Page 67 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)
“We don’t have to run,” I say wistfully, running a hand down his chest. “We could just walk out of here. No one would chase us.”
He wraps his fingers around my wrist, stopping my hand from going any further.“If you knew how badly I wanted that, you wouldn’t say it now when you don’t really mean it.”
My heart twists in on itself. “I’m sorry.”
Lifting my hand to his mouth, he places a kiss on the center of my palm. “Don’t be. You have work to do, a promise to keep. I understand, and so does Cal.”
“I love you,” I whisper, the words urgent and necessary.
Beck’s answering smile soothes the ache in my chest. “I know. I love you, too.”
With one last set of kisses, he leaves me to finish preparing for my night of misery. When I referred to it that way on a call with Monique, she laughed and said I was being dramatic, but I wasn’t.
In fact, I was grossly underestimating just how awful the night would be.
I spend hours standing in my beautiful, but uncomfortable heels, pretending to care about the people Aubrey introduces me to, smiling through the constant wave of disgust that comes from being touched by him, laughing like everything is fine when Jacob Marsh is somewhere out there plotting to kill me and the only people I trust to protect me are doing perimeter sweeps at my house instead of at my side.
My finger runs over the bracelet for probably the hundredth time tonight, and I force myself to stop fidgeting when it catches Aubrey’s attention.
His eyes linger on the bracelet for what feels like forever, but eventually he turns his focus back to Cordelia and the other group of Republican senators who have come here to kiss up to the future President.
“Excuse me,” I say to no one in particular, slipping off to the bathroom with the two female agents Agent Lennon suggested be added to my detail in order to avoid incidents like the one at Feast hot on my heels.
One of them, Agent Shaw, a tall Black woman with a stunning face and a grumpy disposition, steps in front of me, taking the lead of the procession to the bathroom.
She steps inside first, leaving me standing outside the door with Agent Morgan, another incredibly tall and beautiful Black woman, watching over me.
When Agent Shaw emerges and nods that it’s all clear, I go in and breathe a sigh of relief at the quiet that envelops me.
It doesn’t last long.
I’m retouching my lipstick in the mirror when Cordelia comes breezing through the door. She’s walking with purpose, not at all surprised to see me in here, almost like she was seeking me out. We’ve never been in a room alone before, so I’m interested to see how this will go.
“Selene,” she drawls, sauntering up to the mirror beside me with a smile on her thin lips. “I was hoping to get a moment alone with you.”
“Why?” I lean closer to the mirror, using my pinky finger to remove any smudging. I can feel her eyes on me, unsettling and expectant. When I can’t take the silence anymore, I angle my body in her direction. “What do you want, Cordelia?”
She taps blood red nails on the stone counter. “To tell you a story.”
Sufficiently creeped out, I close my lipstick and turn to leave. She grabs my arm, the tips of her nails digging ever so slightly into my skin. I look down, shocked at the sight of such an egregious violation of my personal space and bodily autonomy. When the shock wears off, though, I snatch away.
“ Don’t fucking touch me .”
She holds her hands up, palms out in mock surrender. “Forgive me. I simply didn’t want you to miss the opportunity to finally get an answer to your question.”
“What question?”
“The one you posed in Las Vegas after the debate.”
I don’t need any more information than that. I cross my arms and take a step back from her. “Well, go on.”
Cordelia grins, clearly enjoying dangling a carrot in front of my face. I wonder how often she does it to Aubrey, taunts him with the promise of something he wants. Maybe she’ll include that tidbit in her little story.
“I was a lot like you when I was growing up.”
I twist my lips to the side. “Doubtful.”
“Okay, maybe I wasn’t intellectually superior,” she concedes.
“But I was also the oldest of a working-class couple with three daughters and not enough money. My daddy was a long-haul truck driver, and my mama stayed at home with me and my sisters. The days at home when it was just us and Mama were the best. There was no fighting, no cursing, no broken glass or slaps across the face. My sisters fell into the traps of teenage pregnancy and marital hellscapes that I ducked and dodged, so I could pursue my own dreams.”
“The longer you talk, the more differences I hear. My father never beat my mother. My mother ran a successful hair salon throughout my entire childhood, which remains a staple of the community today. My sisters married their high school sweethearts and, as fr as I know, are both happily married. As far as financial similarities, we weren’t rich, by any means, but we were never?—”
“ My point, ” Cordelia cuts in, eyes narrowing into slits in the face of my bluntness, but she continues. “We’re both survivors, both incredibly strong women who overcame challenging upbringings and made it here.”
I have so much more to say about her faulty comparisons but decide to swallow the words because I hope eventually things will turn to Aubrey and what she wants with him.
“When I lost the Republican nomination last election cycle, I took it extremely hard.” Frustration flits across her features, and she shakes her head like she still can’t believe it.
“Men who want to go to war every time a world leader forgets to wish them a happy birthday said I was too emotional to lead,” she scoffs.
“They don’t even understand how a uterus works, and yet they felt confident looking me in the eyes and expressing doubts about my ability to hold it together during ‘that time of the month’. Un-fucking-believable.”
“It’s actually incredibly believable. Misogyny trumps everything, even your whiteness.”
She doesn’t appreciate my contributions to this conversation.
That much is clear by the way her nostrils keep flaring every time I speak.
Maybe I should feel bad about interrupting her little monologue, but I don’t.
There’s nothing worse than being forced into a conversation and then expected not to participate in it.
“That experience taught me a lot. Namely, that you don’t have to be the person in the seat to be the one in control. That sometimes the key to real power isn’t holding it in your hands, it’s sitting next to it, steering it in the direction you want it to go.”
“And that’s what you’re doing with Aubrey? Manipulating him? Pacifying him with the illusion of power while you wield the real thing?”
Cordelia tilts her head to the side, examining me. “Isn’t that what you plan to do?”
“No.”
She pushes her lips out into a fake pout. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t, can you? You don’t have his ear, his trust, or his secrets. It’s a little hard to control a man, even one as weak-willed as Aubrey, without one of the three.”
The shot she’s just taken doesn’t hurt as much as she wants it to.
I’m too caught up wondering what secrets Cordelia knows that I don’t, and whether or not I can find them out.
If I can, then I might be able to persuade him to reconsider his stance on gun control.
Hope rises in my chest, bright and bubbly despite the dark cloud around my present company.
“Thank you for the story, Cordelia,” I mutter, flashing her a smile I’m sure is disconcerting when her plan was to come in here and make me cry.
This time she doesn’t delay my departure, and I’m glad to be free of her, returning to the party with just enough patience to make it through the rest of the night.
As soon as I step back into the room, Aubrey is at my side wearing a wide, false grin. He sweeps me into his arms, pulling me onto the dance floor, so we can put on a show for the donors.
“Smile,” he growls through his exposed teeth, spinning us around the floor in wide circles while everyone watches with adoring expressions.
They watch, but they don’t see. The straining muscles in my upturned lips. The truth of our embrace. They don’t see the distance between our hearts, the cold expanse of hate that stretches between us and gets wider and wider every day.
They don’t know that being this close to him is nauseating, that having to pretend I welcome his touch is an insult to everything I’ve built with Cal and Beck.
As soon as my mind conjures their names, my eyes fall on the bracelet, and Aubrey’s follow.
He spins me out, holding the wrist with the bracelet tight, then pulls me back in so my back is to his front.
His lips are at my ear, his breath hot on my skin. “That’s a beautiful bracelet. Is it new?”
“A gift from Monique,” I lie, wanting nothing more than to remove myself from his grasp so he can stop touching the only reminder I have of my men tonight.
Aubrey goes quiet, and I assume the conversation is over. Then, the song ends, and he dips me low and follows me down, kissing my cheek as he whispers, “You’re good at a lot of things, Selene, but lying has never been one of them.”