Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
He’s a prick and that’s all I need to know.
“What’s going on with you?” I ask, letting some of my anger bleed into my tone. “You’re blowing all these meetings. Mr. Riley is pissed about the way you just ignored him for the last half hour. If I hadn’t followed him and tried to patch things over—”
“She was nineteen,” he says, interrupting.
That makes me pause. My stomach lurches. “That’s, uh—”
It’s gross. That’s what it is.
“She told me she was twenty-four, which I believed because I am a stupid piece of shit, and also because I don’t check IDs before having sex.”
“Maybe you should.”
That’s the best way to defend against teenagers.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I don’t want to hear about this, Conlan. Is that why you’re such a mess today?”
“Yes,” he says, staring into my eyes. There’s something in his expression—it’s not regret, exactly, but something haunted, something dark. I’ve only ever seen it once or twice before, but both times it made me stop and stare, just like I am today.
There’s pain in him buried under his attitude, buried under the drinking and the women.
I recognize pain—it’s the same thing I’ve felt for a long while now, a low-level constant buzz, a hum of discomfort. The knowledge that I am broken in a myriad of ways. The certainty that I am fundamentally flawed.
In this moment, like in those other moments, I’m sure he feels that about himself too.
But he looks over toward the windows, his face composing itself.
“Do you want me to cancel the rest of your meetings?” I ask.
“No, but I need you to find out who she is.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Allison Leyland.”
Something itches the back of my skull. “Leyland,” I repeat.
“She’s got a politically involved family.”
The itch becomes a roar. “How do you know that?”
“Two men showed up outside my house. They took pictures of us together, pretended like they were paparazzi. One of them admitted they were private detectives workings for politicians or some Super PAC or whatever. Didn’t mention who exactly hired them, but—” He makes a dismissive gesture. “The implication was clear.”
Leyland. Leyland. I wander to the chair in front of his desk and lower myself into it. “I think I know the name,” I say, a chill running through me. “Did you google it yet?”
“Not really,” he admits. “Couldn’t bring myself to do it. Been too busy feeling like a fucking creep.”
“You probably should. Feel like a creep, I mean, but also you should google.”
His eyebrows raise. “It’s that serious?”
“Just search, ‘Five-Star General Liam Leyland.’”
He leans back in his chair. For a second, he says nothing. Only looks at me. I stare into his eyes, all my frustration dissipating.
“You’re fucking with me,” he says.
“I wish I was.”
“Five-star general?”
“Maybe four. I’m not really sure.”
“One less star doesn’t fucking matter.” He leans forward and grabs his phone. “This is very bad, isn’t it?”
I could lie to him. Try to make him feel better. But I’ve been cleaning up after him long enough to know that won’t help.
“Yes. Really bad.”
He starts typing away on his cell, but suddenly it rings.
I flinch, but he only stares at it. It rings and rings then stops. His direct line, which means someone that knows him well enough to bypass his secretary.
Not many people have his cell number that I know about.
It starts to ring again.
“Answer it,” I say, feeling desperate for that noise to stop.
He picks it up, pauses for a moment, then puts it on speaker. “Hello?”
“Conlan, you stupid motherfucker, you utter piece of human—”
“Hello, Adler. Isabel is in the room.”
His older brother’s voice is low and filled with malice. “I don’t give a fuck if your assistant is around. You stuck your dick in the wrong pussy.”
I grimace, staring down at my lap.
Con’s voice remains impressively even. “I heard. It’s as bad as I think, isn’t it?”
“It’s worse. It’s goddamn political.”
“Would you care if I said I didn’t know?”
“Guess.”
Con smiles slightly. “What can we do?”
“You can get on your plane right now and fly back to the Sunrise.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I don’t give a shit what you want to do. General Leyland is on his way right fucking now too. The pair of you are going to sit down and solve this.”
“The five-star general himself?” Con asks, sounding innocent. “I would’ve thought he was busy, you know, running the army or whatever.”
“He retired last year, something you’d know if you cared about the world outside of fucking drunken starlets.”
“Hey, they’re not always drunk. And not always starlets.”
“You need to get here in the next ten hours, before Leyland shows up, or we are in serious shit. He’s a contender, Conlan, a serious goddamn contender for the presidency. If he actually makes it into the Oval Office, he’s going to ruin us unless you make this disappear. You understand that, don’t you?”