Devastated

“I’m sorry. It was a private text, and I...I’m sorry.”

“Well, there was nothing untrue in that article.”

“Ben didn’t, um, say anything to you about it?”

“He blamed himself for the article and acknowledged that Oakland Forward had been his idea initially. I would have told him a PAC was unnecessary, but it is what it is. Did Ben know you worked for the Tribune?”

“Technically, I wasn’t with the paper at the time I knew Ben, and I never told him I was a reporter. How... How is Ben?”

“I haven’t heard from him recently. I think he’s in Tokyo right now.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong. I believe he was trying to do everything right. And he’s completely devoted to you and your campaign. I...I misled him, and because of that, you’re being investigated by the FPPC.” She bit her lower lip. “I wouldn’t blame you if you—and Ben—hated me.”

“I can’t speak for Ben, but hate doesn’t do anyone any good.”

“Will you still let the Tribune do a profile? I don’t have to be the reporter writing it.”

A woman knocked and opened the door. “Gordon, your precinct folder for East Oakland is ready.”

“Thank you,” Gordon replied to her.

“You’re walking East Oakland?” Kimani asked him.

“Why not?”

“Not a lot of people choose to walk East Oakland.”

“I don’t feel right ignoring the neighborhoods there just because they’re not the safest.”

“If you’re still good with the Tribune doing a profile, I’d love to have one of our reporters and a cameraman join you on your walk.”

“Sure. Will you be coming along as well?”

“Only if you don’t mind.”

“I would be happy for you to come,” he said with a forgiving smile.

Her emotions swelled. Her instincts on Gordon had been right. She only wished her instincts had been right about Ben. Or maybe they had been right—she just hadn’t listened to them.

She had no expectations that Gordon would tell Ben that she’d apologized, but if Gordon could forgive her, maybe one day Ben could as well.

Chapter Four

In his dreams, Ben ravished her against the walls of the caves located on the beaches of one of the Lee Corporation’s resorts in Thailand. Or he fucked her hard and rough while she struggled in rope bondage—hogtie, frogtie, strappado, piledriver—he’d do them all with her. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t the experience sub she’d pretended to be for the Scarlet Auction.

And sometimes they made love beneath a cloudless California sky.

Whatever the dream, Ben always woke to the most annoying hard-on. He had banged plenty of women since leaving San Francisco, but it felt like he was suffering from blue balls. All because he couldn’t fuck her.

“It’s stabilized,” his pollster had called to tell him. “I think Gordon’s taken all the hit there is from the FPPC investigation—unless something new comes out.”

“You think the Tribune is still digging?” asked Ben as he stood fully dressed in a suit and looked out the window of his hotel room at the Tokyo skyline. Turning around, he looked to his bed, where two naked women lay. One of them had woken up and started to pet the breasts of the other.

Ben had jacked off in the shower earlier instead of waking the women.

“I have no idea, but their readership in Oakland has shrunk a lot in recent years, so their impact is limited. The question is whether or not the other news outlets will pick up on the story, too.”

The Tribune’s readership will be zero soon enough, Ben thought to himself. He’d had his attorney, Murray Jones, form an LLC to facilitate the purchase of the Tribune so it wouldn’t be immediately traceable to the Lee family. He didn’t want any negative press to come from it.