Page 64 of Unwritten Rules

I choked on a garlic knot. “No way! He can sleep on the couch.”

“Mhm,” she grunted. “I’ll wear earmuffs tonight.”

My food fell right out of my mouth.

“You ruined a perfectly good garlic knot, you ass!”

Buzz!

Kelly’s and my phones buzzed in unison on the table. A notification on mine from a social media app I hadn’t opened for months appeared. And then another. And another. My heart sank into my butt when I saw the headlines and tags.

Montgomery Group Heiress Identified?

I didn’t want to continue reading. Who knows what would be in the sea of mess–gossip on the internet was always a hundred times more brutal.Bring me back to classic tabloids!Holding my phone out to Kel, she picked hers up with eyes bulging out of her head.

My stomach churned scrolling through the posts, tags, headlines, and comments. Garrett’s family being accused of fraud, money laundering, and organized crime–the same things he’d mentioned to us. Montgomery and my pictures were plastered all over it too, naming me as Garrett’s girlfriend and sole heir to the Montgomery Group international real estate firm. There were incorrect connections between our families and businesses. I was being dragged into the mud.

Everything my mother worked for was coming into question. There were questions of how dirty our company was.

My face drained of all color looking at all of this. “Fuck me,” I breathed.

“This can’t be real, right? You’re everywhere and there’s, like, federal investigations and speculations on your mom’s company.” Kelly looked like I felt.

Brent moved his chair over to look at my phone.

I was too shocked to speak and just handed it over to him.

“What do we do?”

I shrugged. Nothing like a heart wrenching scandal to sober her up. It felt like a wake up call and I was wide awake at midnight.

Brent turned my phone around to show me a text that came through.

Garrett: Meet me tomorrow? We should talk about this.

How much farther could my heart have dropped, I didn’t know. My body felt like it was going into an adrenaline-fueled shock. I didn’t know what to think or believe about what was happening. How quickly my world turned upside down.

How did they have these pictures of me? Someone had to have been following me.

Evans would have my head on a platter by the morning.

Brent’s demeanor changed in my peripherals while he watched me digest the internet meltdown and Garrett’s message. “I’m definitely not leaving now.”

That bodyguard that would be showing up anytime now was more than justified.

Confusion, anger, and overwhelm started to overtake me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What? I came here to tell you about this, and it just so happened to blow up while I was here.”

Everything felt too much. “I don’t want you to stay. It’s no good for you and being seen with me after this is probably not good for either of us...”

“Blondie.”

“Please stop.” I stood up, shaking. “We don’t–we can’t. You’re the infamous womanizer. I’m newly identified. None of this makes sense or even feels right to me.”

“My wanting to help you means nothing?” He mimicked me again, standing up and pushing closer to me.

We had two dates–ifyou could call them that. He just wanted to see if he could bed me. I was only a fun little challenge for him. There’s no way. He’s just looking out for his own company, right? Just purely selfish, that’s all. “You’re seen with a new girl almost daily, Brent Vaughn. You cannot expect me to believe youonlyhave a pure motive coming over here.”

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