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“Hello,” she smiles, offering out her hand. “My name is Emilia.”
It’s impolite, but I don’t take her hand. Looking away from her, I arch a blond eyebrow at King. “Well, you blackmailed me into being here, so spit it out. I have better things to do than drag my ass halfway across Manhattan to fulfill your wishes.”
His eyes narrow, but he doesn’t look offended by my words. “Pleasure as always to see you again, Bex.”
The woman before me lowers her hand slowly, like she’s shocked I didn’t jump for joy to be in the same room as someone of King’s stature. Poor thing probably has no idea the diabolical asshole living beneath the shiny, expensive exterior of his suit.
King gestures to the chair across from him with stacks of paper sitting before it. “Take a seat. I have a proposition for you.”
Taking a moment to compose myself, I pull my shoulders back and firmly state, “No.”
King and Emilia stare at me. King in anger, Emilia in bewilderment.
“Aillard said I had to come, show up, and he wouldn’t pull his funding for the Hastings Humanitarian Award winner. I’m here, I showed up, and I’m leaving,” I calmly explain. “Whatever this is about, the answer is no.”
“You don’t want to help Thorin?” Emilia’s puzzled expression tells me she’s not been privy to my explosive past with the man in question and its rather crude details. I know how this game is played and when to not play it.
“Help?” I echo the word with acid dripping from my tongue. “No, I don’t want tohelpThorin. Whatever mess he’s gotten himself into, he has two best friends to drag him out of it. Right, King?”
Emilia’s head snaps to the side, her mouth agape in shock. “Clearly I’m missing something here. I know you were married to Thorin, but I don’t completely understand why you’re so angry with King.”
“She’s mad at me because I gave her the divorce papers I had drawn up from a favor owed by a judge before Thorin even requested it,” King offers, a heavy sigh leaving his mouth. “We treated Thorin as a client.” He visibly flinches at his words; like a heart truly beats under the callous exterior. “Bex was a casualty.”
Casualty. As if destroying my entire life at the time, leading me to rebuild myself slowly and crawl away from the microscope of the media with my limbs intact was a mere normal Tuesday for him.
“You guys were only married a short time, though.” Emilia’s quizzical tone only causes my teeth to grind harder.
“You’re right, we were only married for two months. I’m not surprised an annulment was drawn up or that Thorin and I divorced. That’s not what I’m pissed about. I’m pretty level headed when I’m not fueled by vodka and sex.” My stare bores into King, who shifts in his seat, bringing a delightful sense of victory from getting under his skin. “I’m pissed off and refusing to help because as acasualty, as you so eloquently put it, you tore my life apart. Or did you forget what all you, Thorin, and Aillard did after I signed the annulment agreeing not to go after Thorin’s money?”
King grits his teeth. “I apologize. Right now, Thorin needs your help, and you need mine.”
As if I would ever find myself in a predicament where I need King to come to my aid. It’s almost laughable as I state, “I don’t need anything from you.”
King’s sharp tone slams into me like a thousand little nails as he calls my bluff. “Really? In the eight years since you graduated from NYU, you’ve only paid nineteen thousand dollars of your almost three hundred and six thousand dollar tuition. Your family makes too much for financial assistance, so you paid for it on your own out of pocket with loans you’re struggling to repay. Help me, and I’ll write a check for a quarter of a million dollars.”
Just like that, the floor disappears from underneath my feet. I may make a decent paycheck, but living in New York isn’t cheap, and considering I pay most of Nana Noel’s medical bills recently since she’s begun having memory issues, I’m not making nearly enough headway on my loans as I should be. Once again, I’m being looked at as acasualtyof Ward Enterprises’ most elusive and daring fixer. I don’t bother asking how he knows such a personal thing. Long ago I recognized that King has his ways of digging up things you think are buried in places people will never look.
“If you agree to this,” King barrels on, “then you’ll receive half up front under the stipulation that you fulfill the contract and the rest when it’s over.”
My mouth refuses to work. The angry part of me wants to tell him to shove his money up his ass, but the rational, in-debt side of me knows the money will be helping me get out from under my father’s name. Dad refused to help me pay for college when I declared a major that meant something to me instead of what he wanted, allowing an insurmountable amount of debt to drive a further wedge between us. I should’ve gone to a cheaper school, but I was young and determined to prove to him I could do it at one of the most sought after colleges in America even with the entire campus hating me for supposedly breaking up theitcouple. As much as I want to tell King to go take a long walk off a short pier, I bite my tongue.
A quarter of a million dollars. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It would knock out a good chunk of my debt, leaving what’s leftover far more manageable. I hate this. Hate that I’m backed into a corner I didn’t see coming and have no way out of. I could say no, but it’sa quarter of a million dollars. It is the difference between slaving away my life and having the chance to eventually live it.
My voice shakes slightly as the words leave my mouth in a stilted, wooden tone, “What’s the contract for?”
“You’ll need to sign an NDA for that.”
Detrick will kill me for this since he’s a penchant for gossip, but the money he’s offering me would significantly change my life. I’d knock out two-thirds of my debt in a single go with the entire contract being fulfilled. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was like tossing down twenty dollars for dinner for someone like King. I walk over to the table and lean forward, grabbing the piece of paper and reading it carefully. It’s a standard document, almost word-for-word the same kind we use at Hastings Center without a trace of what King is about to ask me to consider. Signing this doesn’t guarantee I’ll help Thorin, but King makes a tempting enough offer I’m willing to hear him out. Picking up a pen, I scribble my name and slide it over to King. “Now, what’s the contract covering exactly?”
Emilia walks over and closes the conference room’s door I left open for a quick escape to give us privacy.
“Thorin’s birthday party was earlier this year,” King begins. “The short version is there was an incident where Thorin was drugged at his party, but it’s been made to look as though he was a willing participant with some uninvited guests. Some unflattering, misleading pictures of what he was doing have been circulating smaller media sites. Recently they’ve been picked up by major news stations because his rival, Gabriel Donner, is trying to slander the Ravenscroft name entirely by focusing on making snide remarks about Thorin. The press is eating him alive because of this supposed new feud between Ravenscroft Hotels and Donner Hotels. Shareholders for Ravenscroft Hotels have been pulling away, not wanting to be caught with a scandal of this magnitude as Thorin is the heir to the entire Hotel empire. We need someone who is likable, approachable, and can fix his image in the media.”
“And that’s you,” Emilia jumps in with the grand reveal.
The hell it is. “Why me? He’s dated a ton since we split up. I’m sure there are a plethora of other women ready and willing to help Thorin.” Someone who could be likable, approachable, and more capable of fixing this image of Thorin abusing drugs and whatever else the scandalous photos are accusing him of. It’s hard to wrap my brain around the mere idea of Thorin Ravenscroft partying like a rockstar since it’s a juxtaposition of who he truly is.
King adjusts in his seat, leaning backwards while steepling his hands together in front of him. “None of the previous dates knew him well enough to be believable as a contender for helping boost his image and reputation. Most dates are known to only be seen with him for publicity stunts or for short flings, nothing that would equate to developing deeper feelings. Then there’s the added benefit that you’re a well known charitable person. Taking him along to charity events is a surefire way to counteract the image the media is currently portraying as false.”
