Daisy still refuses to look at Jon. Her hands press down hard on her thighs.
Kat says, “Did you tell Jon where you got that idea? Did you tell him what inspired you?”
Kat turns her attention to Jon. “She didn’t tell you, did she? Daughters learn from their mothers. Annabelle Wentworth paid a small fortune to the poor immigrant parents of the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who learned she was pregnant after the rape. On condition that her mother persuaded her to get rid of the baby. On condition that the parents would not pursue charges on behalf of their daughter.”
“It wasn’t my baby,” Jon snaps. “It could have been any one of those guys’ sperm.”
Kat falls silent. A hard and frightening look enters her eyes. “Oh,” she says softly. “Are you admitting, then, what happened?”
Jon glances at the walls, the ceiling, looking for the CCTV cameras. “Who’s watching this?” he demands.
Kat leans forward. “I guess Annabelle thought it wasn’t worth the risk of the girl having the baby, because if a paternity test did prove it was yours, you would be irreversibly tied to me via our child for the restof our child’s life. And that’s not what Annabelle wanted for her Daisy, was it? Better to make the problem with a poor schoolgirl go away. Easy enough since money was no big deal for Annabelle, but it was a very big deal to my parents.”
Kat rises to her feet. She crosses the room on her high, square heels. She spins, faces them both as they sit on the edge of the sofa. “The contents of that NDA make it pretty clear Annabelle Wentworth knew the truth of what happened that night. Probably because Daisy knew the truth of what happened that night. And so did the other rich boys and girls. And you know what hurts me most? That my mother never told me what she signed. I was devastated when she suggested we just make it all go away because we could never win against people like you. She coached me into keeping quiet. She said if I made a fuss, you might sue us for defamation or something—I imagine this was Annabelle’s threat to my mom. And my mother probably never told my father, either. He was old school. Old morals. My pregnancy, my accusations of assault, the fact I was drinking—I became a disgrace to him. My father disrespected me. He was disgusted by me. He heard everyone say I was a liar, a drunk little whore who threw myself at ‘JonJon’ Rittenberg and the other boys, and who got pregnant and tried to defend my promiscuity by crying rape.” Kat reaches for what looks like a television remote on the bar counter.
“And when I did get rid of the baby, my uterus was ruptured. I got an infection. And I could never have kids again.”
She presses a button on the remote. A huge television screen rises slowly like a phoenix from a white block of concrete. She hits PLAY.
Jumpy, grainy footage from the night at the ski lodge party fills the screen. The sound of laughter, jeering, music fills the house. Kat turns the volume up.
Jon’s jaw drops. He feels bile surge to his throat.
“Turn it off!” Daisy lurches to her feet. “Just stop it. Now.”
Kat hits PAUSE.
“What do you want?” Daisy’s words come fast. “Just tell us what you want.”
“Remember the newspaper headlines, Jon?” Kat asks. “They read, ‘It Never Happened.’ Tell me it did happen. Admit it. To my face. You raped me. You and your friends drugged and gang-raped me. I want to hear you say it.”
Jon’s gaze shoots in desperation to Daisy. He thinks of all the things Kat has already done to him. He’s terrified what she will do next. She’s crazy. Insane. He needs to buy time. They must placate her, get out of this house, and then figure out how to stop this, how to make her go away.
“Fine,” Jon says slowly. “It happened. You can see it happened by that footage. It was in the heat of the moment. We were all drunk, high from the day’s race events, our wins, our own sense of glory and power. Things went sideways. They went wrong. I’m sorry. Just tell us what you want.”
“Nine hundred thousand dollars.”
“What?” Jon blinks.
“She said she wants nine hundred thousand dollars, Jon.” Daisy’s voice is strangely calm. Her neck is wire tight, her mouth a thin line.
“That’s impossible,” Jon says.
Kat says, “I’d like it transferred directly from your CityIntraBank account to my CityIntraBank account. It’s an intrabank transfer. It can be done via this tablet here.” Katarina picks an iPad up from the bar counter, and she comes over to Jon. She holds the tablet out to him. “I’ve pulled up the bank website. And I’ve already alerted my account manager that I will be receiving a gift from the father of my child. It’s been cleared. All you have to do is open up your account page and make the transfer.”
“That’s absurd. My child? That’s a lie—”
“Is it, though?”
Jon moistens his lips. “I don’t have that kind of money. Not immediately accessible. Not—”
“Pay it, Jon,” Daisy says quietly.
He spins to Daisy. Her eyes are ice cold. Her face is all tight and ugly in its puffy thickness.
“Pay it,” she whispers.
“We don’t have the assets. We—”
