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This time it was Jason who winced. But he said, “If I accept your offer, that still leaves me in the red. Don’t get me wrong, Renee, I want to help—”

“And I want to help you,” said Renee. “It shouldn’t be too hard to cover the remainder. Tell your parents you paid for a fan’s cancer treatment or something. But I can’t go any higher. Even giving you that much is going to hurt Virtu.”

Jason’s lip curled. “Of course, Virtu. That’s always been the most important thing to you.”

“Virtu has never fucked me over the way you were planning to,” said Renee sweetly. “Are you taking the offer or not? There are other ways I can raise capital. I’m not going to be struggling to find buyers for my material.”

Jason flushed a dark red. “If this is how you do business with everyone…”

Renee should have been less angry, more coaxing. Jason, like any man, had always responded better to being humoured than having his hand forced.

But she was running out of patience. There was a throbbing ache behind her temples. She hadn’t had breakfast that morning, which was normal for her, but proved a bad idea today: she was feeling light-headed and wobbly.

“This is not how Ido business,” said Renee. “This is me doing my best to deal with a shit situation, brought on by you and my fucking brother and my stupid belief that I could trust my boyfriend. I’ve made you the best offer I can. If you want to reject it, go ahead. But you should remember, Jason. I don’t only have that video. I have your mother’s phone number.”

She wasn’t proud of that last line. If she’d had the foresight to eat some granola and yoghurt that morning, maybe she wouldn’t have said it. But it sealed the deal.

“Fine,” said Jason, his lips white with fury. “I accept.”

12

Renee insisted ongoing straight to Jason’s hotel room, so he could surrender his devices to her there and then. She had no intention of letting him go off to screw a counteroffer out of Su Khoon.

Jason resisted, until Ket Siong got involved. He didn’tdoanything—just loomed, with an uncharacteristic lack of respect for Jason’s personal space. But Jason caved with remarkable rapidity. Renee had a feeling he wouldn’t be going out without his security detail again.

They all went to the hotel together, the whole posse packed into a black cab, Jason’s girl included. She looked pale and abashed.

If Renee had had any spare emotional bandwidth, she might have felt sorry for the girl. She’d set out that morning, the lead in a rom-com with a hot celebrity love interest, only to end the day playing a bit part in a tawdry melodrama.

Renee might have been embarrassed about dragging Nathalie and Ket Siong into the affair, too. Well, maybe not Nathalie. Nathalie wouldn’t have been anywhere else for the world. She was making the most of her ability to beam rays of hatred at Jason while sitting opposite him in the cab. He was visibly wilting under the pressure.

Ket Siong, though… helpful as he’d been, Renee would happily have done without him. He was sitting in the passenger seat next to the driver, so she couldn’t watch him and obsess about what he must be thinking.

She’d freak out about that later. For now, she couldn’t find it in herself to worry about anything except wrapping up this hideous business.

The scouring quality of Nathalie’s scrutiny seemed to put Jason in a penitent mood. When they arrived at the hotel, he dropped back from the group. Renee paid the cabbie, so she was lagging a little behind everyone else.

“Today was the first time I met Cherry in person,” Jason said abruptly. He glanced at the others, his gaze skipping over his new girlfriend to rest on Ket Siong and Nathalie. He seemed unsure which of the two terrified him more.

“I never cheated on you with her,” he went on. “I know you think I’m the scum of the earth, Renee, but you can trust me on that. When we were together, I was all in.”

There must be something incurably honest about Jason, after all; his phrasing was so revealing. Renee hadn’t seen him “in person” in months when she sent him those accursed photos of herself. As for that telling “never cheated on you withher”…

“I really cared about you,” said Jason. “But you and Virtu… it was like you were married to your business.Wewere never going to come first.”

“I believe you,” said Renee wearily, because it was less effort than explaining she didn’t give a shit anymore.

She waited till he moved away to take out her phone and schedule a reminder to herself to get tested for STDs. They’d been safe the last time they slept together, but who the hell knew anymore?

The operation went off without a hitch. Jason didn’t even get Renee’s phone off her, though he tried.

“I’m not the one who was auctioning off nudes,” Renee said. “You can tell me when your people want to come over and go through my devices, and we can set something up.Youare not invited,” she added.

It was afternoon by the time she, Nathalie, and Ket Siong emerged from the hotel. The longer they’d been in Jason’s room, the less abashed and the more thunderous Cherry had looked. It was clear Jason’s day of mortifications was far from over.

This would no doubt be gratifying some other time. Renee should probably be feeling triumphant, or violated, orsomething. But she was blank as a stone. All she wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep for a thousand years.

She started saying to the others, “Sorry about all of that. You guys will be wanting to get home.”