The dick could have anyone he wanted. Jesus, Jenny was panting after him like a dog in heat. She would have gone out with him if he’d so much as clicked his fingers at her.
But he’d had eyes for me.
Like he wanted me.
He thought he’d bought me. Or, at least, bought my silence, and yeah, to some extent he had. But . . . why buy me, why not just drop the price on the building if he wanted me to pay for the time he’d wasted on me?
The arrogance imbued in those words was enough to make me pull my hair out, but that was inwardly. I was a redhead. I had a temper. But that temper was mostly overshadowed by fear.
Senator Alan Davidson wasn’t my boyfriend, my lover, as this dick seemed to believe. He was my father, and as Finn O’Grady had correctly surmised, he was aiming for the White House.
How could I put that in jeopardy?
My dad was a good man. He’d made a mistake one summer when he’d come home from college, one that only some careful digging by his campaign manager had uncovered. Dad himself hadn’t known of my existence, not until his CM had gone hunting for any nasty secrets that could come out and bite him in the ass.
This had been five years ago when he’d run for Senator. Now, Dad’s goal was the presidential seat, and I wasn’t going to be the one who put a wrench in the works.
When Garry Smythe had approached me back then, I’d thought he was joking. I was out on the street, heading home from work. At the side of me, a black car had driven in from the lane of traffic, just to park, or so I’d thought. As he’d held out his hand with a card, one of the car doors had opened up, and I’d been ‘invited’ inside.
Had I been scared?
At first.
But when Garry had told me my country needed me, I hadn’t been sure whether to laugh or tell him to fuck off. He hadn’t shuffled me into the car, though, hadn’t tried to coerce me. He’d just asked if I’d voted for Senator Alan Davidson in the elections, and because he was one of the only politicians out there who wasn’t a complete douche, and that was the name printed on the card in my hand, I’d shuffled into the back of the car.
Where the Senator himself had been sitting.
Now, when I thought about that day, I realized how fucking naive I’d been to get into the back of a limo for such a vague reason. But I’d been fortunate. Alanhadbeen waiting for me. Waiting to tell me a story that still shook me to my core.
I’d made a promise to my dad that I wouldn’t tell anyone. He’d offered me money, and I hadn’t accepted it. I guess I should have, but back then, I’d been haughty and proud, and because the good guy I’d thought him to be hadn’t been so good when he tried to buy my silence, I’d told him to fuck off. I’d been disappointed in him, frightened by the lifelong lie I’d been living, and equally hurt that the man who’d sired me was just concerned that I was a threat to his campaign.
I’d walked out of that car never expecting to see my dear old Dad ever again.
Then, the day after he’d been elected, he’d been sitting in the booth of the cafe where I worked part-time to get me through culinary school.
Seeing him, I’d almost handed that table off to one of the other waitresses, but I hadn’t. Not when every time I’d passed the table, he’d caught my eye, a patient smile on his lips, one that said he’d wait for me all day if he had to.
Ever since that second meeting, I’d been catching up with him every three weeks.
And this bastard thought he could use our limited time together against my father? The one politician who could make a difference in the White House? One who didn’t have Big Oil up his ass, a pharmaceutical company sucking his dick, or any other kind of corporation so far up his rectum that he was a walking, talking lie?
No.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Which meant I was going to have to sleep with this stranger.
Before this conversation, hell, that hadn’t been too disturbing a prospect. Because, dayum, what woman wouldn’t want to sleep with this guy?
Even with an ego as big as his, he was delicious. Better than any cake I could bake, that was for fucking sure.
More than that, I knew him.
And I now knew that the life Fiona would never have wanted for her son was one he’d been drawn into.
The Mob.
The Five Points were notorious in these parts. Everyone was scared of them. I paid protection money to them, for God’s sake. I knew to be scared of them, and having been raised in their territory, it was the height of stupidity to think paying them wasn’t just a part of business.