Page 70 of The Art of Scandal

“My son’s stupidity.”

“You know he cheated on me?”

“Yes, I do. I also know that you agreed to stay until the election.” He studied her face. “How much did you ask for?”

She sighed. He was sitting there, calm as a frog on a lily pad, asking how much hush money his son paid his wife to keep his secrets. This family made her sick. “Not enough.”

He smirked. “When it’s for your dignity, it never is.” He scanned the room, eyes resting on a framed wedding photo. “I’m impressed you kept things together this long. I never would have known it was so bad if he hadn’t told me. My son can be very shortsighted about his own best interests. He only thinks about what he wants in the moment. At one point that was you.”

“Which you never approved of.”

“Not at first, no.” He paused. “But I was wrong about you, Rachel. I know I should have said something before now, but sentiment doesn’t come naturally to me. You’ve been a good influence on him. Calming. Rational, when he lost focus.” He leaned forward. “When we poll Matt as an unmarried candidate, he’s unelectable. No one trusts him. Not without you there. Beautiful. Respectable. You convince voters he’s more than just another trust fund, Ivy League kid.”

The revelation turned her stomach. She should have known Matt’s change of heart was prompted by the numbers on some spreadsheet. “Why are you here?”

“To fix his mistake.” Herman leaned back and crossed his legs. “Neither of you has any idea how to negotiate. He should have made the initial offer. And you should have demanded enough to make following through worth it. You have no incentive to keep your word.”

“I won’t tell anyone about his affair.”

“But you won’t stay either.” He tilted his head. “Will you?”

It was like being pinned beneath a microscope. She needed to get rid of him before he started plucking away her defenses like the wings on a dead fly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Because you’ve decided money doesn’t matter,” he said. “But what about Faith? Matt told me how well she’s doing at that expensive culinary school. And that apartment in New York? It’d be a shame to lose all that so suddenly.”

His nonchalance was terrifying. She eyed a nearby vase. It was light enough to throw but heavy enough to do damage. “Are you threatening her?”

Herman looked insulted. “Faith is family. I don’t threaten my family. I help them.” He pulled out a white envelope from his suit jacket. “This is an agreement, already signed.”

Rachel stared at the envelope. Deciding whether to accept it felt like haggling over her soul. But her curiosity won. She snatched it from his hand and pried it open. The amount made her gasp. “Oh my god.”

She looked up at him, and he stared back, inscrutable. “You’ll stay through the congressional primary next year and we’ll negotiate an additional agreement after. You and me. Matt will have nothing to do with this.”

She wanted to fling it back into his face. She wanted to have never seen the trust agreement, with all the zeros under Faith’s name. But her fingers tightened around the envelope, like they had a will of their own. “I need to think about it.”

Herman stood and straightened his jacket. “I would expect nothing less. Like I said, Rachel. You were always the smart one.”

Nathan had expected Joe to leave for the office as soon as they reached the laundromat. Even on a Sunday. Instead, he stood in the middle of Nathan’s apartment, scowling at the air. His brother was never this quiet. It went on for so long that Nathan finally lost patience. “Is this silent treatment some kind of punishment?”

“She’s a distraction,” Joe said. Nathan started to protest, but Joe lifted a hand to stop him. “It’s what you do. Escape somewhere…” He glanced at Nathan’s sketchbook. “Into something, so you don’t have to feel anything.”

“You’re wrong.” Joe had it backward. He felt too much, all the emotions, firing on every cell at once. “I’m in love with her.”

Joe looked pained, like it was the worst thing Nathan could have said. “It doesn’t matter.”

That’s when Nathan realized that a part of his brother, the romantic, was slowly being poisoned by his two broken hearts.

“This family needs to heal,” Joe continued. “You don’t get to flit around infatuated, while the rest of us are putting in the work. Not this time.”

Nathan thought about his last fight with Beto. How he’d frozen when confronted with his father’s suffering. The next day he was in New York with Rachel, pretending it never happened. “The trip was last minute,” Nathan said. “I wasn’t trying to run away. I just needed a break to get my head on straight.”

Joe laughed, and it was so sad and bitter that Nathan’s throat tightened. “A break? I’ve lost my wife. I might lose my kid. The livelihood of our entire family—no, half this goddamn city—is about to be on me!” He flung a hand at Nathan’s chest. “And now I’ve got you, trying to make a terrible situation immensely fucking worse, by going down in flames where the whole world can see.”

Nathan could feel himself retreating, his body instinctually trying to escape his brother’s wrath. Joe was right. He’d been hiding from this. Cowering on the other side of town, behind a wall of fucking dryers. “I’m sorry,” he said, even though the words felt thin and inadequate. “You’re right, it was selfish. I’ve just always been—” Nathan stopped, because he’d nearly saidalone. But it wasn’t true. Because Joe had been there. As always. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

The next day, Nathan was forced to follow through on that promise when he received a text from Beto asking him to stop by the house. After the argument with Joe, he’d decided to focus on what he could control. If Beto insulted him, Nathan didn’t have to argue. He could ignore it and engage with his father as an equal instead of a wounded son. He could keep the peace for both their sakes. And for Joe.

An hour later, he pulled into his parents’ driveway behind a car he didn’t recognize. A housekeeper let him in, explaining that Sofia was visiting with guests. Nathan started to seek out his mother but froze at the sight of Rachel in the foyer. She’d straightened her hair. The pearls were back, tucked inside the high collar of a stiff white shirt that made it look like she was wearing a uniform. When she finally looked up from her phone and saw him, he couldn’t think of anything to say except “Rachel?” It was a question, accusation, and plea all at once.

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