Karen gave me a pitying look. “Oh, poor naïve little Meg.” She clicked her tongue. “Hunter doesn’t love you. He’s been using you.”
“Why do you care? You don’t even like me. Why are you telling me this?” I cried.
“Us women have to stick together. There are lines we can’t let men cross,” she said as she took her phone out of her purse. “And one of those lines is revenge porn.”
“No.” The room spun.
“All those dirty pictures you sent? I overheard him and his brothers talking about how they were going to release them to the public right before the election to ruin your chances of winning.” Karen gave me a sad face.
“He wouldn’t.”
“He asked me to do it,” Karen said. “Look.” She handed me her phone. I scrolled through all the pictures and text messages I had sent Hunter.
“He asked me to go to the next state over and upload them online anonymously at a McDonald’s so they couldn’t be traced back to him. I told him I would, but I haven’t yet.”
“Are you blackmailing me?” I screeched.
Karen was offended. “Of course not! I’m just giving you a heads-up. I’m not going to put them online, but Hunter will figure it out sooner or later. And then he’ll make someone else post them.”
“Oh my god,” I moaned.What am I going to do?“I can’t believe him.”
“You can’t pretend like you didn’t know he was capable of something like this,” Karen told me. “You know what kind of man he is.”
* * *
I did knowwhat kind of man Hunter was.
“He’s a liar and a bastard,” I fumed. He also wasn’t stupid. The only way Karen would have had those pictures was if Hunter had given them to her personally.
God, I was so dumb!
I packed the last box in the car, slammed the trunk shut and turned to head to the driver’s-side door when I almost crashed into a man’s chest. For a second, I thought it was Hunter. The man reached out, his large hand a vice around my forearm.
“Meg.”
I peered up at the man. “Leif?”
He had shaven, and it was clear where Hunter and his brothers had gotten their looks from. “I came to see if you had rethought my offer.” He released me.
I looked away. Hunter was clearly about to screw me over big time. If those pictures were out online, it wouldn’t just ensure that I didn’t win the election. My reputation would be ruined. I wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. My only option would be to become homeless or totally dependent on Hunter.
Screw the rules. Screw Hunter. I have to get him before he gets me,my mind decided with dreadful clarity. “What kind of information do you have?” I asked Leif.
He smiled. “Let’s talk business. I have information that will sink Hunter. But it’s not free.”
“How much money do you want?” I didn’t have much left. I had just received my paycheck, though, for my mayoral duties. Plus, I still had some money from the personal loan from the bank I’d taken out. I had been hoping to pay off my credit card debt, but if those pictures got out, I would have bigger problems to worry about than a late credit card payment.
“Twenty-five hundred dollars,” Leif told me. “You can Venmo it to me.”
That was a lot of money. It was all the money I had.
“This will win you the election and put Hunter in his place, for good,” Leif promised, holding out the envelope.
“Okay,” I said quickly, before I lost my nerve. I took out my phone and typed in the username he gave me that would allow me to transfer the money.
My heart hammered. His phone chimed.
“Received. Thank you very much, Meg.” He handed me the envelope. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake. What if there wasn’t anything incriminating in there at all?
