“You’re joking...you can’t be serious.”
There was a long pause, and the smile became more and more strained. After a few more seconds, it was more of a grimace than anything else.
“I assure you,” Mitchell replied evenly, “I have never been more serious about anything in my entire life.”
It was at this point, that I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I could not believe this was happening. I could not believe that we had somehow found ourselves in this situation.
We just had to step into that boxing ring...
But Nick wasn’t giving up so easily. In his mind, he’d faced worse than this before. He’d been out on a ledge before. He’d dealt with the publication of naked photos before.
Granted, his father had never been quite so directly involved.
“My wedding,” he repeated. That smile was gone, and there suddenly wasn’t an ounce of humor on his face. “And whom might I be marrying?”
It hit me like a knife in the gut. He hadn’t even connected that it would be me.
Mitchell’s eyes flickered between the two of us, before returning to his son with a sickening little grin. “Why you’ll be marrying Ms. Wilder, of course. At least, that’s what I told the Post. I thought her the most logical choice at the time. Unless you’ve been boxing with anyone else lately that I should know about.”
It was like my throat had entirely shut down. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even speak. For one of the first times in his life, it seemed like Nick was having the same problem.
Although that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.
“Dad...come on.” He tried to sound as reasonable as possible, but a note of panic had strained the edge of his voice—betraying his true feelings. “This is insane. Of course I’m not going to marry Abby just to—”
“—just to get your hands on a photograph of the two of you rolling around naked on the floor?” Mitchell interrupted coldly. “Just to stop the publication of yet another humiliating mark on the family name just three short months before this merger?”
A heavy weight descended in the pit of my stomach. The accompanying wave of nausea was soon to follow. As I gazed up at Mitchell in a daze, I suddenly wondered if he had seen it.
“I don’t give a fuck about your merger,” Nick snarled. The initial fear and shock had been replaced with a fiery temper—the one and only thing he’d gotten from his father. “As if it wasn’t enough that you asked me to stage a relationship just to appease the board, now you’re actually asking me to—”
“No, Nicholas. I’m not asking.” Mitchell’s eyes flashed dangerously, as he reached down and began turning something over in the pocket of his coat. “I’m telling you that this is what’s going to happen. The announcement has already been made. This is not a request.”
I was vaguely aware that he was speaking. Vaguely aware that with every word, a little more of my freedom was being chipped away right in front of my eyes. But for the moment, my every attention was focused on the rhythmic motion inside his jacket pocket. On the hidden thing he was turning over again and again in his hands. I wondered if it was the flash drive.
Nick obviously wondered too, because his eyes dilated with an almost predatory look, as the muscles in his body tensed. It was easy to see, as he had yet to find any clothes, and for a split second, I was terrified he was going to wrestle it away from his father right then and there.
As father and son locked eyes, Mitchell’s mouth twisted up in a little smirk.
“I’ve made copies.”
The air in the room dropped another ten degrees.
He’d made copies?! Had I just heard that right?!
Blackmail. I knew we were being blackmailed. To be honest, having worked so long in public relations, I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the concept. Every now and then, I would get a client in a similar position as Nick’s. A client who had to promise an interview, or a sit-down, or some other casual sacrifice in order to keep information they didn’t want shared kept quiet.
I just never would have imagined that Mitchell was the one blackmailing us.
The man had hired me. I’d worked with him for two years. In that time, I’d attended three of his weddings. Sat in the courthouse for three of his subsequent divorces. I’d traveled with his son around the globe, and considering Nick’s whimsical proclivities, I’d done a damn good job of keeping him out of trouble. I’d gone to family luncheons. To baptisms. To holiday parties.
And he was blackmailing me?
There was a sudden movement on the bed, and my eyes flickered sideways to Nick. A wave of guilt welled up in my stomach, as I remembered the much more relevant connection.
He was blackmailing his son.
“You made copies,” Nick repeated, not an ounce of inflection in his voice.