by Stella Hart
Even though our families were so-called rivals, Logan and I used to be friendly. We also spent one perfect evening together at my junior-year prom four and a half years ago. It was unexpected but wonderful, and I spent the next day walking on air, my skin practically glowing with excitement and anticipation. I’d viewed our little liaison as some sort of Romeo and Juliet scenario; two young people desperately wanting and needing each other in spite of their feuding families. The concept was so romantic. So hot.
Of course, I was sixteen back then and also a complete idiot. Logan turned out to be an asshole, and he never spoke to me again after the night we spent together. For some reason, he also seemed to actively despise me now. Over the last few years, I’d heard more than one nasty rumor he’d allegedly started about me, and whenever we ran into each other at events such as this one, he either shot me nasty looks all night or flat-out ignored me.
Tonight was no different. When he saw me looking over at him and Teddy Rutherford, his eyes narrowed on mine. Clearly, he didn’t like what he saw.
Don’t worry, Logan, I don’t like what I see either, I thought bitterly, wishing that was actually true.
If I said it to myself enough, perhaps it would come true, and I’d finally see him for all of the ugliness that lay beneath that handsome exterior.
“Shit. Don’t look to your left,” Marissa muttered.
I whipped my head back around to face her. “Huh?”
“Rowan Harris is here,” she whispered. “Oh, no, he’s coming over to us. Ew, ew, ew.” She cringed as Kate and Simone curled their lips in disdain.
I turned around and spotted the young man they were talking about, slowly pushing his way through the crowded room. I smiled and gave him a wave.
I’d known Rowan Harris for most of my life, because his family had always been friendly with mine. His father was a high-ranking White House official, and his mother ran some sort of investment company in the city.
Unlike his parents, Rowan was very quiet and shy, and he seemed to have a lot of trouble with socializing. Simply put, most people found him to be very weird. He was incredibly smart, though, and I didn’t think he was that weird. He loved talking about conspiracy theories, which was kind of strange, but that didn’t make him a creep like all my friends suggested.
I had a feeling it was his looks that cemented him firmly in the ‘creepy guy’ category with girls like Marissa, Kate and Simone. He wasn’t very tall, he was skinny, and he had a prematurely-receding hairline. All those things rendered him totally unfuckable in their eyes.
“Hi, ladies,” he said as he approached us with an uncertain smile. His forehead was beaded with sweat. “How… um… how’s your night been so far?”
Marissa rolled her eyes. “It was fine until five seconds ago,” she said in a syrupy-sweet voice.
Kate and Simone giggled behind their hands. My cheeks flamed, and I glared daggers at them.
Sometimes I didn’t even know why I bothered being friends with girls like them. When they pulled shit like this, I fantasized about blocking their numbers and never speaking to them again. Unfortunately, reality always crashed back down on me within a few hours.
As the daughter of the current vice president, it wasn’t easy for me to make new friends. For one, I always had a secret service detail trailing me, and that made most people view me as untouchable—and probably also a massive snob.
Secondly, it was difficult to find other girls who had thick enough skin to hang out in my world. In the past, I’d tried making friends with some girls from one of my college classes, but they ended up fading me out after having terrible experiences at events I invited them to attend with me.
The first girl had been snubbed and derided by some other young women at a charity champagne brunch for attending a public high school and living on the ‘wrong’ side of the city, and the second had been offered five hundred dollars for a blowjob by some young asshole who thought it was funny to mock someone without an elite family name. He’d actually said right to her face: ‘How else are you gonna pay for Georgetown?’ while waving the cash at her, even though she was a genius who’d managed to score a full-ride scholarship to the university. It was like a bullying scene from a bad 80s movie, and if I hadn’t directly witnessed it, I might not have even believed it happened.
I tried to apologize and make it up to those girls, but the damage was already done. They didn’t want to be friends with someone whose acquaintances had the power to make them feel so small and insignificant.
I guess I couldn’t blame them, as much as it stung.
As the daughters of powerful government players, Marissa, Kate, and Simone understood this world and how to navigate it without letting all the typical D.C. assholes get them down. Besides, they weren’t always catty, and we had fun together most of the time.
I definitely wasn’t having fun with them right now, though. They were being total bitches.
I linked arms with Rowan and steered him toward the champagne tower. The girls tried to follow me, but I turned my head over my shoulder and shot them a dirty look, silently warning them not to follow me.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Rowan, cheeks still aflame with embarrassment. “I think they’ve all had too much to drink.”
He gave me an awkward smile as he plucked a champagne glass from the top of the tower. “It’s not them,” he said softly. “It’s me. I have no idea how to talk to women.”
“Trust me, you’re not the problem,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “How’s your new job going, anyway? My dad told me you’re at the NSA now.”
He nodded. “It’s good. Makes my parents happy, too.”
“How are they doing?”
“Same as usual. Always dragging me to awful parties like this in the hope I’ll meet a nice girl and get married.”
I giggled and raised one eyebrow. “I doubt you’re going to meet many nice girls here.”
“Well, you’re not bad,” he said with a shy smile, clinking his glass against mine. “So there’s some hope.”
Other women might’ve assumed he was hitting on them with a statement like that, but I’d known him for long enough to know better. He had no interest in me, and that was exactly why he had no trouble saying nice things to my face. If he was actually attracted to me, he’d be tripping over his words and sweating like crazy.
I smiled. “Keep sweet-talking girls like that and you’ll find someone in no time.” I took a quick sip of champagne and leaned forward, lowering my voice to a furtive whisper. “God, remember when you had a crush on Chloe Thorne?”
Rowan nodded and groaned. Chloe was Logan’s sister. She was the same age as me and breathtakingly beautiful with brilliant green eyes and silky blonde hair. She was also a terrible bully back in the day, and possibly the only person in the world with a soul as ugly as Logan. Rowan used to have a crush on her, but she shot him down in typical Chloe style. In other words, it was a very public and deeply humiliating rejection.
“We probably shouldn’t say anything about her,” Rowan said, looking into his glass. “Not when she can’t defend herself.”
My smile faded. “Yeah. You’re right.”
As mean and nasty as Chloe was when we were younger, I felt pretty bad for her nowadays. Around four years ago, she was involved in a terrible car accident, leaving her horribly injured, and now she was under permanent care at the Thorne family’s main estate in Kalorama. From what I’d heard, the brain swelling had been so severe after the accident that she might never be able to speak or walk again.
“Speaking of the Thornes, I see you’re still very popular with Logan,” Rowan said, looking over my shoulder.
“Is he glaring at me again?”
“Yup. I don’t think he’s listening to a single word his father is saying. Too busy giving you dirty looks.”
“Of course.” I sighed and briefly turned my head over my shoulder. Rowan was right. Logan was standing with his parents now. His mother was cl
ad in a stunning green satin dress with matching emerald jewelry, air-kissing another woman’s cheeks, and his father was grinning and carrying on with a Congressman. Logan’s attention, however, was entirely on me. His brows were pulled low with disdain, and his lips were pressed into an arrogant smirk.
I turned back to Rowan. “I still have no idea what I did to piss him off so badly.”
“It’s just the way he is. Trust me, I went to school with him,” he said, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Anyway, how’s Georgetown?”
“It’s okay. Kinda sucks having a security detail following me to every class, though,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I really hope my mother never becomes president, because then it’ll just get worse.”
Rowan’s face clouded, and he leaned his head closer to mine. “That reminds me. There’s something I should tell you.”
“What?”
He motioned for me to step over to the edge of the room with him, and then he leaned in again, speaking in a hushed voice. “You should know the government isn’t actually being run by the government.”
“Huh?”
“Have you heard of the Deep State?”
“Um… sort of,” I said slowly. I had a feeling I was about to be dropped right in the deep end of one of his latest conspiracy theories.
“Apparently it’s real,” he replied. He paused and looked over my shoulder, presumably to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “The president is just a puppet. The real leader is supposedly a lizard.”
I almost spat out my drink. “Did you say a lizard?”
Rowan nodded emphatically. “Yes. A thorny green lizard.” He emphasized every word, as if that made it any more believable. “They run a secret society filled with Washington’s true elite, and the society controls everything.”
“I think you might’ve had a bit too much of that,” I said, nodding toward his champagne glass. I’d heard this theory many times before. According to all of the tinfoil-hat-wearing proponents of the idea, the US (and maybe even the rest of the world) was secretly run by shape-shifting reptilians or aliens.
“I know it sounds crazy, but you need to think about it. Just think,” Rowan insisted. “Think about it in terms of an allegory.”
As much as I liked him, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to a wild conspiracy theory right now. Fortunately, I spotted a way out of the conversation almost immediately.
“Shit! They’re cutting the cake already,” I said, craning my neck to look over at the table on the other side of the room. Two servers were in the process of slicing up my mother’s tiered birthday cake, and she was nowhere to be seen.
“What’s wrong? Did you want some?” Rowan asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that. My mom wanted to be in here when they started serving it, because it’s her favorite type of cake. I even asked the servers to make sure she was standing right there when they cut it so she could have the first piece.”
Rowan whipped his head around. “I can’t see her anywhere.”
“Me neither. I actually haven’t seen her for a while,” I said, forehead puckering with confusion. My mother usually loved attention, so it was strange that she wasn’t front and center at her own party.
“I haven’t seen her either,” Rowan said. “Your dad’s gone too. I saw him heading to the bathroom ages ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”
I sighed. “Oh, well. I better go find Mom before the whole cake disappears.”
“Why don’t you take a slice with you just in case?” Rowan suggested.
“Good idea. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Sure,” he said with a nod. Before I could walk away, he grabbed my arm and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Wait. I forgot to tell you. I think the secret society leader is going to kill President Rutherford.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how or when, exactly, but I think it’ll happen soon.”
“I’m sure the president will be fine, Rowan,” I said with a sympathetic smile. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
He gave me a faint smile in return and dropped my arm.
I headed over to the cake to grab a plate for my mother. She was still nowhere to be seen, and no one I asked in the next five minutes seemed to have spoken to her recently either. A state senator from Connecticut was the last one to speak with her before she disappeared from the party, and that was over thirty minutes ago.
I stepped out onto the large curved veranda of the Queen Anne-style mansion, wondering if my mother had simply decided to get some air. There were a few partygoers standing around enjoying a breeze as it skated through the area, but she wasn’t one of them.
With a sigh, I headed back inside and started checking the upstairs rooms.
My little brother Jared was fast asleep in his bedroom. I leaned down, kissed his soft forehead, and pulled the blankets up over him before quietly heading down the hall to the sitting room on the other side of the top floor. It was a circular room with a turret on top and wide windows wrapping around it, so it gave the best view of the grounds.
I peered outside. Mom enjoyed evening walks in the gardens every so often, so I figured she might’ve taken a few favored guests out for a tour of the estate.
Even though it was late, the grounds were well-lit by wrought iron lamps hanging on vintage posts. From my spot at the window, I could see nearly every inch of the lawns along with the manicured hedges, trees, and gardens.
Right now, every garden was completely unoccupied.
“Damn,” I muttered. “There goes that idea.”
I looked down. Directly below me was a white wooden pergola with a curved top covered in climbing vines and purple flowers. There was a little gate on the other side of it, leading into the lengthy heated pool area that a previous VP had installed on the grounds. Two Secret Service agents were standing next it.
“Bingo,” I whispered, lifting my gaze to the rest of the pool area. Mom was standing near the gazebo on the western end. It was so far away that I could only tell it was her by the color of her dress and the curvaceous shape of her body.
She was with someone, but I couldn’t tell who it was no matter how much I squinted. All I could make out was a tall dark-haired man in a suit, and that wasn’t exactly helpful, considering half the guests at this party fitted that description.
I briskly headed back downstairs and went outside. My Secret Service detail followed me out, but they didn’t ask what I was doing. As long as I remained on the grounds, they didn’t care.
I walked through the pergola and stopped at the gate on the other side. My mother’s agents stepped right in front of it, blocking my way. “Sorry, Miss,” the shorter one said. “We can’t let you through.”
“It’s just me,” I said with a frown. “You know I’m not going to walk up to her and stab her with a poison-filled syringe.”
“I know, but she asked to be left alone while she’s out here.”
I held up the little china plate with the slice of cake. “She also asked for a piece of her birthday cake,” I said. “If she doesn’t have this now, she’s going to miss out. They cut it without her, and everyone’s going nuts over it.”
The men didn’t say anything in response to that.
I sighed and tried one last time. “Look, I’ll just hand it to her and leave. She won’t mind.”
The agents exchanged glances. One of them finally shrugged and relented. “Okay. Just you.”
“Thank you.”
They let me through the low gate. I couldn’t walk on the paved part of the pool area, because it was covered in a certain type of tile that made me trip every time I wore heels, so I stepped over the neatly-trimmed grass which ran along the left side of the pool area instead, masking the sound of my footfall.
As I drew closer to my mother, I finally saw who she was talking to. It was Jamie Torrance, one of President Rutherford’s senior advisors.
He was relatively young for such an important jo
b—somewhere in his thirties—but he had the goods to back it up. For years, he’d worked as a successful political fixer and campaign manager, and then he’d been offered the job of White House Communications Director. After that, he’d been tapped for the advisor position by Rutherford himself.
The closer I got, the more I could hear of his conversation with my mom.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s not looking good,” he was saying. “I organized the exploratory committee like you asked—”
“Covertly, I hope,” Mom cut in.
“Of course. Rutherford has no idea,” he replied. “Anyway, the results weren’t exactly what you hoped for.”
“How so?”
Jamie’s tone turned reluctant. “Well… people do like you. In fact, most of them love you. You poll very well.”
Mom scoffed. “So what is it, then? They still aren’t ready for a female president?”
“It’s not that. Like I said, they love you, but they love Rutherford more. He’s the most popular politician in recent history. You know that.” Jamie rubbed his chin and let out a small sigh. “Not only that, it’s very rare for a vice president to run against a president. It’s even rarer for one to actually win.”
“So what are you saying? I shouldn’t bother running?”
“I wouldn’t advise it. If you run against Rutherford in 2020, all the people who currently love you could turn on you in an instant. They would see it as a betrayal of the party. And…”
“And what?”
Jamie let out another sigh. “Like I said, Rutherford is very popular. Even if people didn’t see you running against him as some sort of betrayal, he’d still win over you. It’s a numbers game, and he has more supporters.”
“So what would you do if you were me?”
“I’d keep my head down and stay on as his Veep for now. He’s going to win the next election by a landslide, and everyone knows it. The Democrats are too unpopular right now to win an election anytime soon,” Jamie said. “So you stay with Rutherford until the end of his second term, and then you run in 2024. That way it doesn’t look like a betrayal, and you’ll have his full support. It’s a guaranteed win.”
