It takes eight separate phone calls to find Bellamy.

CNN. Fucking CNN. They were probably her first call, and now she’s going to go on the air for the morning show.

The car stops at the curb and I launch myself out. It’s still cold at this hour and my temples throb with the need for sleep. Glorious sleep. I’m worth several billion dollars but I can’t buy restful sleep.

Not on such short notice, anyway.

I stride for the front entrance of the headquarters.

A gloved hand slaps the handle at the same time as mine,.

“Apologies.” I say it with half a smile, sheer habit, but the voice that answers me doesn’t belong to a stranger.

“You’re in an awful hurry, Graham.”

I’m not hallucinating—it’s my father.

“What are you doing here?”

His hair is neatly combed back, and it might be six in the morning but his suit is impeccably pressed. I see it for what it is now—a facade, to keep the rest of the world from knowing the rot that’s underneath.

“I’m here to address some rumors.” He sticks his hands in his pocket and shakes his head, as if a national news item were a couple of housewives gossiping over the fence in the backyard. “What trash.”

The hairs on the back of my neck rise. I look him in the eye—eyes the same as mine. “Is it? There’s nobody else here. You can tell me the truth.” I put a hand up. “No, don’t bother. You’d only lie.”

He presses his lips into a thin line and my chest swells with triumph. For once, my father is the one who’s cowed. His eyes flit over my shoes and linger just past my shoulder until he can bring himself to look back. “It was one dalliance.”

I brace myself against the door to stop myself from falling. “Holy shit. I can’t believe you admitted it.”

My father frowns. “Language, Graham. How many times—”

“Did you step out on my mother? Is there a half-brother in the world that’s been kept a secret from me for a decade? Yes or no, Dad. I’m short on time.”

He hesitates. “Yes, and yes.”

“And what were you going to do? Go on television and say it wasn’t true? That the president is the one who deserves to take the fall?”

His expression softens. A familiar glow comes to his eyes. A very familiar glow. I’ve recently seen it in Andrew’s.

“My god. You can’t be serious.”

“It’s the right thing to do, Graham,” he wheedles, and puts his hand on the door handle. “Let’s go discuss it inside. It’s freezing out here.”

I step inside and he follows.

“Mr. Blackpool, the dressing room is down this hallway to the right,” says a woman at a polished-mahogany reception desk. Is she talking to me or him?

“Thank you.” My father answers for both of us and we walk down the hall. He passes the dressing room.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to watch the previous segment,” he says. “I want to see it for myself. I want you to see it, so you can understand why I need your help.”

A surge of happy warmth cascades through my chest. No. I want to claw that feeling out with both hands, with all ten fingernails. But beneath all the walls, all the shields, there’s still the ghost of that teenage boy who wanted his father to love him.

Like he loved Andrew.

I stop dead in the middle of the hallway.

He keeps going.

I only thought they loved Andrew better than me, but that wasn’t true.

What they loved was his compliance.

They were rewarding him for following along even as they used me to create a distraction.

“Are you coming?” My father has stoppped ten paces ahead and waits with narrowed eyes.

I follow him out of instinct while my mind reels.

I come up alongside him.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Graham, you’ve grown up so much in the past couple of months. I’m proud of you.”

It makes me thrilled. It makes me sick. That old, hapless part of me still wants to hear the words from him. The man I’ve become wants nothing to do with it. “If you’re going to ask me for a favor, you can ask without the flattery.”

We pause outside an office the size of a closet and my father waves to someone inside. The woman there jumps out of her seat. “Mr. Blackpool. We’re so glad you could—”

“Send someone to do makeup in the studio.” My father charms her with a smile so transparently false I can see right through to the other side. “I want to see what my daughter-in-law says.”

“Of course. Of course. We can do that.” She hustles around behind us and down the hall. “Shelly? I need you down here...”

As soon as she’s out of earshot, he turns back to me. “I’d rather see what you have to say. Come on.”

He goes farther down the hallway, and I follow like I’m on a fucking leash. Why can’t I break away? Why can’t I walk the hell out of here and never look back?

The studio door is open.

Inside, it’s a pool of darkness with a searing bright center.

On a chair in the middle of that light is Bellamy.

She looks flawless, lit from heaven. Angelic. Righteous.

She stares straight ahead like a queen.

“You need to stop her.” My father’s voice is smooth, convincing. It’s a sound I’ve always craved. It’s the way he always spoke to Andrew.

But now I hear it for what it is—a lie wrapped in a second lie. A promise rotten to the core.

“You need to take her place. Do you understand?” He puts his hand just above my elbow and turns me to face him. “I would be so grateful to you, Graham, if you’d do this for me. For our family.”

“What the hell do you expect me to say?”

The woman from the small office brushes past with someone else—it must be Shelly.

His lip curls upward, an indulgent smile. “That the child is yours, of course. That you were unaware of his existence. That you’ll be fighting to take him back. You’ll lose, naturally. The mothers always win. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will take the spotlight off Andrew and let him do his job the way he was meant to do it.”

I swallow what feels like pure bile. “And if I agree?”

Now he claps both hands around my shoulders. “Son, we’ll be forever in your debt.”