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I can’t do this much longer. It makes me feel sick, but I have to know how and when I can see her alone, so I carefully funnel some money into a friend’s business on the back of a few big-ticket purchases to get some cash to hire someone who isn’t a part of Reginald’s detail to follow her. No pictures, nothing incriminating. I just need to know what the right opportunity will be.

Within an hour of hiring the PI, I realize that this is exactly what Reginald would do in my situation. Looking in the mirror now, I can see more and more of him in my face. People always told me I was the spitting image of my father, but I never really saw it.

After a visit from his barber, and his personal shopper in advance of another bullshit excuse for him to interrogate me around his buddies, though… there it is. Those are my father’s eyes. That’s his jawline. Hell, I’ve even got his hairline with that little bit of widow’s peak.

It’s all I can do not to take the mirror off the wall and hurl it across the room. The sound of shattering glass feels like it would wake me up somehow, like this is all just a nightmare that I can wake up from if I shock myself out of it.

But it isn’t.

“Where are we on the Janie Hall situation?” Reginald asks me later, after he’s paraded me around like a prize pony. “It’s been weeks. I haven’t seen a whisper about the two of you.”

“She’s stubborn,” I tell him. “She wants to be sure I’m serious, so I’m being serious with her. You want me to run her off?”

His eyes bore into me. Any second he’s going to call bullshit and announce to the room that I’m no longer his son.

Please do that. Please see through me.

“Do whatever you need to,” he finally growls. “Propose, for all I care. Knock her up. I don’t give a fuck about the consequences. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” I tell him.

I’m beyond fucked.

Chapter 51

Janie

I’m in my office ignoring the discomfort that now hovers in my stomach. Who knew being pregnant was so much like having chronic acid reflux? Not me, that’s who. Checking and rechecking the ledgers, there’s five hundred dollars missing and I desperately hope that Gloria is stealing from me, because that would be the only good icing on my towering shit cake. It doesn’t look like it, though, dammit — I missed an order last week because I handed it off to Chester.

He told me, and I even made a note about it in my phone. So why didn’t I enter it? Because I’m currently losing my goddamn mind, that’s why. On the up side, I have the most perfect skin I’ve had in my entire life.

My eyes wander across the desk for a moment, taking a break from the computer screen, and settle on the test results from the hospital. “You’re going to have one hell of a story, kid,” I mutter. “Maybe I’ll make up something. Somehow I think the truth would just piss you off. It would piss me off. Hell, it’s already pissing me off.”

The baby is the size of a raisin or something; she, or he, can’t hear me. But I’ve been doing that lately. I’m determined that this is going to be the snarkiest baby ever to walk the world, and right now I have sarcasm and nihilism in spades.

There’s a knock at the door to the office that makes me nearly jump out of my skin.

It’s Gloria. She looks like she just spotted the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, and she isn’t looking at me. “Oh, my…”

Clearing my throat, I stand up and snatch the test results off the desk, stuffing the papers into my purse. “I’ve got to go out,” I tell her. “Chester’s in charge, you need to — ”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Gloria says, more gleefully manic than I’ve seen her basically ever. “This is too good. You don’t get to just brush this one off, Janie. Holy shit. You’re fucking pregnant?”

Hearing it from someone else’s lips shocks me, even though it isn’t exactly news. Hearing it from Gloria’s lips is potentially enough to make me miscarry. Can unbridled rage cause a woman to lose a baby? I suspect I’ll find out if I spend enough time around this woman.

“I don’t have time for this, Gloria,” I tell her. “We’ve got the last sauce debuting tonight and I need the place spotless, so you — ”

“Uh, no.” Gloria folds her arms over her chest, looking smugly sinister. “We absolutely need to talk. Who’s is it? Let me guess: Jake Ferry. Funny I haven’t seen anything on Facebook about it… oooh.” Her eyes widen even more, if that’s possible. “Nobody knows.”

Much as I try to keep a straight, flat face with no affect or emotion at all, Gloria has this freakish instinct for gossip. Her hand goes to her mouth. “Jackpot,” she breathes. “He doesn’t know. Holy. Fuck. Janie!”

Threats are on my lips, clawing to get out. But that will only set her off, and being defensive will just confirm everything she’s thinking.

“If I had just slightly fewer scruples,” she says to my silence, “I would totally cash in on this. Wonder what Reginald Ferry would pay me for a tidbit like this? Probably a lot. What’s a few hundred thousand for him? I bet he’s got that in his couch cushions. Have you thought about that? I bet you could make a killing.”

“I don’t care about Ferry money,” I tell her. “I don’t need to ‘cash in.’ I’ve got my own money that I worked for and earned on my own merits instead of spending my life hunting down someone who could give it to me. Get out of my way.”