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“Of course, Mr. Black,” I blurt with a confidence I don’t feel.
His eyes narrow on me.
“Ms. Yamaguchi?—”
“I’m positive, Mr. Black.”
He sucks on his teeth, raking his fingers down his jaw again before he straightens his shoulders. Those greenish-hazel eyes flecked with gold, never leave mine.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Fumi.”
I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until he turns and walks away.
The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. Not in the slightest.
But it’s too late now.
7
GABRIEL
I learned years ago to spot trouble coming. In court, it’s a skill that can make or break your case, and when it comes to court cases, I fucking hate losing.
So I don’t. Not often, anyway. In a perfect world, my win record would be one hundred percent. The only reason it’s not is that justice is, at times, corrupt, broken, and manipulated.
But, as we have seen, I have my own methods of course-correcting missteps in justice like that. And if we include my “extra-curricular activities”, that win record very well might be one hundred percent.
My sharpness in the courtroom is partly due to years of training myself to see the problems before they surprise me. When the other side smugly announces a “surprise” eyewitness?
Yeah, I already know about them. In fact, I’ve already taken a closed-door deposition from them, lined up my defenses, and prepped my cross-examination.
When my opponent tries to mic-drop me with some piece of evidence that they think I missed during discovery?
Yeah, nope.
Trouble just doesn’t sneak up on me. Problems simply don’t surprise me. Which is why I’m more than slightly perturbed when Fumi Yamaguchi does surprise me like a baseball bat to the side of the head.
If there’s one thing I hate more than losing, it’s being surprised.
Back in my office, I drum my fingers on the edge of my desk, not really hearing Alister and Taylor as they debate fuck-knows-what right in front of me. Instead, my thoughts are centered on the…call it pageantry…that I just witnessed down on the tenth floor.
She came prepared.
She came out with guns blazing.
She came to win, even if her methods to get into the competition were bullshit.
My PR guy Josh, Meredith and I were seated near the back of the audience for the auditions. Filling the first two rows in front of the stage was the twenty-five-person focus group that Meredith assembled, with tablets at the ready.
They were to assess the candidates as each one had their turn on stage answering various questions. Some were bullshit straight out of Miss America: what’s your favorite pet. Your ideal first date. How would you save the world.
I mean, fucking shoot me now.
Other questions dug a little deeper: what are your thoughts on political issue X? Where do you see yourself in ten years? That sort of thing.
The point was to get a sense of how regular, everyday voters reacted to each woman on that stage. The tablets were for them to enter general scores for likability, or how easy each candidate was to relate to. It was also to capture how they viewed that candidate as relationship material—both in general, and as it pertained to yours truly.
Some candidates scored almost one hundred on the likability scale. I mean, Monica Wells is one of American’s sweethearts, and after her near Oscar win for that World War Two movie where she played that fighter pilot’s widow?
