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She sat down weakly in one of the chairs, staring at the table. “Oh, Sebastian. I didn’t know. I just assumed . . .”
“Did you watch the video?”
“Not much of it. It was vulgar.”
“Did she look like she was voluntarily participating?”
Mrs. Cabral pressed a hand to her mouth.
That was enough of an answer for him. “I cannot believe you didn’t come to me with this, Mother.”
“How was I supposed to know? He blackmailed us. Imagine what would happen if it got out.” She shook her head slowly. “I said such unkind things to her. Oh, I’ve messed up, Sebastian. I don’t hate her, you know. It’s just a story line for the show. I’m supposed to start liking her next season—”
“Find a new fucking story line, Mother. Ditch the cancer story line, ditch the hating-your-son’s-new-wife story line. Ditch it all. Better yet, stop living your life through your television show, all right? Be there for Father. How much longer do you think he’s going to be around?”
“That’s not fair.”
“What, using the truth? I realize you’re not too familiar with it, but life isn’t scripted, Mother. You can’t do something like this and expect there to be no consequences.” He shook his head, wishing there was something else nearby he could throw. A chair, maybe. “Chelsea is the most beautiful person I know, inside and out, and you’ve got no idea of the harm you’ve done.”
She pulled a jeweled box of Kleenex close to her and began to dab at her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I only wanted what was best for you.”
Sebastian pinched the bridge of his nose. It’d do no good to keep railing at his mother. He needed to figure this out and get things moving. Start making headway to getting Chelsea back. First off, though, he needed that damn video. “Do you still have the file?”
Mrs. Cabral clutched her pearls. “Are you going to watch it?”
“Fuck, no.” The thought made him ill. “I’m going to take it to the police. I want that sick fuck arrested.” His fists clenched, over and over again. He imagined the asshole in front of him, and pictured punching his smug, grinning face.
His poor Chelsea. God, how utterly betrayed and violated she must feel at the moment. He had to fix this for her. Even if she never wanted to see him again, he had to make this right for her. It was his fault she’d gotten mixed up with his family in the first place. If she hadn’t, would the tape have ever surfaced? Her pain could stay buried and she could have gone on with her happy life, skating with her friends and making her soaps. Participating in Gretchen’s wedding.
He didn’t deserve to have her.
“Going to the police—that’s good, Sebastian,” his mother said encouragingly. “They’ll know what to do. But once this man knows the information is out there, won’t they come after us?”
“I don’t know, and don’t care.”
“Whatever you think of me, your father doesn’t deserve to have his family smeared through the mud.”
Sebastian ground his teeth. She was good at aiming where you were weak, his mother. “What do you propose?”
“You’ll have to keep quiet about the video until the police have captured this man. I’ll come up with something else that will distract the tabloids.”
“Like what?”
She gave him a sly look. “I’ll enlist Lisa. She wants to be famous and doesn’t care how. You leave it to me. We’ll have a new story for the tabloids and one that will scare your blackmailer into silence for a little while.”
He nodded. “You do what you need to do. I’ll go to Austin and get Chelsea and let her know—”
His mother put a hand on his arm. “Wait, you can’t do that.”
“What do you mean?” Knowing Chelsea was in pain and hurting? It gnawed at him like a wound. He had to let her know he didn’t care about the tape. That he loved her and still wanted her, and that his mother had been wrong. That she could come back.
That he could hopefully fix this for her, even if only a little.
“You can’t contact her. Whoever’s blackmailing us is clearly following the family’s footsteps. If you go hauling off after her, they’ll know something’s up. If we say we’re going to the police, you might never catch them. The best thing you can do is go about as if things are normal.”
“But Chelsea—”
“Is in Austin, like you said. And I haven’t received any updates from the blackmailer, which means that they’re watching you and not her.” She gave a small shake of her head. “You’re going to have to act as if nothing is going on.”
