Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“That’s when I called.”
She nods.
I remember that phone call. It was the last contact I had with them until after the con. I haven’t wanted to replay the call in my head. I didn’t want to think I had any part of something going bad. But I have mulled it over. And now . . . for the hundredth time, I recollect it again.
Phoebe “drunkenly” answered her friend’s phone and put me on speaker.
“Faye?” I asked over the music. “Are you at a party? You do realize, you have a photo shoot with Dior tomorrow? This is a two-hundred-grand campaign on the fucking line. The agency is not going to be happy about this. Faye, are you there?”
Phoebe probably pretended to be stunned and then she hung up on me.
“I put on a show of complete remorse,” she says. “I told Jeremy that I shouldn’t have answered the call. That you must have been her agent. I kept telling Jeremy not to tell Faye. That I had no idea just how successful she’s been in California, and I didn’t want to fuck it up for her.”
I know how this con is supposed to work. Jeremy should have realized the fiddle (Hailey/Faye) was actually worth more than Phoebe knew. Add in the fact that Jeremy Leeds hates Dior, and he should’ve offered Faye more money than Dior to get her in his Aquarius campaign instead. But all of this relies on Jeremy being greedy enough to screw over another brand.
“It didn’t work?” I ask.
“He was already kind of drunk,” Phoebe says, staring straight ahead. Past me. Off in the distance in remembrance. I skim her, careful not to move. Her grip is tightening on my forearm.
“When Hailey returned,” Phoebe says gradually, quietly, “he told her that he found out what she was worth, and he’d be willing to double it and bring her into the Aquarius campaign in exchange for sex.”
My heart quickens, now seeing where this is going. Muscles tensed, I don’t make a sound. Don’t want to startle Phoebe into stopping the story altogether.
“Hailey was against it, of course,” Phoebe murmurs. “And I was the principal on this—so I tried my best to course correct. I told Jeremy that Hailey wasn’t that kind of girl, but if I could get a slice of the deal, I was willing to sleep with him as long as he agreed to wire the money beforehand.”
I don’t go numb.
I’m torched. Burning the fuck alive. I can barely breathe, barely move. Barely see anything other than red. I blink. Because I need to see. I need to see her.
Phoebe grits down on her teeth, and her eyes flash up to me. “How many times had I been in that situation before? And how many times had I talked my way out of it?”
Sickness churns in me. “Too many times,” I tell her, fury and torment making a home in my body. “But you should have never been in that position in the first place. You should have bailed—”
“I couldn’t!” she screams at me, battling tears. “I can count on my hands the number of times our moms gave Hailey and me two-person cons. If I failed once, it’d never happen again. And I’ve never failed before. On any con. I couldn’t imagine disappointing my mom in that way, and I thought . . . I believed in myself enough that I could get out of it.” She blinks back more emotion. “Would you have not believed in me?”
Pain infiltrates like a ten-inch gash. I struggle to keep my shit together. “I would have,” I tell her the truth. I would have let her go like I’ve always done. “But I wouldn’t have left you alone with him for long. You know I never would have left you—”
“It’s not her fault!” Phoebe screams, her voice threatening to crack. She catches my other forearm and brings both of my arms to my sides. Causing my hand to slip off her neck. And I don’t fight her. She doesn’t release her hold on me.
“I’m not blaming my sister. I’m not blaming you,” I say with an inferno in my lungs. It hurts—every single breath hurts.
“Hailey tried to get in the room,” Phoebe says with amassing tears. “She tried. Really hard.”
This is gutting me.
“But it was being blocked,” Phoebe explains. “They even took her phone.” I grind my jaw, breathing through my nose, and she takes a long beat, gazing over at a crumpled dress thrown across the ottoman at the foot of the bed. “I told her it was okay beforehand. I wanted it to be okay. And afterward, I tried telling her it was fine. The sex was all right, a little rough, but not the worst thing in the world. I thought I played it off cool, but obviously not if Hailey devised this whole thing . . .” She looks around the room, taking it all in.