Chapter One
Emily
I stared at the blank screen and huffed out a frustrated breath. I’d already floundered around for a week, writing nothing because I’d been blocked worse than a sinus during hay fever season. Fear was pounding at me, my veins throbbing in my head.
One star, this book sucks.
One star, I can’t believe anybody with a brain would read this.
One star, quite possibly the worst book ever.
The actual reviews left on my last book. Mom had told me to ignore them and cheer up because the book had also received over six hundred five-star reviews. But of course the crappy ones always hit the hardest.
And now they were hanging over me like a dark miasma, sucking up all my creative energy. Just what the hell was so terrible about the last book? And how could those reviews have appeared so fast after the book went up on Amazon? They were like a freakin’ guerilla hit squad.
Now I had two weeks to hammer out the last fifty thousand words. It was already seven in the evening. Another day almost wasted.
Crap.
My phone started ringing, distracting me from my mental diatribe against my creativity—or lack thereof.
It wasn’t one of my writing pals, because they knew better than to call when I was working to meet a deadline. So it could only be…
Mom.
Dread curdled in my belly. We chatted once a month to discuss my social media stuff because she managed my accounts for me. I paid her a set amount every month so she’d feel more financially independent and assertive. She needed that, living with my dad, who, well… Calling him a control freak would be kind. “Asshole” was starker, but much closer to the truth.
But this wasn’t a scheduled call. And if Mom wanted to show off some nice stuff she got while out shopping, she usually just texted pictures.
So this could only be about the longstanding marital drama. I wished I could ignore it, but it was likely an emergency that would give me one more reason to hate Dad.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, keeping my voice sympathetic despite the impatience and annoyance for being write-blocked bubbling inside me. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything productive anyway, so what would be the harm in spending some time to console her?
“Hello, baby! Am I interrupting anything? What am I saying? Of course I am. But I had to call.” Mom sounded breathless, but not with rage over discovering that Dad was cheating on her again. She seemed to be brimming with something akin to excitement plus indignation.
“Is something wrong?” I started praying for the miracle of divorce. That would be the happiest ending for Mom. I’d have to buy her a membership to some dating app to celebrate. Hook her up with some hot young men she could flaunt in Dad’s face.
“No! I figured out who’s behind the One-Star Hit Squad!”
The angst over my deadline vanished, and I nearly jumped to my feet. The One-Star Hit Squad was the name Mom had given to a group of about fifty or so reviewers who left me one-star reviews as soon as my book was published. They’d started to target me immediately after one of my books made the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for the first time. Why was anybody’s guess. They weren’t the people I’d given early review copies to, so they couldn’t possibly have read the book so fast, unless they’d quit after a couple of chapters. And they certainly weren’t leaving reviews that meant anything, objectively speaking. “One Star, This book is stupid” was as meaningless as a review could get, but it hurt my release week to have all those terrible ratings. And it hurt me creatively when I was trying to write, because those comments stayed in the back of my mind. I’d been countering them by having more people on my own review team, people who loved my books. But it had never occurred to me that there might be someone orchestrating the haters.
“Who?” I demanded.
“Your father!”
My head started to spin while I grappled with this bombshell. Of all the possibilities, this one had never crossed my mind.
“I was looking at the credit card statements, and he hired a virtual assistant to do some contract work,” Mom continued, correctly interpreting my silence as incredulity. “That’s not like him at all.”
Not at all. He liked to hire hot women he wanted to fuck. You can’t really leer at a virtual assistant.
“So I was going through his tablet,” Mom said, her voice vibrant with petty pride. “He forgot to take it with him today, and his password is his birthday.” She laughed a what a dumbass laugh. “He hired her to gather up reviewers to post fake reviews on Amazon for your books. I read their emails.”
He’d left an electronic trail. But then, of course he would. He was that arrogant. Shock began to turn to fury. “Can you screencap them all?” I needed the evidence so I could use it to have my revenge. I didn’t know exactly how yet, but something would present itself.
“Already done. I emailed them to you before I called.”
“Thanks.” If he’d been here, I would’ve punched him. Then run him over with my car a couple of times.
“He wants to win.”
The damned bet. I ground my teeth as the fury spiked and made the veins in my head throb. He’d wagered I’d fail, and I’d wagered I would top the Amazon Kindle chart. I had until the fifth of May to do it or admit failure and suffer public humiliation. So he was determined to see me beaten…apparently by any means necessary.
“Even if it means destroying my career.” And hurting me. I swallowed the bitter thought. “Is he home now?”
“No. He’s working overtime.”
Yeah, sure. If I believed that, I was some alien slug from outer space with nothing but air for a brain. A real pneumo-cephaloid. “Okay, I’ll deal with him later. Look, I have to go. I’ll have more time to chat after I turn in this book.”
“Sure. You go win, sweetie! I know you can do it!” Mom hung up.
I glared at the phone for a moment, breathing slowly to try to control the raging fury in my chest. It didn’t help. I wanted to wrap my hands around my father’s neck and strangle him, force him to his knees and make him say he was sorry. But since that wasn’t a viable course of action, I decided to call.
He answered on the fourth or fifth ring, sounding slightly out of breath. “Hello?”
A female murmured in the background and disgust twisted around my belly like a thorny vine. Who was he screwing now? His assistant? A client? Some random woman he’d picked up at a bar?
“Did you hire fake reviewers to trash my books?” I demanded.
“Oh. It’s you.” He sounded completely unconcerned.
What I wouldn’t do to wipe that irritatingly smug dismissiveness away! “Did you? And don’t even think about lying! I have evidence!” I quickly checked my email. Mom’s message with screencaps sat on the top of my inbox. The sight of it caused an internal tug of war between confidence and anger.
“Calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down?!”
“Jesus. Are you PMSing?”
I inhaled as another surge of fury swelled within me. He did not just say that! “You’re cheating to win the bet!”
“What ‘cheating’? We never agreed I couldn’t do that. If you don’t remember, call Holly Stein to explain the details of our contract.”