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Forty-Seven
BROOKE
I stormed into Chloe’s office, even harder and faster than last time. She was in her chair, bent over the phone. Immediately upon seeing me, she covered the bottom half of the receiver with one hand.
“You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve coming in here,” she growled angrily, “considering what you just—”
“Dump the story.”
I was leaning forward, both hands resting on the edge of her desk. She was staring at my hands. No one ever touched her desk.
“Brooke, I—”
I reached out and slammed two fingers down on the cradle’s button, disconnecting her call. Chloe looked up at me like I’d just run over her dog.
“Are you out of your goddamn min—”
“I said dump the story,” I snarled, practically into her face. “Call Cosmo. Tell them the whole thing is dead, and do it now.”
Chloe slowly lowered the phone to its cradle and regarded me coldly. From her expression I could tell she wanted to rip my face off. But I could also tell that no one had ever talked to her this way before.
Maybe ever.
“I can’t kill the story,” she said, regaining some of her composure.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both, really.”
I shifted even closer, kicking one of the uncomfortable metal guest chairs out of the way. Staring into her eyes, I could see it now. Past the mascara, beyond the too-thick layers of eye-shadow… there was a small measure of fear in her eyes.
“It’s in my contract,” I said grimly. “I own full rights to every story I write for Mythic Daily, during and after my employment here. Therefore I’m taking it out of your hands. I’m killing the story, and you can tell your bosses that too.”
“Technically you didn’t write this story for our magazine,” Chloe pointed out slyly. “You wrote it for an outside source.”
I blinked in astonishment.
“Besides, I don’t think your contract is as iron-clad as you think it is,” she touted. “Or that we’d even honor that clause in a situation this important.”
Chloe’s tone was definitive, like all this had already been decided. Even so, she looked almost nervous, telling me these things.
“Brooke, your boyfriend put my brother in the hospital,” she said. “He has a possible concussion.”
“He’s got brain damage,” I sneered. “That’s for sure.”
She ignored me. “You joke, but this is serious. You both work here. You’ve both been fighting like cats and dogs. In and out of each others’ offices, making scenes that the rest of the workplace can attest to.”
“Your brother—”
“I don’t know if I can protect you anymore,” Chloe interrupted. “Hell, I don’t know if I even want to protect you. He’s my brother, Brooke. My own flesh and blood.”
“Your own flesh and blood showed up in front of my boyfriend’s place,” I said. “And in a jealous rage, clubbed him in the back of the head with one of the police batons your stepfather gave him.”
“So you say,” Chloe smirked.
“He’s been tracking me all over the city,” I went on, “through a—”
“Keychain he gave you on your birthday,” Chloe chuckled. She waved dismissively with one hand. “I heard all this bullshit already, Brooke. Chris told me.”
