I snort. “If I offended that easily, I’d be ashamed of myself.” I walk around him and inside the building. I’d ignore all the glamour the lobby drips because it’s not like it’s not everywhere in the city, but I can’t do that, not this time. My father lives in a billionaire building and he’s not a billionaire. Don’t get me wrong, he has money, my mother’s money, and she was worth a sizable amount but not this kind of money.
Pocher’s the billionaire, and while I’ve never cared to look it up, I’m assuming this place is his place, and I wonder about the election laws that allowed that to happen. I’ll be figuring that out. For now, I step inside the elevator, only to have a doorman catch up to me. This one is tall, Black, and younger than the other guy, maybe thirty-five.
“Agent Love, I need to use a keycard to get you up to your father.”
“You mean my badge won’t work?” I ask, because, you know. I just want to fuck with him.
“No, Agent Love,” he says with a straight face. “But we’d all feel safer if it did.”
I snort-laugh. “Stop with the bullshit. I’m wading in it, it’s so deep.”
He laughs and offers me a smile. “Good luck up there. I have a father just like him.”
“Condolences,” I say.
“Back at ya,” he says, punching in floor twenty-one and backing away.
My father’s reputation is already ripe, and he’s not even governor yet. But he will be. Then again, he did demand my presence tonight. If him being governor was really a done deal, he wouldn’t suffer through my involvement. It’s an interesting realization I plan to evaluate to the fullest. Maybe I can save my brother by ending my father’s rise to power.
The elevator doors open and I exit to the hallway, find my father’s apartment, and ring the bell, yes, the bell. It’s a fancy place, with all the bells and whistles. I’d bet a hundred bucks I’m about to be greeted by a butler. The door opens and I was almost right. Instead, it’s a beautiful thirty-something blonde my father’s likely banging. Close enough.
“You must be Lilah,” she greets. “I’m Elizabeth, your father’s new press secretary. He’s expecting you, and honestly, I’m thankful you’re here. We have our hands full right now.”
And so does my father, I suspect. Elizabeth is wearing a creamy white, form-fitting dress, with curves a million, and breasts that pop like hills. I always want to ask women like her if the implants get in the way when they sleep. I mean, it seems like it would. I decide not to ask her today. It might take the attention off all the blood and death we’re dealing with, and who the hell wants to do that?
She backs up to allow me entry, and I walk into the foyer, while she shuts the door behind me.
“Can I take your coat, Agent?”
She asks this as if she’s living here, and she probably is. I slide out of my jacket and hang it on the coatrack myself. “Where is he?”
“This way.” She walks ahead of me down a hallway.
I follow her, noting the excess of crown molding as I do. For some reason, rich people overplay the crown molding to extremes. It’s gaudy, but then, so is my father. Elizabeth cuts left and when I do the same, I find my father and Pocher in a sitting room in front of a crackling fireplace. My father is sitting on a brown leather couch, a whiskey glass in his hand. Pocher is perched on the armchair next to him, also with a whiskey glass in hand. Both are still dressed in business attire, sans the jackets.
Elizabeth steps to the rear of the couch, beside my father, but behind him. That’s how he likes his women, and I now realize she looks like my mother. He’s such a prick.
“There you are, Lilah,” my father greets.
“Yes, welcome, Lilah,” Pocher interjects.
Of the two men, it’s clear why my father is the front man for the Society, with his good looks, charm, and baby blue eyes. He’s the new Kennedy only with blond hair now graying with distinction. On the other hand, there’s Pocher, who is tall, thin, graying, and easy to forget, if he wasn’t the man who had me raped before my intended murder.
I know what he did.
He knows I know.
That knowledge crackles in the air between us and there is an edge of tension in me that ramps up to the nth degree.
“I see all the famous people are in one room,” I say, walking to the dry bar next to the entertainment center and selecting a glass for myself. My father knows his whiskey. He only drinks the good stuff. I pour myself two fingers and then reach for the ice pick.