I glared at the phone for a moment, breathing s
lowly to try to control the raging fury in my chest. It didn’t help. I wanted to wrap my hands around my father’s neck and strangle him, force him to his knees and make him say he was sorry. But since that wasn’t a viable course of action, I decided to call.
He answered on the fourth or fifth ring, sounding slightly out of breath. “Hello?”
A female murmured in the background and disgust twisted around my belly like a thorny vine. Who was he screwing now? His assistant? A client? Some random woman he’d picked up at a bar?
“Did you hire fake reviewers to trash my books?” I demanded.
“Oh. It’s you.” He sounded completely unconcerned.
What I wouldn’t do to wipe that irritatingly smug dismissiveness away! “Did you? And don’t even think about lying! I have evidence!” I quickly checked my email. Mom’s message with screencaps sat on the top of my inbox. The sight of it caused an internal tug of war between confidence and anger.
“Calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down?!”
“Jesus. Are you PMSing?”
I inhaled as another surge of fury swelled within me. He did not just say that! “You’re cheating to win the bet!”
“What ‘cheating’? We never agreed I couldn’t do that. If you don’t remember, call Holly Stein to explain the details of our contract.”
Holly, the attorney we’d hired to make sure everyone kept their word, had copies of the ads that would go out the weekend after the fifth of May. She was also in charge of an escrow account with enough money to cover the bills from the newspapers. Neither Dad nor I trusted each other.
He added, “Or—if it’s hard to think from all the hormones—ask your lawyer. He vetted it. And it isn’t like the reviews said anything that isn’t true. Romance is the dumbest thing to waste your life on, and its so-called readers are so illiterate and stupid that they can’t see what they’re reading is trash.”
Oh my God. Grandma’s egg had to have been expired when this man was conceived. “Romance is not trash!”
“Well, what’s the word for something that’s unrealistic, badly written and basically just porn for bored women who have nothing better to do with themselves? I think ‘trash’ is good.”
“At least they aren’t fucking other people while they’re married!” I yelled as my vision went hazy red.
He laughed. He didn’t feel a smidgen of guilt that he wasn’t faithful to Mom. Nor did he care that the woman he’d just screwed might hear my shriek. “If they read less, maybe they’d have more time to screw around. I can’t wait to see the ads you’re gonna have to take out, admitting I was right. What papers did we agree on again? Oh yeah… the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today and L.A. Times. It’s not gonna be cheap! But if you don’t want to fork over your hard-earned money, you can always just tell me I’m right and post what you’re supposed to say in the ads on your author website. I’ll be nice and tell Holly we can cancel the whole deal. Get our escrow back.”
My hand was wrapped around my phone so tightly that my whole arm was shaking. “Over my dead body.”
“I’m only doing this because I’m your father and I care about you. I don’t want to see you waste your money like that. All the good things that have happened in your life are because of me—because I made it so.”
My ass, he cared about me! He only cared about himself. And he was pissed off that I wasn’t doing something he approved of—being a respectable corporate drone he could proudly bring up in public. Everything was about his self-image and selfish desires. It had gratified him to brag to everyone that I’d graduated at the top of my class at UVA…and that I’d gone to Harvard. But he told me the only reason I’d been able to attend those universities was because he’d hired tutors—which I hadn’t needed—to prep me for the SAT and GMAT.
And that was just a sliver of what he took credit for. As far as he was concerned, all my accomplishments were due to him, and it enraged him that I’d chosen a path he disapproved of.
“It’s going to be absolutely delicious,” I said between clenched teeth, “seeing you spend money to take out full-page ads admitting you were wrong—and that romance is the most wonderful, smartest reading choice for the most intelligent and discerning women. I’m going to frame those ads, take pictures of them and run a social media ad campaign targeting all your buddies and clients!”
He laughed. “Big talk, but you have to win first. Your last three books peaked at four, five and seven on the chart. The trend doesn’t look good…for you.” He hung up.
I struggled to suck air in around the iron ball of anger lodged in my chest and ignore the hot tears gathering in my eyes. It wasn’t that I was hurt; Dad was always like this. I was simply furious. Determined. Ready to show him he was wrong.
Shaking, I stared at the half-finished manuscript. Staying home and trying to type something up wouldn’t work. I needed to put on my big-girl panties and use the thermonuclear option.
I took off my glasses and put in contacts. Then I grabbed my keys, slipped on some running shoes and left. There was work to do.
Chapter Two
Emily
I ran along the only trail in my small town, which, naturally, was located at the opposite end from my house. Well, “ran”… What I was doing was more like a jog. A very slow jog because, like most writers, I wasn’t an athlete. And I was a clumsy writer at that—ten minutes in I’d snagged my pants on a bush and heard something rip. Plus I’d lost a contact lens somewhere on the dirt trail and hadn’t been able to find it, even with my phone light. Maybe I shouldn’t have switched from glasses to contacts before leaving the house, but I hated how the frames slid down my nose when my face got sweaty. I told myself it was okay to lose the contact because I still had my left one. It was enough to see with, especially if I squinted a little.