Chapter 123

My hand curled and uncurled by my side. I was so tired of people trying to rip Andrew and me apart. It was my life—our lives—no one had any say in it except for Andrew and me.

Lisa stared at me expectantly. Behind her, Bob had regained his smirk, but I could tell there was a hint of bitterness to it. He was not happy with the idea of this deal, and I doubted that he would hold to it if I did go through with my end.

“No,” I said. “I’m not breaking up with Andrew.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes at me. Bob’s smirk grew.

“Then we’re not dropping out of the race,” Lisa said.

“And if we happen to know of something that the public needs to know about their current Alpha King and his new girlfriend, then we have an obligation to tell the world about it,” Bob added, a little too happy about the situation.

“Then we have nothing else to talk about,” I said. I pulled out my phone and looked at the time. “And I’m late for dinner with your father.”

I knew that the last sentence was bitchy and perhaps a step too far, but I didn’t regret it. I relished the disgusted look on Lisa’s face before I turned around and walked toward the elevator, Jeffrey on my heels.

“Well,” Jeffrey said as the elevator doors closed on us, “that went well.”

I shrugged.

“You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t try.”

“Hmm. How are you going to explain this to Andrew?”

“I’m not. We’re not going to tell him that we were here.”

Jeffrey glanced at me out of the side of his eye.

“Just remember whom I work for.”

Andrew and I were eating breakfast when Andrew received a message from Dennis. Andrew looked at the message, and his brow furrowed. His eyes flicked up at me, causing me to swallow for reasons that I did not quite understand.

“Crystal,” he said, his voice so even and controlled that it made my nerves worse, “would you mind explaining this to me?”

He turned his phone to me. On the screen was a tabloid article with the headline:

ALPHA KING’S GIRLFRIEND USES INTIMIDATION TACTICS AGAINST #1 POLITICAL OPPONENT

Beneath the headline was a picture of Jeffrey and me standing at Bob and Lisa’s door. It was taken from behind a potted plant and angled upward to make Jeffrey and me look more intimidating than we actually were—if that were even possible with Jeffrey. It seemed to be just after Jeffrey had stepped towards Bob, when Bob began to look penitent for having yelled at Lisa.

Damn it, it did look like we were intimidating them.

I covered my face with my hands and then ran my hands back through my hair.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, my eyes imploring Andrew to believe me.

“I know that,” Andrew said, withdrawing his phone. “The tabloids never get it right. What I want to know is, is what you were doing at Bob’s apartment in the first place.”

I stared down at my lap like a chastised child.

“I was confronting him and Lisa about the election and all the controversy they’ve been stirring up, trying to get them to back off of both.”

Andrew sighed.

“And how did that go?”

“Not well.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not exactly.”

Andrew did not respond for a moment, probably expecting me to change my mind and elaborate. I didn’t. I wasn’t about to tell him that his daughter told me to break up with him or else.

“Very well,” he finally said.

When he didn’t say anything else, I looked up to see him taking a bite of toast.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You aren’t mad?”

“Mad? No. I kind of expected it, actually.”

I blushed.

“Am I really that predictable?”

Andrew grinned.

“Only to those who love you.” His grin vanished. “You will need to fix this, though.”

“How? Another press conference?”

Andrew shook his head.

“No, that might be too severe a reaction. I think that a social media post addressing the issue will do the trick.”

“But anything that I could say regarding this could be twisted to seem like I was intimidating them.”

“That’s why Dennis will be helping you.”

Andrew typed something on his phone, and I received a text from him.

“Here are the details for your meeting with him tonight. He values punctuality. Don’t be late.”

“You’ll want to be a little vaguer than that,” Dennis said, hovering over my shoulder as he read my fifth draft of the social media post. “Too much of this could be misconstrued as you going there to force them to drop out of the race.”

I rolled my eyes but backspaced the entire statement once again. For the sixth time, I typed out a new post, this time trying to be even vaguer than the last.

I knew that Dennis had been hired for his attention to detail, his ability to clean up messes, and his ability to predict people’s reactions to potential social faux pas, but his nitpicking was getting on my last nerves.

One draft was too vague, leaving it open to interpretation. Another said too blatantly what had happened, leaving us no wiggle room in case people twisted it to fit the narrative they already had in their heads. This one was too long, that one was too short, blah, blah, blah.

Hopefully, this sixth draft would be good enough.

I handed him my phone with the new draft. Dennis read through it a couple times, then nodded his approval.

“Post it,” he commanded.

Without hesitation, I did what he said and posted the final draft to my social media accounts:

Good evening, everyone. I wanted to address the allegation that I tried to use intimidation tactics against Andrew’s competition to get him to drop out of the Alpha King election. It is not true.

I went to Bob’s apartment last night to discuss some personal matters. The man with me is my bodyguard, who has become a necessity due to multiple attacks against my person. We were not, in any way, there to intimidate Bob or Lisa.

I wish nothing but the best for Bob and Lisa, as well as for werewolf kind in general, no matter what that means for the outcome of the Alpha King election. Whether it is Andrew or Bob, I only want the best werewolf to win.

Admittedly, it made me throw up in my mouth a little to write some of that, but if it would make this mess blow over, I would say just about anything. When I looked over at Dennis, he seemed rather proud of himself, so I had some hope that this would work.

Then the responses began to drop in.

Within five minutes, my post had thousands of reactions. A few people liked my post, but many more left nasty remarks:

What a fake! Look at her “bodyguard.” He’s about to charge Bob!

What “personal matters” could she possibly be talking about? The election, perhaps?

Look at Lisa. She’s terrified of them! Fake news!

“Don’t worry,” Dennis told me, patting me on the shoulder, “it might look bad now, but it’ll get better by tomorrow. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

I sighed and watched the comments roll in, none of them getting any better.

“That’s great to say when it’s not your reputation on the line,” I mumbled.