I wave him off.
"Rough night," I say. "But nothing you have to worry about. It's all under control."
I get up from the couch and move over to my office chair, taking a seat at my desk.
"You turned your phone off," Silas says in an accusing tone, walking around the desk and building himself up in front of me. "You can't fucking do that, Jared."
"Calm your shits, it was just for a few hours."
"What the hell is going on?"
"Nothing," I assure him, leaning back in my chair and trying to be as nonchalant about the whole matter as I possibly can. "All you need to know is that the girl is gone. I don't need her. On the contrary, I've decided that she poses an unnecessary risk. My campaign is better off without her."
Silas rolls his eyes.
"And no, before you ask," I hurry to say, "I won't be looking for a new one. I'm sure we can do this without a fake girl at my side, don't you think?"
Our eyes meet across the desk, and I try to make sense of his expression while he processes my words.
"What happened?" he wants to know.
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Jared, of course this concerns me," he insists. "But you don't have to tell me. Would you allow me to guess?"
I look at him, knitting my eyebrows. "Whatever you may think, you're-"
"She was approached by the press, wasn't she?" he interrupts, causing me to shut up and be all ears within a split second.
"She was approached by someone who offered her a lot of money to sell him some dark secrets about you, wasn't she? She had a very lucrative offer to sell you out, and you think she was ready to do it?"
I continue to fixate on him with a frown. "She told you?"
Silas shakes his head. "No, Jared, she didn't tell me. She didn't have to tell me because I already knew about it before it even happened."
"What?"
I can practically feel myself going pale as he speaks.
"What the fuck are you talking about, Silas?"
He looks at me, biting his lip and turning around to close the door before he deigns me with an explanation.
"You know, I've had my doubts about her, as have you, with her being a reporter and all," he starts. "I didn't trust her, and I didn't like the way you were with her. She grew to be a little too special to you, Jared, and that could pose an actual problem, if she can't be trusted."
I glare at him, twirling my hand to beckon him to go on when he adds an unnecessary pause for emphasis.
"So I wanted to make sure that she could be trusted and that she was sticking to the contract, even if someone presented her with a pretty lucrative opportunity, offering more than you were willing to offer her, a temptation that would be impossible to refuse if she was the person I thought she was," he continues.
"What are you trying to say?"
"I staged it," he says. "I hired a guy to make her believe there was money to be made, a financial gain bigger than what you've promised her, if she was ready to betray you. We did some research on her. I even sent the guy by her old office. It was a pure coincidence that she showed up that same day, getting into that argument with one of her colleagues. Our guy saw it, and we thought it was time to make our move. She seemed unstable and troubled."
My blood is boiling. She never told me about this. I know that she went back to her co-working office a while ago because she had to clear her desk. But she never mentioned that she ran into any trouble that day.
My heart is racing, beating in loud and aggravated beats against my rib cage. I doubt that a person could feel any more betrayed than I do right now.
"You paid someone to trap her?" I ask.
Silas sighs. I growl with anger, jumping up from my seat ready to storm the fuck out - or to burn this entire place down.
"Look, I knew you'd be mad," he says, raising his hand in a placatory gesture. "But let me finish because I'm pretty sure you're going to like this last part."
"Oh, you think?" I bark at him. "Why is that? Because now at least we know that she's a fucking traitor?"
"No, no, no," he hurries to say, shaking his head. "Because she didn't take the bait."
I freeze, staring at him in disbelief. "What did you just say?"
"I just heard from my contact, the guy I hired," he says. "I mean, it didn't look like she was going to take it to begin with. When he first talked to her at that event, she basically told him to fuck off and leave her alone. But she appeared shocked and confused. The fact that she took his business card left us with a hint of doubt."
"She took his business card?"
"She did," Silas confirms. "But as it turns out, it was only to tell him to fuck off again and make it very clear that she was not interested. And this time, she was very firm about it."
We remain in a silent stare, Silas waiting for a reaction and me trying to process what he just told me.
"But... you never set her up in the first place?" I want to know. "You just sent this guy?"
He nods. "I don't know what else has been going on between you two, but all I can say is that she didn't bite. It didn't sound like she was considering it for even a second."
I huff. "Yet she waited until this morning to call him."
"To tell him again," Silas clarifies.
I turn away from him, sighing and rubbing my temples.
I need to go home. Right fucking now.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jared
I find her curled up in the armchair. She has moved it next to the window, with its back turned halfway toward the elevator and facing the window in front of her. It's still early in the day and the sun is bathing the city skyline below in a blazing light.
I can't see her face, and while I know that she must have heard the elevator, she doesn't move an inch, not acknowledging my presence whatsoever. Instead, she keeps her eyes glued to the window, watching the city breathing below her.
The elevator doors close noisily behind me, and I wait, burying my hands in my pants' pockets while I slowly approach her. She still doesn't move, doesn't even turn her head when I stop right next to her. She tries to look calm and unfazed, but I can tell by the way she’s breathing that she's tense.
"What now?" she asks, still not looking at me. "Are you kicking me out? Is that it?"
I'm standing next to her, my stance wide and close to the floor-length window. There's a certain thrill to standing so close to the edge and looking right into the abyss at the tip of my feet, despite the lack of actual danger. I know I couldn't break this glass and fall even if I tried. But it looks like I could, and that's enough to make my heart race at the thought of it.
"Why did you write these things?"
I'm keeping my eyes away from her, fixating on the view below. Despite everything that Silas told me, I still need to know why she wrote those words. Even if she refused to fall for his bait, she may still have other plans that no one knows about.
Button sighs next to me, clinging to the blanket wrapped around herself.