“What I have to tell you will ruin his career,” she said, lifting burning eyes.

Oh, it was so sweet.

“Ten thousand,” I agreed, pushing away my glass of bourbon. “Now, what’s your story?”

17

CARTER

The roaring in my ears was the sound of my life coming down around me. Everything I’d worked for—law school, city council, Mayor Pro Tempore—it crashed and crumbled, obliterating itself into dust. Into nothing.

“This is an attack!” Amanda cried, pacing in front of the big windows of the mayor’s golden oak office. I sat in a vacuum, a million miles away from these people and these events.

But the ripped and torn sensation of betrayal I felt, I felt down to my bones. I could barely breathe.

Mayor Pro Tempore Lies in Court.

That was the headline this morning. Not nearly as catching as Deputy Deadbeat Daddy, but it got the job done.

“He names one source,” Amanda said. “One anonymous source. I can’t even believe they published such crap.”

“You need to get a statement together, and fast,” Ben Grovener said. Poor Ben, who just happened to be the right lawyer at the wrong time, had been sitting outside my office when the story broke.

“We can destroy Blackwell,” Amanda snarled. “No doubt about it, he paid someone. For sure he paid someone to tell this story.”

The story. With one anonymous source. One anonymous female source. This secret had been buried for ten years, and four days after I tell Zoe, this happens? I didn’t want to believe it, but could I believe anything else?

The roar in my ears was deafening. The pain in my chest made me sick.

The only other option was that my mother had betrayed me again, but how? And why now? She’d told me there was no angle. Unless it was money – but it would have to be big enough. No way Jim Blackwell had big money lying around to pay informants. It just didn’t make sense.

Which only left Zoe. Broke, about-to-have-a-baby Zoe.

Christ. Everywhere I turned it hurt. I breathed hard through my nose, trying to numb myself to this pain.

“With the right spin, you can control this,” Ben said. “But you need to act fast. Something aggressive, but that takes the high road. Carter?” Everyone in the room turned to me, waited for me to get to my feet and start fighting. Start giving out orders and putting together a plan. “Carter?” Ben asked, glancing quickly around the room and then back at me. “I know this is a shock, but we—”

“It’s true,” I said, my voice a broken rasp.

The mayor swiveled in his seat, shock clear on his face.

I looked right into my mentor’s eyes and gave up the fight. There was nowhere left to hide. “I lied in court to keep my mother out of jail. It doesn’t matter if Blackwell paid someone, or the source is anonymous. It’s true.”

“Oh, my God,” Amanda sighed, collapsing onto the stiff couch in the corner.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing how hard Amanda had worked on my behalf.

“You’ll be disbarred,” Ben said, and I nodded. “And the mayoral race—”

“It’s over,” I said. And it had been torn from me, just as I was beginning to taste the rest of my life. Sweet after a lifetime of sour.

I was light-headed with anger and pain.

“Well, Christ, son, if you’d told us we could have dealt with it,” Mayor Higgins said.

“How?” Amanda cried. “He lied. In court. To protect his criminal mother from further jail time. There’s no good way to spin this.”

“She’s right,” I said, the blunt truth of the situation pushing me into action. I turned all that anger I felt back on myself. Nobody had done this to me; I’d done it to myself. After all those years of worrying that my family would be my downfall, in the end it was just me and my mistakes. “I’m not going to confirm or deny the story. But I am going to withdraw from the primary.”

“You might as well just say it’s true,” Ben said. “That’s what everyone is going to think. And you’re still going to get disbarred.”

“I know,” I said. “But it gets me out of here faster.”

And out is what I needed. A thousand miles between me and Baton Rouge and Jim Blackwell and Zoe, was what I needed. I needed time to get myself under control and to think this all through, because right now I was scared of what I would say—how my pain might find its way free.

“I’m sorry,” I said for the last time. “It’s been a pleasure to work with you.” I glanced at Ben. “And it would have been a pleasure to work with you.”

And then I left, walking down the long hallway from the mayor’s office to my own office as mayor pro tempore for the very last time, as if I was marching to my death.

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Notorious Romance
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