Exposed

by Tracy Wolff

  “As if.”

  “It’s true. We need constant ego…stroking.” I shift my hips against hers to make sure she gets the pun.

  She does. “Geez, this is getting more ridiculous by the second.”

  She tries to shove me away, but I hold tight. I lower my head and drop a brief, but real, kiss on her mouth. And then I’m letting her go, watching her walk through the building’s lobby and away from me. And praying that she’s as ready for what’s about to happen as she thinks she is.

  The minute I’m back in my office, I call Stu back in. I cancel all my afternoon meetings and work on planning the best way to get this done. It’s Friday afternoon and there’s a part of me that wants to drop it into the news cycle tonight so that it can get absorbed over the weekend when everyone is busy with their own lives and not paying nearly as much attention to stuff like this as they do over the weekend.

  Stu says that’s a bad move, though. Says it makes us look like we’ve got something to hide. He wants to wait until Monday morning. We’ll have all our “ducks in a row” and we can “blow this thing wide open.”

  But my mother’s deadline is hanging over my head. The forty-eight hours runs out tomorrow night and I don’t want to get caught with our pants down on this. Now that Chloe’s made the decision that we’re doing this, I want to do it right.

  I tell Stu as much and he responds with, “That’s what I’m trying to do. We’ve got this, Ethan.”

  “I don’t want any fuckups, man. Whatever you do has to be super-quiet. I don’t want to tip our hand to them one second sooner than we have to.”

  “The only warning they’ll get is the calls that start coming in asking for comments. You hired me because I’m the best at my job, Ethan. It’s time for you to let me do that job.”

  “Before tomorrow night.”

  He grimaces. “Yes, before tomorrow night.”

  We’re going over some of the preliminary details, getting the rhetoric of the story down exactly as I want it to go out, when Dorothy buzzes in with a call from Sebastian. “I have to take this,” I tell Stu.

  “I’ve got a couple calls to make anyway. Fifteen minutes enough time?” he asks as he heads for the door.

  “It should be.”

  I wait for him to close the door behind him before I pick up the phone. “What’s up, Sebastian?” It’s not the friendliest of greetings, and the fact that he doesn’t call me on it means he’s as preoccupied as I am. Definitely not a good sign.

  “I got a call from Aria’s father a few minutes ago. It seems Brandon’s been sniffing around, trying to get other mafia support now that Valducci has cut him off.”

  “Aria’s father? What does he have to do with—” No one can accuse me of not being quick on the uptake. “He still has ties to Valducci after—”

  Sebastian pauses for long seconds, then reluctantly admits, “Yeah. He and Valducci are still close, even after what Valducci’s bastard of a kid did to her. That whole thing was pretty much supposed to be an arranged marriage anyway. To cement the familes’ relationship.” His voice seethes with a rage I’d have to be deaf to miss.

  Jesus. What is it with rich men treating their daughters like chattel? I thought we’d left that shit behind in the Middle fucking Ages. “I’m assuming things aren’t good between Aria and her father, so why’s he letting you know that?”

  “I think he’s trying to mend fences, as much as they can be mended. Plus, I don’t think he or Valducci know what to do in the situation. Valducci already cut Brandon off but your brother’s not going away. He’s making a lot of noise, really pushing for them to keep up their connections with him. Says he’s got a story that’s about to go live that will earn him the sympathy of the American public and make him skyrocket in the polls.”

  My blood runs cold and I decide it doesn’t matter if Stu wants to wait until Monday morning’s news cycle. We’re moving on the story tomorrow afternoon.

  “What’s Valducci say? Is he planning on breaking our agreement?”

  “I don’t know.” Sebastian’s voice is hard and deadly. “We’re not exactly on speaking terms. But I get the impression he plans on honoring the deal you guys made. But—”

  “But there are other guys who would have no problem with sliding a soon-to-be-congressman straight into their pockets.”

  “Exactly.” Sebastian pauses. “What do you want me to tell him, man?”

  “Tell him…” My mind whirls through a bunch of different courses of action, and none of them—save beating the hell out of my useless brother—provide much satisfaction. In the end, though, I can’t control everything. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one. “Tell him if they consider it advantageous to get back into bed with Brandon, then I’m not going to try to stop them at this point. His whole campaign is going to implode in twenty-four hours anyway—there’s not much damage mob money can do in that amount of time.”

  Sebastian’s quiet for a moment, absorbing what I said—and what I didn’t say. “You’re going to leak what he did to Chloe?”

  “I’m not going to leak it. I’m going to come right out and say it. We’re going to give the story to a couple hand-chosen news outlets tomorrow morning and let them run with it.”

  Again, Sebastian doesn’t speak for long seconds.

  “What do you want to say?” I finally ask, when the silence has stretched on too long.

  “Nothing. I mean, it’s really brave that Chloe’s willing to step forward and do that. But is it worth hurting her like that, opening her up to the shitstorm that will come her way, just to bring your brother down?”

  “This from the man determined to destroy Nico Valducci at any cost?”

  “Not at any cost. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man. I want that scum and his son in a cage so bad I can taste it, but I’m not willing to hang Aria out to dry to do it.”

  “And you think that’s what I’m doing to Chloe? Hanging her out to dry?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying the evidence we have connecting Brandon to Valducci is pretty overwhelming. And if he ends up getting in bed with Aria’s father or one of the other guys around here…that’s just more evidence to land him in jail. And no, none of that will have him paying for his most serious crimes. None of it will have him paying for what he did to your woman. But at the same time, keeping quiet about what he did to her will keep her name out of the national media. It won’t make what he did to her better, but maybe it will at least let her keep some semblance of peace.”

  His words hit me like bullets. Not because they’re new to me, but because they aren’t. Everything he’s saying is something I’ve already thought. A conclusion I’ve already reached. And the fact that I don’t have a choice, that my own mother is forcing me to put my wife in the middle of a three-ring media circus that has the potential to devastate her—makes me absolutely crazy. It makes me want to wrap my hands around Brandon’s throat and keep squeezing until the motherfucker isn’t a threat to anyone else ever again.

  I don’t say any of that, though. Instead, I tell him about my mother’s threat to leak the story and how I’m trying to get out in front of her, trying to control the rhetoric and how the story gets told.

  Sebastian curses, low and long as I lay out my rationale, and when I’m done, he says, “Fuck, man. You’re between a rock and a hard place.”

  “More like a rock and the hardest place.”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much what I meant.”

  “I know.” I think back to Brandon, to the original reason for my best friend’s phone call. “Tell Aria’s dad that, at this point, it doesn’t matter to me if they want to get back in bed with Brandon. Their money isn’t going to save his career—nothing is. I’m planning on making sure of that.”

  “I hate to sound mercenary,” Sebastian adds, “but if he ends up crawling back in with one of them it will make it that much easier to hang them all later.”

  “Even Aria’s father?”

/>   He pauses then, thinks it over. “I guess, what it comes down to for me, is that these bastards made their own beds. Now it’s time for them to lie in them. And if that means they finally go to jail for what they did…it’s no more than they deserve.”

  I think about Chloe, about all the other women Brandon has hurt or will hurt in the future if he isn’t stopped. About my original plan that called for him going to jail for a long, long time. “He deserves worse than jail. They all do.”

  “I know. But seeing them stripped of their silk suits and fancy cars, seeing them locked in a cage they can’t get out of until someone lets them out…it’s enough. Right?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, still trying to get a grip on the fury that’s been raging inside me since I saw my brother last night. “It’s enough.”

  Because I can’t change the past, can’t take away Chloe’s pain. All I can do is focus on making the future as good, and as safe, for her as I can.

  It’s enough, I tell myself again as I hang up the phone a couple minutes later. It has to be. Because there’s no way Brandon is ever going to hurt my wife again.

  Chapter 20

  “What do you want for dinner?” I ask Ethan as we let ourselves into the house early Friday evening.

  It’s a relief to be home. Between the looks I spent all afternoon dodging and the whispered conversations about Ethan and his brother that I did my best not to hear as the news spread, I’m more tense than I’ve been in years. All I want is to take my shoes off, have a glass of iced tea and spend one last, normal evening at home with my husband before all hell breaks loose.

  Not that it hasn’t already started. When we left Frost Industries tonight, there were reporters stationed right outside the guard booth, just waiting for an opportunity to leap on Ethan and ask him about the statements he made yesterday about Brandon. He’d ignored them, kept the windows of the car firmly rolled up. But I have to admit I’d wished at least a couple times that I hadn’t been so insistent about driving home. Dodging reporters who seemed determined to throw themselves in front of my car was definitely not the easiest thing I’ve ever done.

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” Ethan says, stripping off his suit jacket, vest and tie. “Do you want to go out?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  I follow him to the bedroom, where I slip out of my suit and into a tank top and the comfiest pajama bottoms I own. Ethan does the same, except he changes into a pair of well-worn jeans and one of his softest T-shirts. It’s the same color as his eyes and for a second—even with everything that’s going on—I get caught up in how beautiful he is.

  He catches me staring and a slow grin spreads across his lips as he pulls me into his arms for a long, lingering kiss that gets my blood humming. Yes, stress and fear are coiled in my stomach like a cobra waiting to strike, but when I’m in Ethan’s arms anything—everything—seems possible. Like somehow even this nightmare is going to be okay.

  “Do you want me to run out and get something?” he asks, before leaning in for another kiss. “There’s a new Italian place just off the beach that I’ve been wanting to try.”

  “What I want,” I tell him with my lips against his and my arms around his neck, “is for you to pour me a really big glass of iced tea. Then I want to cook dinner together and eat it while vegging out in front of a truly ridiculous movie. And then,” I continue, pressing a couple kisses to his jaw before moving on to the sensitive spot behind his ear, “I want you to take me out to the hot tub and make love to me under the stars.”

  I lick my way down his throat, loving the sweet and salty taste of him. “Do you think you can make that happen?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” he tells me, his hands sliding down to cup my ass, and pulls me against him.

  He’s already hard and I move against him, deciding dinner—and everything else—can wait. Except just as I reach for the top button of his jeans, Ethan pulls away.

  “Dinner,” he says, eyes smoldering and skin flushed from our kisses. “The lady wants dinner.”

  “The lady wants a lot of things,” I answer, making grabby hands for him.

  He laughs, drops another kiss on my mouth. “And, in time, she shall have them all.” He grabs my hand, pulls me pouting out of the room and down the hall to his state-of-the-art kitchen. “Why don’t you poke around, see what you can find? And I’ll get you that glass of iced tea. Unless you’d rather have wine?”

  Wine sounds delicious, actually, but no. No wine. Just in case my sudden weak stomach is due to more than nerves and upset. Which, it probably isn’t, but still, until my period shows up…Better to be safe than sorry. “Iced tea is perfect. And so are you. I’m not sure what I ever did to deserve you.” I mean for it to come out sounding light and flirty, but I choke up on the last few words.

  He stops in his tracks, sadness flashing in the depths of his glorious blue eyes. But then he seems to catch himself and it’s gone just as quickly as it came. “I have no idea,” he tells me. “But I’m more than happy to let you try to deserve me in the hot tub later.”

  “Wow. That’s so very, very nice of you,” I respond, my tongue firmly in cheek.

  “Yes, well, sacrifices must be made.”

  “Sacrifices?” I grab a piece of paper towel off the roll, ball it up and throw it at him. “You jerk.”

  He laughs as it hits him full-on in the face. “Hey, you’ve got a good aim. I never knew that about you.”

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” I tell him primly, as I walk to the refrigerator and pull out the chicken I put in there to marinate before leaving for work this morning.

  “I’m aware of that.” He’s behind me now, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing hot, openmouthed kisses against my neck. Stress or not, disaster looming or not, he makes me weak. Makes my knees tremble and my heart skip a beat, just like the fairy tales always promised.

  My own Prince Charming, I think whimsically as he heads toward the bar to get our drinks. Riding a Tesla instead of a horse, but that’s exactly the way I like him.

  I’m chopping potatoes into chunks when he returns a couple minutes later with a big glass of tea for me, as requested, and a Corona with lime for himself.

  Though I never say a word about it, Ethan must sense that I’m near my breaking point. So instead of talking about Brandon or his mother or the plan Stu is putting together even as we speak, we talk about anything and everything else as we cook dinner together.

  Ethan uses the indoor grill to cook the chicken and warm up the pita bread, while I season the potatoes with olive oil and a variety of Greek spices before putting them in the oven to roast. While they’re cooking, I clean some asparagus for Ethan to grill and make a quick Greek salad. Less than half an hour after he brought me my tea, we’re sitting down to dinner and a ridiculous Seth Rogen comedy that makes me laugh so hard I nearly cry. Ethan picked it out, and by this point, it’s no surprise at all that he knows exactly what I need.

  But then, he almost always does.

  As Seth Rogen starts a feud with Zac Efron and a bunch of frat guys, I cuddle into Ethan and put my head on his shoulder. There’s an easiness to us tonight that was lacking when we first got together, a feeling of rightness that doesn’t take away from the sexual tension humming in the air but only adds to it even as we laugh and laugh and laugh. It’s an easiness I love, and one I pray desperately that we’ll have a chance to keep.

  But, for all the relaxed conversation and cuddling, the later it gets the harder it is to ignore the specter of tomorrow that’s floating around the edges of my mind. I make a conscious decision not to let it in, can see Ethan doing the same thing several times throughout the evening. But it’s still there, just waiting for us to drop our guard. Just waiting to drag us down.

  I promise myself I won’t let it.

  When the movie is over, when the dishes are done and the kitchen cleaned up, Ethan keeps his promise. He takes me out to the hot tub and makes l
ove to me under the stars. And as he wraps himself around me, as he takes me right to the edge of the universe and then flings me over, I think that this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for all along. Is it selfish to hope, to wish, to pray, that it will last?

  —

  All hell breaks loose in the morning. Boston and New York are three hours ahead of us and Ethan’s mother had the early morning news shows in both cities leading with the story.

  We find out when the phone rings at six a.m. Stu’s on the line to break the bad news and to discuss damage control. He’s already started the spin engine, of course, but it’s going to be a long ugly day. The first in a series of progressively longer, uglier days.

  I’m in bed, listening to Ethan yelling through the phone at poor Stu, demanding to know how the fuck this had happened, how the fuck he hadn’t had a heads-up this was going to go down this morning, when my stomach revolts. I make a mad dash for the bathroom, hand over my mouth, and end up on my knees, dry-heaving into the toilet.

  It only takes a second before Ethan’s there, too, holding me as my body betrays me yet again. Rubbing my back, murmuring soothing sounds as I face the fact that I’m still nowhere near as strong as I’d like to be. Not when it comes to this.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan says over and over again. “I’m so sorry, Chloe. I never wanted this for you.”

  “Stop it!” I tell him, after I brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out with mouthwash. I’m still queasy, but I do my best to ignore it. “This isn’t your fault and you need to stop taking the blame for it.”

  “It’s completely my fault. I should have known she wouldn’t wait the forty-eight hours. Sneak attacks are always her style.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t know,” I tell him, brushing a kiss to his bare shoulder on my way out of the bathroom. “You don’t have a sneaky bone in your body.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve got a few vengeful ones. She’s going to pay for this. She and Brandon both.”

  I don’t bother arguing with him, partly because I know it won’t make a difference and partly because I want vengeance, too. She called me a whore on national television, produced witnesses from that godforsaken school saying I’d chased Brandon for weeks and then called rape when he’d taken what I had so freely offered. Or at least, that’s what I’d managed to glean from Ethan’s half of the conversation with Stu. It’s more than enough to bring back all the hatred and rage and fear I felt when I was a freshman in high school, being bullied almost to the point of giving up. Giving in.