it. While driving a Subaru with a rusted-through muffler.
Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) Page 12
