Chapter 23
CASH
My little bundle of chaos was apparently a very good spy.
I nodded at the driver, silently indicating we weren’t alone. “Tell me at the hotel.”
She winked in understanding. Rossi was a big name around here. I didn’t trust anyone. Information was worth money. People would not hesitate to sell it. I understood that and rarely talked about anything in front of others. I probably had trust issues, but whatever.
Back at the suite, I removed my jacket and loosened my tie, watching Cleo kick off her heels first. They went flying in different directions, one landing near the sofa, the other somewhere by the balcony door.
Then she started removing her jewelry piece by piece, placing each item carefully on the coffee table.
“These earrings are gorgeous but they weigh approximately eight pounds each,” she said, rubbing her earlobe after removing the second one.
I should be focused on what Angelica told her. That was the priority. The information could save the deal. But instead, I was fixated on the way she had carried herself tonight. The way she read the room, saw what was happening, and extracted me before I could do more damage.
She had protected me.
No one protects me. I’m the fixer. The one who handles things. The one who steps in when others need backup.
I poured two fingers of scotch into crystal tumblers and walked over to where she was now sprawled across the sofa, feet up, looking like a Renaissance painting come to life. The black silk pooled around her, and she had one arm thrown dramatically over her face.
“I have never been so uncomfortable in my entire life,” she announced. “Those people? My God.”
I handed her the glass. “You seemed perfectly at ease.”
“That’s because I’m an excellent actress. I’ll expect my Oscar nomination in the mail.” She took the scotch and sipped it, then made a face. “This tastes like sweet fire.”
“It’s a thirty-year single malt.”
“No wonder it tastes expired. I’m drinking it anyway because I need something stronger than champagne after that circus.”
I sat down in the chair opposite her and loosened my cuffs. “You did well tonight.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned suddenly, and it transformed her face. “I was absolutely on my game. You should have seen me in that bathroom. I went full mafia wife on her.”
I smiled before I realized it. “I’m sure you did.”
She took another sip, made another face, and gave a full body shudder.
“What did Angelica tell you? I’ve been patient long enough.”
Cleo tucked her legs up on the couch and turned to face me with the expression of someone who’d been waiting for this moment since the car. She was looking for her second Oscar nomination. “Angelica Rossi is a very unhappy woman.”
“I gathered that during dinner.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” She pulled a remaining pin from her hair and the whole thing came down.
She ran her hands through it once before continuing.
“Federico Rossi is apparently one of the most disliked businessmen in Rome at the moment. Unethical practices. She was vague on the specifics, but from the way she talked, it’s significant.
His empire is in considerably worse shape than he’s been presenting. ”
I went still. “How bad?”
“Crumbling. Her word, not mine.” She paused. “There’s more.”
“Tell me.”
“He’s going to try to pin it on the Bancroft name.
” She watched my face as she said it. “The negative press the Bancrofts attract in America—he’s banking on it.
He creates a scene, attaches your family to whatever fallout he’s generating, and while everyone’s looking at the Bancrofts, he slips away to a private island somewhere in the South Pacific and waits for it to blow over. ”
The room was very quiet.
“She said your family has a scandal a month. Rossi is just waiting for his moment while also stirring the pot to make that moment a little more opportune for him.”
“We don’t have a scandal a month,” I retorted. “We’ve got it down to every three to six months.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.”
“Trust me, you haven’t met my whole family. I’m very proud of that fact. You met Finn. He’s one of the least problematic.”
She took another sip. No icky face so it was going down smoother. Scotch was like that. You just had to trust the process.
“What do you mean slip away?” I asked. “Like he’s hiding from the law?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she tell you what scandal?”
“No, but I assume it’s the Austin thing.”
I groaned. “You mean the Summer Situation.”
“Maybe. I really don’t know why that’s such a thing. Honestly, people have fake relationships all the time. I can name five celebrities in lavender marriages right now. It’s cover. I’m pretty sure it’s been done since the dawn of time.”
“Maybe, but Summer keeps teasing more information.”
“Does she have more?”
“No. We Bancrofts are careful. We don’t talk.”
“I’ve noticed that,” she said thoughtfully. “First rule of being a Bancroft is you don’t talk about the Bancrofts.”
I stared at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Fight Club. Come on, you’ve seen it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Were you hatched?”
“What?”
Cyclone Cleo was back. Having a conversation with her was like trying to grab water. I could never keep up when she got like this.
“Focus,” I said. “Rossi. What else?”
She downed the scotch, which made me wince. And then she was up. I finished my own glass, ignoring the burn, and followed her toward her room.
“He’s been planning it since before your meeting,” she said.
“The contract cancellation was just the first move. He wants to make it look like the Bancrofts backed out badly or behaved badly. She wasn’t specific, but the general direction was that you were going to be a convenient story while he disappeared. ”
I followed her to the bathroom doorway, trying to process what she was saying.
Cleo was at the mirror. She opened a pack of what looked like baby wipes and started attacking her face. One swipe and the black makeup around her eye smeared. She did it again and again.
“How did you get all of that out of her in a bathroom in less than five minutes?” I asked.
Maybe she knew some secret CIA interrogation methods. That seemed useful. I wanted to know her tricks.
“I offered her something she wanted.”
“Which was?”
She met my eyes in the mirror. “Time with you.”
I stared at her reflection. “I beg your pardon.”
“One-on-one time before you leave Rome. A genuine conversation.” She kept moving the wipe over her face.
I was mesmerized by the transformation. “She’s clearly miserable with him.
She wanted access to someone who seemed like an alternative.
I gave her reason to believe she might get that access if she talked. ”
“You offered me up,” I said. “To the wife of a business associate. As what, exactly?”
“A listening ear.”
“Cleo.”
“I said what I needed to say to get the information. That’s how negotiation works.”
“I can’t be seen meeting privately with Rossi’s wife. Do you understand how that looks? Whatever he’s planning, if I’m photographed with her, if there’s any suggestion that I am having some illicit affair with her, that could destroy us faster than any scandal he’s cooking up.”
“You don’t have to do it.” She turned from the mirror to face me directly. “I made a promise I had no intention of keeping. She gave me the information. We left. She gets nothing.”
“So now I’m associated with a lie.”
“You’re associated with getting out of a very bad situation before it got worse. You have information that protects your family’s business.” She tilted her head. “I’d call that a net positive.”
“And the commitment made in my name to a woman whose husband is planning to frame Bancroft Holdings is what?”
“It was never real.” She turned back to the mirror.
“Nobody’s holding you to it. What’s she going to do?
Tell her husband she betrayed him so she could get five minutes with you?
That’s not going to go over well. She walked into the situation.
I told a little white lie. Have you ever watched any true crime documentaries? ”
“What?”
Once again, she was drifting into another topic.
“Interrogators often tell little white lies like the other guy is talking or the murdered man isn’t actually dead and he’s talking. It’s a tactic. An effective one.”
“I’m holding myself to the promise you made.” I heard the edge in my own voice and didn’t move to soften it. “I don’t lie. I don’t make commitments I don’t intend to honor. That’s not how I operate.”
She glanced at me in the mirror. “Cash, that’s ridiculous. It’s not like we shook on it.”
“I brought you here because I thought you understood the stakes.” The words were laced with my barely contained frustration. “This isn’t a game. This isn’t content for your social media strategy. This is my family’s name. We’ve always handled these situations with careful consideration.”
“Careful?” She turned fully now. “You’re calling tonight careful?
You walked into that meeting without knowing what Rossi was actually planning.
You were about to have a visible argument with him in a room full of people who would have had photographs up before the dessert course.
You needed me to pull you out of that, and I did, and somehow I’m the problem? ”
“You made a promise in my name without asking me.”
“And you flew me to Rome to be your fake fiancée without asking me.” The words were direct hits. “You decided what role I was playing and told me after the fact. So we’re both working with imperfect information about what the other person signed up for.”
I gritted my teeth.
“From everything I’ve seen of Bancrofts and what I’ve observed this weekend, the family has a rich history of image management and creative truth-telling when it serves their purpose.
So don’t stand there and tell me you’re too principled for a little white lie that had no teeth.
Quit being so damn self-righteous. It’s not a good look on you. ”
“I am not my family’s history.” My voice was calm in the way it got when I was furious. “I have spent a lifetime building a reputation that is specifically not that. I am not my father. I am not my brothers or cousins. I’m not a fucking tabloid headline.”
Cleo looked at me. “No one said you were. You dragged my ass halfway around the world to help you. I did that, so back off.”
“You behaved like a child playing under the table while the adults handled the actual business,” I said. “Like this was all interesting material to collect and turn into a story. Do you understand what’s actually at stake here? Or is everything just content to you?”
The silence that followed crackled with electricity. Cleo looked at me and I knew immediately I was staring at the calm before the storm. She was about to unleash holy terror on me.
I probably deserved it but shit. It was going to get bad.
“A spoiled brat,” she said. Her voice was quiet too. “That’s what you think you’re dealing with.”
“I think you’re talented and impulsive and you made a decision tonight that could complicate an already complicated situation.”
“A spoiled brat,” she said again.
I didn’t have the right words to dig myself out of the massive hole I’d created. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. I was pissed. She had gone too far. No one managed me. No one lied for me.
Her hands went to the front of the dress. She grabbed handfuls of fabric and jerked hard.
I heard the tearing of fabric and then it was falling to the floor.
“Fuck you, Cash. You don’t get to dress me up like your personal doll and then call me a spoiled brat. You’re the one throwing money at a problem you created. A learned response from growing up as a spoiled brat and now an entitled asshole. Fuck you.”
My nostrils flared. She was wearing a strapless bra that plumped up her ample breasts. Black panties. I didn’t even hear her words. I crossed the room.
She met me halfway.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. My mouth slammed against hers. My lips smashed into my teeth. Pain bloomed but it only fueled the fire.