“I swear to Christ, Brian, if you call me one more time about the tabloids, I’ll come down there and make your life very difficult.”

Brian laughs. It wasn’t a joke. “It’s not my favorite item on the agenda, Mr. Blackpool. But I have orders from the president.”

“Do any of you people ever tell him to screw off?”

He laughs again. “None of us could ever get away with that kind of thing. Not that we’d ever try.” His tone slides into seriousness. “Mr. Blackpool, it’s important that we focus on the matter at hand.”

“Do you have new information?”

“Only what my office has been tracking. The coverage hasn’t slowed down at all. In fact, discussions of your supposed meeting with a call girl are popping up everywhere. There’s not a corner of the Internet that doesn’t have—”

“I get it.”

“President Blackpool was hoping we’d have more of a headway—”

I tap my foot on the floor of the office building I own in Foggy Bottom. I gutted all of it and put in shining hardwood floors and real plaster walls. It’s the best space in the District—I made sure of it. “What is it that he expects from me?” There’s a crackle over the phone line that scrapes at the tender flesh inside my ear. The vein at my temple throbs. God. Offer Andrew an inch, and he takes a mile. “Chase her down? Force her to submit to his whims?”

A beat of silence. Brian is calling from his office in the White House, which means this call will go on official logs. I know he doesn’t like to omit talking points, but this is one he can’t endorse. “Of course not. President Blackpool wanted me to pass along the suggestion that you reach out personally.”

“Personally. To the woman who accosted me in the street through no fault of my own, and is refusing to work with us.”

“Yes. But if you feel like that would be unproductive—”

“It would be worse than unproductive. It would be detrimental.”

“Are you certain? Is there any chance that a positive outcome—”

“She and I can’t communicate. You saw that firsthand.”

“She was perhaps a little sensitive to some of your humor.”

I laugh. “That’s a nice way to put it. Tell me, Brian. Man to man. Could you come back from that?”

“Me?” He seems to be taking the question seriously. “I’m a Public Relations officer for the White House, not a multibillionaire.”

“Waving my money around didn’t work very well at our meeting.”

“Don’t wave it then.” Brian’s voice gets an edge to it. It’s a dull edge, like a butter knife, but I hear it nonetheless. “Use it to your advantage.”

“She didn’t want my money.”

I’m being a complete asshole again. I know it. It takes a superhuman effort to recognize it, but I feel it in my pounding heart, in the heat of my skin, even though I’m alone in my private office and Brian’s across the city in the West Wing. A month into Andrew’s presidency, and I’m already sick of being handled by his people.

Brian doesn’t sigh, but I’d bet my entire fortune that he wants to. “All I’m saying is that you have options that aren’t open to others. President Blackpool would be very grateful if you’d explore them.”

I want to tell him that President Blackpool only cares about maintaining his status as the most powerful man on the planet, but I don’t. Brian is only the messenger. He doesn’t deserve to die. “I’ll look into it.”

“The media isn’t letting up, Mr. Blackpool. I think you know what happens next.”

“I can handle more negative coverage.”

“They’ll start digging into Ms. Leighton’s background. You’re an easier target, but they need more fuel for the fire.”

It shouldn’t be the thing that takes my brain in its fists and forcibly re-centers my thoughts. I shouldn’t care at all about Bellamy Leighton. She’s the reason we’re in this position in the first place. If she’d acted like a normal person and kept the money for herself, or even ignored it—

But she’s not a normal person, is she?

I knew that the moment I looked into her eyes.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t call me again.”

“You know I can’t promise—”

I end the call.

In the silence of my office, I turn over Brian’s request in my mind. Use my money. That’s his solution. What, am I supposed to convince her by hiring a fucking skywriter? Fireworks show? What?

I sit down at my desk and flip open my laptop. It’s entirely possible that Brian is exaggerating the situation.

I choose a news website at random.

It loads.

There’s my face, right there at the top of the screen. There’s a huge screen-width photo of Bellamy and me from that day on the sidewalk. I’m touching her in the photo, a little grin on my face, and it looks for all the world like I know her, like this is a lovers’ spat.

Christ.

Three more news websites.

Three more pictures.

The paparazzi were paid handsomely this week, that’s for fucking certain.

My heart beats into my throat. Normally, I would be a non-item. Another rich man stepping out of line? A dime a dozen. Those are the kinds of flames that die out as soon as the match is struck.

Not this one. This one is a brushfire that’s going to consume thousands of acres of delicate forestland.

There are other pictures.

Pictures from the night before I met Bellamy. Pictures that aren’t on the Internet—not yet—because in the hours before Jameson hustled me into the car, in an attempt to make me look like a regular, upstanding citizen, I paid the photographer handsomely.

I met him myself.

They’re on my computer now. They’ve burrowed into my brain like a cancer, like an earworm I can’t get out of my head.

Me, through a window, darkly.

Me, in a slouch that looks suspiciously drug-related.

Me, with my hands on a woman’s neck.

A woman I don’t remember, but who has been identified by one of my friends as D.C.’s most expensive call girl.

Photographic evidence.

If it ever comes to light, Andrew is right. He won’t be able to stop the accusations from flying.

I close the folder and type in the password to re-encrypt it.

My phone rings. It’s Henry.

“You’d better be calling with good news.”

“Mr. Blackpool.” The moment he says my name, I know it’s not good news. “We’re hemorrhaging staff. There’s some concern that the coverage is going to scare away clients. People on all levels are jumping ship.”

“Tell them to calm the fuck down.”

He laughs nervously. “I don’t know if that will have the effect you’re—”

“I’m containing this. Okay? I have a solution. Convince them, Henry. That’s your job.”

I end the call.

Andrew’s presidency. My business. They’re all riding on this.

Still…

I’m not going to hunt down Bellamy Leighton, as much as I’d like to.

I need another plan.

I lean back in my seat and let my memory travel down over the curve of her lips, the gentle slope of her neck, the rise of her breasts underneath the pink shell blouse she wore to the meeting with me and Brian.

My phone rings on my desk.

I could ignore it and keep thinking of her. It’s a D.C. number I don’t recognize.

But I’m a fucking adult, so I answer the call.

“Graham Blackpool.”

“Mr. Blackpool?” The voice is tentative but determined. “This is Bellamy Leighton. I—I need to talk to you.”