Page 59 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)

“Maybe she should!” He throws his hands up in the air, and all of the calm, peaceful energy that’s been floating around in the room fades as his agitation grows.

“It’s her life that’s in danger, Cal. Her back with a target on it.

She has a right to know what’s going on, and if we don’t tell her, who will? ”

I don’t disagree with him. Truly, I don’t.

I just hate the thought of bringing Selene problems I don’t have any solutions to.

Beck doesn’t wait for me to answer. He’s on a roll now, and when he’s like this—feral and angry, worried about someone he loves—there’s very little that can be done to stop him.

“It won’t be those fuckers upstairs. They didn’t even tell her she’s the reason we’re here in the first place.”

“They didn’t need to,” Selene says, stepping out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel with her skin still glistening.

She’s even washed her hair, so it’s wet and curly, piled into a bun on top of her head.

“Your appearance coincided with an uptick in worrying comments online that started after the press conference about Aubrey’s affair, all of them aimed at me, of course. I assume things have gotten worse?”

The towel drops to the ground, and she steps over it, grabbing my bottle of lotion off the nightstand and pumping some into her hands. I’m obsessing over the thought of her smelling like me all day, when Beck answers.

“Yes.”

She crosses the room, retrieving her clothes from the edge of the bed where I placed them after Beck made it. When she’s dressed, she squares her shoulders. “Can I see?”

Beck and I look at each other, both of us hesitant to fulfill this request. Monique let it slip that Selene has been on a strict social media hiatus, so she doesn’t know what she’s asking us to subject her to.

It doesn’t take her long to grow impatient with our silence. She crosses her arms. “You want me to be informed, but you don’t want to give me any information?”

“You don’t need that information, gorgeous.”

“Yes, I do. I need all the information.”

“Selene.” My voice is a cautious plea that she gives no consideration.

“ Show me .”

The command lands on my shoulders, heavy and impossible to fight.

I’m turned on by her ferocity even as I regret the very moment I said the words ‘Don’t ask.

Tell ,’ because now she’s turned them into some sort of spell.

My teeth grind against each other, and every cell in my body screams its dissent as I turn to my computer and call up the file that contains screenshots of every credible online threat I could find.

It bothers me that it’s so vast but still isn’t comprehensive, that there are hundreds of thousands of posts we weren’t able to find or capture in time.

“Sit down.”

She does as I ask, sinking into the chair in front of the desk and breathing deeply.

I step back, giving her space, watching her hands as she uses some keyboard magic to display multiple threats at a time.

It helps her sort through them faster, which means she gets to the posts about her son before I have the chance to explain how popular they’ve become, with the anniversary of his death approaching.

All of the posts pertaining to her were viewed with a kind of numb disinterest. She scanned them quickly and objectively, like they were about someone else, but with these, she takes her time. She views them one by one, refusing to look away even though there’s nothing good there, nothing kind.

My stomach is in knots, and I want nothing more than to close the computer and make her stop, but I rein that desire in.

I let her keep her eyes on the screen even when a particular post— a school picture of Aubrey Jr. that’s been edited to include blood dripping down his face and neck, Xs over his eyes, and a gunshot wound between them— makes them bulge out in horror.

“Oh my God.”

Beck steps up, his expression grim and laced with regret as he starts to close the computer. “This was a bad idea. I’m sorry.”

“Wait.” Selene places a staying hand over his. “Look at the caption.”

Most of the time I try to put the shit these people say out of my mind, but this seems to be important, so I steel myself and read the words aloud. “Hope his mama follows him to an early grave. She deserves a bullet between the eyes just like her mixed-breed son got.”

I shudder at the bitter taste of hate on my tongue, revolted by the thought of a bullet even coming close to her. “Jesus.”

Selene appears completely unmoved, but I know that isn’t true. She feels everything deeply, sometimes too deeply, which means the pain is somewhere in there, trapped behind the wheels spinning in her mind.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“We’ve been considering the possibility that a lot of these accounts are bots. That would account for the sheer number of posts and the uniform nature of the language,” I offer.

She shakes her head. “No. Well, I mean, yes, there are absolutely bots at play here. Normally, their sole purpose is to amplify the reach of the person or people paying for them by tricking the algorithm into thinking they have all this engagement and pushing their content further. These are also programmed to create their posts, echoing the sentiments of the person who paid for them. In this case, that sentiment is that I deserve to die in the same manner as my son.”

I gesture at the post. “So you’re saying this is a bot?”

“No. A human wrote this post.” She glances at the screen for a second. “It was, however, liked and shared by several of the bot accounts, which most likely means the person behind this account is the one paying for them. I think I know who it is.”

Skepticism lines Beck’s features. “You’re incredible, Selene, but I don’t think anyone, not even you, can identify someone after reading one caption on a photo.

You just said the bots echo the language of the person who programmed them, so it stands to reason that you read a comment just like that as you were sorting through the other posts. ”

" I didn’t say I read the words before, Beck, I said I heard them.”

“Someone said that to you?”

“When?!” Beck asks, his face a mask of rage that matches the fury coursing through my veins. He drops to his haunches in front of her, turning the chair so she’s facing him. “Who the fuck said that to you?”

Her answer is faint. “The woman who approached me in the bathroom at Feast.”

Beck rears back as if he’s been slapped, and there’s a rough edge to his voice when he responds. “You never told me that. I asked you for all the details, and you left that out.”

His righteous tone doesn’t account for the details we’ve kept from her about the same woman, namely, the connection between her and Jacob.

“I know, but I kept it to myself because the last time we talked about AJ, it brought up memories of Cameron. I was trying to spare you.”

“It’s okay,” I assure her, because we’ve been trying to spare her too, trying not to add more worry and stress onto her plate by telling her about Jacob and the threat he poses.

But now that we know he’s had his sights set on Selene for far longer than we thought, keeping that information from her is no longer an option.