Page 90 of The Bridesmaid

‘You want your sister to be written up as a bitch and a diva?’

‘Absolutely. In the early days of Tantra, we dropped hints about Mafia connections too. Just enough to make us sound edgy. But we moved on. Gangsters went out of fashion. It’s all about mean-girl influencers now.’

‘Adrianna is the mean girl?’

‘It’s what gets the clicks. We need Dri to seem difficult and demanding. Like she will only accept the best. That’s part of the luxury image. And …’ She lifts a picture of Adrianna in a skimpy bikini, looking coquettishly at the camera. ‘We need to play a fine line with the sexual imagery. If we feed the newspapers enough sexy stories of Dri – infidelity, bi-sexuality – stories that we can quickly crush, that means we control the narrative.’ Georgia shrugs. ‘The media is like feeding a tiger. Dri needs to be a little bit sexy, a little bit bad. We tried to play her as a nice girl in the beginning, and they started hunting out really nasty sordid things. Ripped her to pieces. There were times she couldn’t get out of bed.’

Unexpectedly, she raises the gun again.

‘PR is about two things, Holly,’ she says, sadly. ‘Putting out the right stories and stopping the leaks. And unfortunately, we’ve got a leak here. You and your assistant are NYPD.’

The revelation of our blown cover ripples through the quiet schoolhouse.

‘You must know how Dri feels about NYPD,’ says Georgia. ‘After that cop sold pictures of her underwear, she was in therapy for months.’

‘We’re just trying to protect your family,’ Fitzwilliam says, ‘andfind out who murdered Simone Walters.’ He fans his hands out, pleadingly. ‘There’s a crazed kidnapper on the loose,’ he adds, ‘let us protect you.’

Georgia’s eyes flash rage. ‘Where were youthree years ago? When weneededyou? Dad begged the NYPD for help. You were worse than useless.’ She looks back and forth between us, before coming to a decision. ‘Holly, did you think you could trust him?’

An uneasy feeling pools in my stomach.

Still keeping the gun trained on us, Georgia steps to reach over and tap her computer.

An image flashes up. It’s Fitzwilliam far out in the ocean. It looks like … He’s kissing Adrianna Kensington. The background is sunlight streaming. Which means this must have happened today, when Adrianna had her photoshoot there.

My eyes switch to his face, questioning, and not a little betrayed. I can’t help but feel a deep personal hurt, which seems to come from nowhere. Why should I care if Fitzwilliam is kissing Adrianna? But I do.

Fitzwilliam has blushed a deep shade of red. ‘I didn’t … I mean … It isn’t—’

‘I intercepted this picture from a rogue email account using our IP,’ interrupts Georgia. ‘You were sending it to the press. How much more than the salary of a New York cop were they offering to sell us out?’

‘I would never do that,’ he says, turning to me.

I look away from him. Why should I care what he does?

‘Do you want explain again how you have our best intentions at heart?’ demands Georgia. ‘How you’re not here to take advantage of Dri?’

Fitzwilliam has flushed a deep livid red.

Georgia lifts a radio from the desk with her free hand. ‘Security,’ she says. ‘I need you at the schoolhouse.’

I shiver in the cool, and my eyes close back on the floristry display on Georgia’s computer screen. Several facts are moving in my mind.

The cold. The AC in the storage room. Flowers. Floristry. Silky.

It all comes together in a rush.

‘Call off your security,’ I tell Georgia. ‘And I’ll tell you what really happened to Simone.’

Chapter Seventy-three

HOLLY

In the cool of the schoolhouse, Georgia’s expression has switched from anger to quiet confusion.

‘You know what happened to Simone?’ she says. ‘How?’

‘Call off your security,’ I counter.