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“Sorry,” I muttered with a roll of my eyes. I grabbed the cup in front of Marcel and took a big gulp allowing the hot liquid to warm my insides. It was early spring, but still cold enough to call for a hot cup. “I was busy.”
“Oh, I know,” Marcel said. There was a level of snark in his voice that I wasn’t surprised when he threw a newspaper on the table between us.
Internally, I groaned but worked to keep my face as neutral as stone. “What’s that?” I asked. I didn’t make a move for the paper. Based on Marcel’s countenance, I knew that it wasn’t good. He was pissed, and his anger was rolling off of him in waves.
“You’ve made the papers,” he said.
“I’ve been making the papers since I was eighteen,” I reminded him.
Marcel didn’t break a smile. His frown continued to be downturned. “This is different,” he said. When he realized that I wasn’t going to open it for him, he did it pressing his thick finger against the headline. “Playboy Prosecutor Works Hard, Parties Harder Amidst Meteoric Rise”
I snorted at the title. “Not very original.” I didn’t bother reading a word that had been written. As the youngest prosecutor in Manhattan history, and one of the few to take on the mafia, I was used to aspects of my life being picked apart. Even before my high-profile case trying Marco Blanchi, I was the son of New York’s city’s most prominent bad girl, and since birth, people wanted to know what I would do next.
“This is a problem,” Marcel said.
“It’s not. People have been writing about me since I can remember. Tomorrow someone else will be here, and no one will remember whatever shit they are writing.”
Marcel leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper. “One of your conquests has talked,” he said. “And she’s got a lot to say.”
There was something in Marcel’s words that made my heart skip a beat. Immediately, I reached out and grabbed the paper, no longer content to just scan the headlines. “Fuck me,” I muttered.
Not only had she talked. She’d run off at the fucking mouth. “This isn’t good.”
“No fucking shit,” Marcel muttered. He reached out and grabbed the paper before I could finish the article. “I’ll spoil the ending for you. She talks about the orgy the two of you had in the Hamptons.”
“Fuck,” I muttered again.
The vein in Marcel’s head was throbbing, which was a sure-fire sign of his irritation. “We are supposed to be announcing your run next month. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
I gritted my teeth together before taking a deep, calming breath. “A lot can happen in a month. This isn't that bad. We’ve got time to get in front of it. Plenty of time. Thirty days to be exact.”
“It’s just a matter of time before one of your other conquests starts speaking and releasing all of the skeletons in your closet, and we both know that there are a lot.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead. Marcel had a point. While I’d never done anything to a woman that she hadn’t begged for, I’d done a lot of experimenting. Which wouldn’t look good for a mayoral candidate.
“What’s the game plan here?” I asked. It pained me that I even needed to ask the question. It was 2021, people fucked. We didn’t need to be so prudish about it. But apparently, there were rules around these sorts of things. Ironic considering, I knew several politicians personally, and they were all deviants.
Marcel’s eyebrow rose. “What makes you think I’ve got a plan?” he asked.
This time my brow rose. “Isn’t that why I pay your exorbitant fee? Because you are supposed to be running my campaign.”
Marcel was my best friend, but he was also the top political consultant in the U.S. He’d gotten two shit candidates into the White House––he was that fucking good. If anyone could turn these lemons into lemonade, it was him.
“I don’t think you are going to like my suggestion.”
I shrugged. “I often don’t,” I said. I learned forward. “But I want to win.”
He sighed, and I braced myself. When we were just friends, Marcel had told me some of the ways he’d gotten even the most unqualified and unliked candidate into office, so I braced myself for having to do something that I wasn’t looking forward to.
“We need to rehab your image,” he told me.
“Doesn’t sound so bad.”
Marcel snorted. “Not that simple. This article paints you as a responsible, sexual deviant. Women will want to fuck you, and men will want to be you, but no one is going to trust you not to run this city into the ground.”
“Shit.” As much as I wanted to ignore Marcel, I knew that he was right. “How do we fix this?”
“We change you from Manhattan’s playboy to the epitome of responsibility.”
