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Caulder nods his head gently.
“Sash”, Alex says, trying to reason with her. “This is bigger than you both.”
“Dante, for fuck sake”, Sash says, her hand flat out and pointed accusingly at Alex. “Tell her. Tell her we are already in a relationship, and we don’t give a fuck about what other people think about us.”
“Sash, wait one sec”, Dante says. “I told you this would happen if they knew, it’s important we make the right decision now to lessen the impact later on.”
Sash shakes her head, shocked that Dante of all people wouldn’t immediately defend their love for one another, especially now their secret was out.
“Lessen the impact? Dante, we’re not some kind of meteorite from space, threatening other people’s lives. It’s just you and me.” She reaches over to take his hand. “We can’t deny we are together, not now it’s already out.”
“You have to”, Alex butts in. “And if you have any sense, Dante, you will.”
“And then what do you expect us to do?” Sash asks, keen to fight her corner. “I can’t go back to being secret, not now.”
“Then go back to nothing at all”, Alex remarks, and Sash’s jaw drops open so far it nearly hits the floor. Undeterred, Alex continues. “This is not going to die down immediately, but your relationship, whatever it is beyond what it looks like here, which I have to admit isn’t very much at all, will have to. After that, when enough time has elapsed, if that ever happens, I for one don’t think it ever will, then you might have a chance again. But, if you ask me, I’d quit before you get anywhere near being serious. That’s my personal and professional opinion.”
“Huh”, Dante says. He regards his personal assistant for a while, his head cocked to the side like a dog. He has never been spoken to before in that way, and when all of this has died down he’ll deal with Alex in the way she deserves. How dare she disregard his relationship with Sash and make comments about his private life, even if she feels her own position to be in danger because of it. Whether she is right or not, no one has earned the right to speak to him like that, especially not Alex. Sash can see the storm brewing in Dante’s eyes, but she can’t see him speaking up for her. She doesn’t get it. Alex’s increased pulse rate indicates that she knows she might have gone too far with her comments. Stubbornness, however, means she won’t retract them, nor change her stance either.
“Is there no other way?”, Dante says, happy to continue to play the passive role, like a predator playing dead, waiting for the propitious moment to strike.
“What other way?” Alex asks.
She refuses to sit down. Half of the time she stands in front of Dante and Sash, leering down at them both, the other half propped against his desk, her arms folded angrily. She’s the only one of the four of them who has refused to take a seat to deal with the matter calmly.
Sash doesn’t know why her stepbrother is deferring to this woman. It’s almost as if he likes making her angry, or just likes the game of trying to work out how to solve the problem they’ve both been handed. Whatever it is, she doesn’t like it. This morning her stepbrother was stressed out and distant, now he seems completely relaxed and almost in his element. It’s almost as if he’s already made up his mind what to do, and this is just the game that’s necessary to play in order to get them there. A fucking detective in the sum up, leading his suspects into the frame.
“Make a bigger story”, Dante says, his arms up and his eyes sparkling.
“Bigger than this? Impossible. You need a natural disaster, and even that’s not going to help you. You are one of the richest people in America. People know you. People want to be you, and a lot of people want to hurt you. This is huge. Aliens would have to take over and reduce everything to dust to make this even think about going away. The pope would have to fuck the Queen of England for you to get out of this fucking hole.”
Dante regards her again. He likes her passion, it was one of the reasons he employed her in the first place. He’ll miss that. Even on her dark skin he can she a hint of red where her collar meets her shirt. Out of her depth, like a Yorkshire terrier yapping at a great Dane.
“And if we admit it. If I stand there and admit that Sash and I are in a relationship, and we’re not doing anything wrong, what then?” Dante says.
Finally he’s defending us, Sash thinks. She reaches over and grabs his hand again, but although he lets her sit it in her lap and stroke it affectionately, he won’t take his gaze off Alex.
“Are you fucking serious?” she says, one hand on her hip, the other hanging loosely by her side.
“Stop being so dramatic and answer the question, Alex. What is the worst case scenario?”
Her eyes go wide. She cannot believe that Dante is being this stupid. To her, the answer is obvious. “Career suicide”, she says finally. “You say that, what you’ve just said right now, you are fucked for the rest of your life. Bye bye private jets and thousand dollar lunches, bye bye credit cards and holidays to California at a moments notice. Bye Bye Hix industries forever. And if you are seriously considering that, you are not the Dante Hix I know.”
Silence spreads throughout the office again. You could hear a pin drop as Alex and Dante regard each other. Sash wants her stepbrother to look at her but he’s quite deliberately choosing not to. Even Caulder has stopped filing his nails to look, for a rare occasion, directly at his boss and his colleague.
Dante is the first to look away. He takes his hand away from Sash and adjusts himself in his seat.
“Well that’s that then, isn’t it?” he says, his palms up defensively. “I guess that leaves me with no choice.”
Sash turns to him, just to make sure she’s heard him right.
“Are you serious?” she says, her blood about to boil over. “You’re going to do what she says, you’re going to deny that we’re together? That we ever were?”
Now Dante turns to her.
“Sash”, he says, pinching her chin. “I’m going to do the only thing I can.”
Sash shakes herself away from him, swatting his hand away when he puts it up again.
“You’re going to put your fucking business ahead of our relationship? I can’t believe I’m hearing this, Dante. After everything that we’ve been through, after everything that I’ve done for you.” Her hands go back to her belly. “After this? I thought I knew you.”
Alex towers over them with her arms folded smugly. As far as she is concerned, she’s won. “I’ll notify the press”, she says confidently, before striding back out to her desk.
Tears are running freely from Sash’s swelling eyes, rolling and tumbling across her cheeks.
“Sash, please”, Dante says. “It’s going to be ok.”
He tries to touch her, but she pulls herself away quickly. A moment later, she’s up on her feet.
“Sash, where are you going?”
“I don’t know you”, she says, shaking her head. “I don’t know you at all.”
A second later, she’s flashed past Alex, who isn’t even bothered enough to look up to her, and is halfway down the stairs before Dante is even out of his seat. In Alex’s office, he stares at the main door, yawning at his stepsister’s absence.
“Don’t”, he says to Alex, when he sees her about to say something.
Back in his office, he closes the double doors, flops back down into the sofa, sighs heavily and begins to pull his tie off.
“What the fuck are you looking at?”, he says angrily to Caulder.
“Can you book me a flight to L.A.?”, Caulder asks. “I have a feeling I know who did it.”
Chapter 7
Sash has no idea where she is going. All she knows is she needs to get away. She takes the stairs two at a time, falling into a rhythm that helps her send everything that has happened in the last few hours, to the very back of her mind. If she doesn’t think about it, she can’t let it affect her.
Jason Walker, her pregnancy, the stepbrother she thought she knew. None of it matters if she’s just Sash, dancing down the stairs, running to get away.
There is a moment of silence as she bursts through the double doors to Dante’s granite black office tower, when the stationed security guards, the row of police and the half a dozen camera wielding journalists collected outside look at her with a shared expression of confusion. This is not at all what they expected to see.
In her haste to leave, Sash had forgotten completely that they would be there. With everything else going on, it hadn’t even crossed her mind. Outside now, faced with an impenetrable wall of people trapping her exit, she feels like she has no where left to turn. She can’t go back inside, and the crowd in front of her looks like the last thing it wants to do is part and let her through.
Finally, a snap second after the penny drops, they realize it’s her. It’s Sash, the woman at the center of all of this. Cameras flash and journalist barge each other out of the way to try and get as close to her as possible.
“Is it true? Look at me. Is it about money? Are you in love? Where is Dante?” The questions mash together and form an incoherent reticulation of noise that leaves Sash hollow and desperate. Everywhere she turns there is a camera pointed at her, or a finger of accusation, or a placard registering disgust. The security guards don’t know what to do, the police either. One of them radios up to the office above, just to see if this is some kind of publicity stunt they haven’t yet been advised of. They all wonder if Dante will burst out of the still swinging doors behind her, as though the building itself is giving birth to its celebrity owner, and save her. Sash doesn’t know where to turn. Everything is a whirling chaos of lights and noise she can’t even begin to imagine how to take control of. She’s on the edge of being consumed by it, ready to sit down and let it swallow her and her baby up, until there is nothing left but a pair of footprints slowly dissolving in the post cataclysmic wind, when out of the blurred confusion that sounds her, comes a distinct and familiar voice.
