Page 46 of Profane
Like collusion, and extortion.
I’m more insulated because I’m not an elected official and I’ve covered my tracks very carefully. There are numerous people who would step in to help protect me, anyway, because protecting me keeps them safe.
Plenty of people in various places know enough about me that they do not want me in jail, because I will burn down the motherfucking city around me if I am ever caught in that way.
Doesn’t mean I will take stupid risks.
Damn sure won’t expose Liam like that. Or, by extension now, Ward. Not like that.
Using Ward as a tool and protecting him from exposure are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Freeing Ward from the swamp he’s trapped in means I have to be at the top of my game. Mason Rutherford Callahan has several decades of experience and networking and intel gathering on me. He might be an old, wounded wolf, but there’s still likely a lot of fight left in him.
One of the advantages I have, however, is that I’m an unknown to him, a total cipher. That Ward has so preciously guarded his treasured secret of his love for Liam throughout the years works to my advantage, as well. Liam and I are not known weak points for Ward with his old man.
How can we be if we’re just friends?
It means I have the time and freedom to build a strong trap into which I can first back Olivia, and then Ward’s father.
If the man’s even alive that long.
See, I wasn’t at that coffeeshop by coincidence today.
I installed a tracker on Olivia’s cell phone months ago, courtesy of Ward’s help. He thought it was so we can keep track of where she is so she can’t sneak up on us.
Silly boy.
Over the past several days, I’ve seen an unusual pattern emerge in her travels. Today, I decided to wait for her here, wondering why the change in her routine.
I was…hoping it would lead to proof of shenanigans. I mean, she’s living outside of Georgia for the first time in her life, she’s working in a city surrounded by countless people willing to have no-strings sex…
And I might not have told Ward that the software he helped me install is also a keylogger program.
She has secret accounts on several dating sites. This was an inevitable conclusion. Of course I could hand that info to Ward to file for divorce from her immediately. In some timelines, that would be a preferable option, removing one large impediment.
But Olivia’s firm works closely with the firm Stella Woodley works for.
That would be Vice President Elliot Woodley’s little sister. And Stella Woodley is besties with Representative Grace Martin, who has deep ties to The Family.
I would be crazy to cut off my access to that prime information right now.
This indiscretion of Olivia’s is merely the first piece of leverage I will collect on her in preparation for getting her the fuck out of my way so I can finally heal my husband’s soul. Meanwhile, I’ll greedily gather every sliver of intel her conversations with others can provide me with and use it to my political advantage. Because it means I can cut them off at the knees legislatively, outmaneuver them, and make them look like idiots.
That’s a noble cause, right?
Besides, Olivia’s one of those annoying double-standard kinds of people I cannot stand. Especially when they use Christianity as a cudgel.
Like I said, my karma will drive over her dogma.
And back up a few times.
Beep-beep, bitch.
The End