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I took a deep breath. “First of all, like I said, we have several new people on the payroll. My stepmother’s one of them.”
“Lydia? We just gave her money! What the hell does she want now?”
“More. And I promised her more. Like, a lot more,” I admitted.
“Why did we do that?”
At least Bryce said ‘we.’ That meant he couldn’t be completely mad at me!
“Because someone else was paying her—actually, two different people were—and I had to offer more.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Who? Tell me everything.”
I sighed. “Your father, and also, Mimi Jones.”
“What? Why the hell is Mimi Jones blackmailing Lydia?”
“She wasn’t blackmailing her, she was trying to get her to do things. Like bring a local news crew to the townhouse and embarrass me.” I shook my head. “Mimi thinks I should be ashamed of my father and Lydia, and so does your father. And Iamashamed of them, but not for the reasons you might think.”
“It’s because of how they treated you and Noah,” Bryce said.
“Right.” I shrugged. “I don’t care that Lydia chain-smokes and has a giant tattoo of a lion’s face on her thigh. If she was a nice person, I’d be all for it. But she’s not. She’s not a nice person, and I offered her alotof money not to talk. I mean, a lot.”
Bryce waved his hand. “We’ll worry about that later. What else? Tell me more about Mimi. I don’t understand how she’s involved in all of this.”
“Ugh, thereismore. She hates our family. She’s so bitter about what happened with Michael and Daphne that she’s taking it out on us. And the fact that you and Felicia didn’t work out doesn’t help matters. But really, she hatesme.” I shivered. “I never should’ve gone after Felicia at the wedding. That was your father’s idea to make me look bad.”
“I freakingknew it—”
“It doesn’t matter. Because not only did I embarrass myself, I humiliated the Jones family. And I think Mimi was already humiliated enough—that pushed her over the edge.”
I blew out a deep breath. “Mimi was disgusted that she wasn’t able to keep that out of the news, and now the most famous picture of her precious American-heiress daughter is the one of her getting her ass kicked by Nobody Chloe Windsor. Who’s an escort. Who’s stepmother is East Boston trash with an accent and a huge thigh tattoo.”
“Jesus Christ.” Bryce looked appalled. “Mimi needs to get a life.”
“She knows about AccommoDating, Bryce. She told Lydia about it. Your father knows, too.”
I paused for a beat, letting that sink in. Our enemies knew the truth about us. What on earth were we going to do aboutthat?
“I guess she hired a private investigator to dig up my past and whoever it was, they did good work,” I continued. “Oh, that’s the other thing—Mimi’s the one who hired Tate to go after your brother. Tate’s an escort, too. She’s been threatening me ever since she got to the island.”
“What thehell? I’m going to have security pack her shit and throw her out—”
“No, no you can’t do that!” I interrupted. “Tate’s on the payroll, too. I told her to lie to Mimi and keep things on an even keel while we figure out our next move. She’s not that bad, actually. I feel sorry for her, she was living on the streets before she started working as an escort. And she really likes Colby.”
Bryce looked at me as though I had three heads.
“What?”
“You seem to empathize with my father, even though he’s been torturing you. You feel sorry for Tate, even though she threatened you. You don’t even sound like you hate Mimi, and she’s trying to blow your life up.” His brow furrowed. “How do you do that?”
“How do I do what?”
“Stay good. How do you stay so good, huh?”
I shook my head. “I’mnotgood. But enough people have tried to do bad things to me since I married you, I don’t know… I guess I see it from a different perspective. Like, why sink to their level? Although I’m all about the payoffs, and I learned that from watchingthem.”
I laughed. “But I just figure, why can’t the good guys win for once? We—you—have a ton of money, just like your dad and Mimi. Why can’t we throw some of that around and come out on top?”
