“Have you told Lucas yet?”Dylan asks, and my entire body tenses.
Jess shakes her head.“It just came in.”
“But you’re going to tell him,”Dylan presses.
I watch as Jess stands and moves to the window, her back to the camera. When she turns, her expression is pained.“It’s complicated,”she says.“I promised Lucas I wouldn’t dig into his father’s affairs. That his family was off-limits unless he gave me permission.”
“But this came to you,”Dylan points out.“You didn’t go looking for it.”
“Do you think that distinction will matter to him?”
As I pause the video, a cold feeling spreads through my chest. Whatever this is, whatever she knows about my father, she’s deliberately keeping it from me.
I force myself to continue watching.
“I need to verify the claims first,”Jess is saying.“Check Martin’s background and employment records, see if there’s a pattern of behavior.”
Martin? My mind races, trying to place the name. A donor? A colleague of my father’s?
“And then?”Dylan asks.
“I don’t know. Journalistically, I have an obligation to pursue this story. But personally…”
“You’re worried about Lucas’s reaction.”
“Wouldn’t you be? This isn’t just any story. This is his family.”
I stop the video, unable to watch more. The betrayal cuts deeper than I expected. After everything we’ve shared, after her promise in the Hamptons, she’s investigating my father behind my back. Worse, she’s deliberating whether to even tell me about it.
I close the files, my mind reeling. Every moment of closeness, of supposed trust between us these past months, has now been cast in a different light. Was I just a convenient source of information? A way to get closer to political stories she couldn’t otherwise access?
The rational part of my brain argues that I’m overreacting, that I should wait to hear her explanation. But the part of me that’s spent a lifetime watching my father’s political calculations, my mother’s careful compromises, and every relationship in my orbit reduced to strategic value drowns out that rationality.
I’ve been a fool to think what Jess and I have could be different. To think that someone whose career is built on uncovering secrets would respect mine. To believe, even for a moment, that our unexpected marriage could survive the collision of our professional worlds.
My phone buzzes with a text.
JESS
Home late tonight. Working on a story.
Of course she is.
I stare at the message, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. I should confront her, demand answers.
LUCAS
No problem. I’ve got work, too.
And if she thinks our marriage, real or fake, can survive her betrayal, she’s about to discover just how wrong she is.
thirty-five
. . .
Jess
I can’t think straightin the office, not with the documentary cameras hovering and certainly not with the weight of Logan Carmichael’s transgressions sitting in a manila folder on my desk.
