Page 222 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
Her soft smile made me roll my eyes. “For moral support?”
“For catering. People are less inclined to lash out when fed.”
“Sure,” she dragged out. The smile never left her face. “Let’s go with that excuse. We can outline terms of agreements before the meeting, including confidentiality, so the company doesn't ge
t bad press.”
“How are you so sure I’ll get off?”
“You’re really looking at six months max. That’s your negotiating point, so the S.E.C. has little to lose and a lot to gain. Besides the logistics, Brandon is motivated and ambitious. He’s looking to go places bigger than the S.E.C. He won’t do that arresting North Carolina’s golden boy, but he will do that with the testimony of an anonymous whistleblower.”
“I’ll make that fucker’s career,” I muttered.
I’d pay a five-million-dollar fine.
Brandon Vu would get the career bust of a lifetime.
I should have cared more, but I didn’t.
He was just another step to getting Emery back.
I laced my Chucks beneath a gown, feeling like a knock-off Cinderella. The same floor-length dress I wore at the masquerade, because I refused to make another for a soft opening, which was really just an excuse to throw a party.
Ida Marie popped her head into the office. “We need an extra set of hands down there. Mr. Prescott never attends the soft openings, and no one can find Delilah, so we’re short some mouths to talk to the press.”
Talking to the press appealed to me as much as ingesting a banana stolen from a porn set. I considered forgoing the event entirely. Nash wouldn’t care.
Nash.
Every time I tried to push him out of my mind, he popped back in. If I was a storm, he was hail, and he came down harder, faster, and did more damage.
Ceiling: Funny. That's how I feel about you.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” I promised, adjusting the slit of my dress.
She rifled through Cayden's drawer and handed me a safety pin. “Hannah downed two cocktails. She’s tipsy and getting loose-lipped. You can take her spot in front of the centerpiece. Have you seen it yet?”
“No.” I latched the ripped seam together with the pin, hiding it beneath the fabric. “Why is Hannah pissed?”
“You didn’t hear? Chantilly has been ranting all morning. Prescott Hotels pulled out of the Singapore deal.”
“What?!” I squeezed the pin too hard. It pricked my thumb and drew a bead of blood, but I ignored it.
“Delilah sent Chantilly a memo, informing her that Nash would leave for Singapore for two months. Then, all of a sudden, they both returned from Singapore, and Delilah told Chantilly they're no longer building a hotel there.”
I swallowed, reading between the lines. Two months gone? Did Nash give up Singapore for me? The timeline made sense if you excluded the part where I’d seen Delilah a day before Nash. He arrived with that note, left me reeling, and mentioned shit was about to go down.
Straightening, I marched to the elevator, hoping to catch Nash in the lobby. I’d checked the penthouse earlier, but he’d already left. I didn't want this conversation to happen through the phone either.
Ida Marie followed me. “You should see the centerpiece. Not even that. You should read the placard. It’s insane. The press has been all over it. Technically, we probably don’t need to talk to them. They're hungry to learn more about the centerpiece, which none of us know anything about.”
I tuned her out the second my feet hit the lobby, careening to a halt. Shock bloomed from my toes to my head.
The centerpiece.
A waterfall stretched the seven-story height. Shards of metal cascaded down from the ceiling. When I peered closer, I noticed the pieces had been welded from car parts, including his old Honda and the used junker I’d sold Virginia’s Birkin to buy. She had Hank drive it to the junkyard. Nash must have kept it.
Rising from the water, the shape of a tiger emerged. Almost like a bird with raised arms, painted the same color of the starless sky. It stood on a bed of geode crystals. The rock shells had been cracked open. Thousands of crystals spilled out in blue and gray waves of all sizes.
