She spins to face me and the look in her eyes hits harder than any punch. Makeup still perfect. Hair still glossy. Dress still screaming money and South Beach.
But her eyes are bright and furious, and her mouth trembles with a rage she refuses to let spill over.
“You had her in your bed,” she says quietly.
The quiet in her voice cuts deeper than if she had screamed.
“Don’t you fucking touch me.”
“It wasn’t what it looked like,” I say.
She lets out a laugh that sounds broken and vicious at the same time.
“She was straddling you.”
“She walked in.”
“She walked in,” she repeats, voice sharpening, “or she climbed on?”
The bar’s silent around us. Shady and his woman pretend to check their phones, but their posture is wrong. Too still. Too attentive. Patched men don’t stare at the president’s business, but they see everything anyway.
A prospect stands frozen near the railing, eyes down, trying to disappear into the wall like he knows better.
Nobody moves.
Nobody steps in.
In this life, you don’t get between the president and the woman he’s trying not to lose.
I don’t give a damn who’s watching.
I drag her down the hallway toward my office stairs and shove the door open hard enough that it slams against the wall.
She stumbles inside and turns just as I shut the door behind us.
The lock clicks.
Her eyes snap to it immediately.
Her chest rises and falls faster.
“You don’t get to trap me,” she says.
“I’m not trapping you.”
“You just locked the door.”
“To keep everyone else out,” I bite back. “So they can’t watch you fall apart like it’s a show.”
She shoves past me and storms toward the desk. My desk. Papers scatter when her arm sweeps across the surface. Invoices slide off the edge and flutter across the floor like dead birds. Club books. Cash-run receipts. The boring parts of power.
A crystal ashtray tumbles down after them and explodes into glittering shards.
She stares at the broken pieces for half a second.
“Good,” she mutters. “Now it looks how it feels.”
I don’t move.
