Dirty Little Lies (Dirty Little #2) (13 page)

“I already have one,” I say, and three pairs of eyes look at me, surprised. My purse is hanging from the back of the chair next to mine. I reach inside, and pull out a piece of paper, write the number of the point person from the security company on it, then slide it across the table.
 

“Where’s the number for yours?” the taller security guard asks.
 

“My what?”
 

“Your security team, Marisa,” Ben says, like I’m an idiot for not realizing this.
 

“I don’t have one.”
 

“Why the hell not?” he asks angrily. “How could you get one for Corinne but not for yourself?”
 

“I got one for Corinne right after my parents’ arrest,” I explain. “I didn’t get that because of the pictures.”
 

His eyes widen. “And still this managed to happen?” He looks over at the security team, and then back to me. “And why in the hell don’t you have security?”
 

“I was scared to contact anyone after the guy approached me. I didn’t want to do anything out of the ordinary.”
 

“Like try to protect yourself!” he yells.
 

“He’s got nude pictures of my sister that he could send out with the press of a button, Ben. Famous people can come back from that, but children of thieves embroiled in a national scandal don’t. I was scared!”

Ben sets his elbows on the table, leans forward, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “How is that not the first fucking thing you did after the scandal went public?” he says lowly. And I can tell by the look on his face when he glances over at me that the other question he really wants to ask is how he didn’t think of it before now.
 

“My lawyer told me I should, but-”

“But what? How was ensuring your own safety not at the top of your list?” he yells.

He’s right, it was stupid. It was incredibly shortsighted and dumb of me to put my own ego above my safety. But I’m going to tell him the truth, even if it gob smacks him.
 

“I didn’t want anyone to know I was scared. It seemed…weak.”

I don’t dare look at the security guys, who have surely heard idiotic things like that more than once. I do, however regret looking at Ben. His head is slumped down near the surface of the table, and he’s rubbing at the back of his neck impatiently. A tell-tale sign that he’s well on his way to losing it.
 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can hear it.
 

He takes a moment to get himself under control before he looks up at the larger security guy. “Take care of that.”
 

The man nods.
 

“What if this guy sees one of them, and gets the idea that I’ve told someone about what happened?”
 

“To be honest, I don’t give a fuck,” Ben says, angry. “How could you be so careless with your own safety?”
 

“No,” I say to the big guy. “I don’t want anything out of the ordinary going on. He can’t know!”
 

“Ma’am,” the smaller guy says, sounding incredibly patient. “We’re professionals, and if we do our job correctly - which we will, no one will be the wiser that you’ve got a detail on you. You have my word. I have a sister, I…I understand how terrible this must be for you. We won’t let anything happen to either of you.”
 

I pick at a growing hangnail on my left thumb, as I think about what he’s telling me. I feel an immense amount of relief now that Ben knows what’s going on. The nagging ache that I’ve felt in my chest, the inescapable worry about everything that was happening in my life is gone for the first time since all of this happened.
 

Hell, probably for the first time since my parents were arrested, if I’m being honest.
 

I really want to put all of this in someone else’s hands. Let them spend all day and night trying to find this shitbag, and to let them figure out who he is and why he went through me to get something from Ben.
 

I want it so desperately.
 

Ben looks like he wants that, too. Like the entire balance of his world hinges on me telling these men that yes, I’ll let them protect my sister and myself, and that I’ll trust them enough to get this done right.
 

I want to.
 

God, I want to.
 

It’s just difficult placing the fate of the person I love the most in this world in someone else’s hands.
 

“Okay,” I say, and I can actually feel the tension go out of Ben’s shoulders.
 

He looks like he can finally breathe again.
 

“Does Corinne know about this?” he asks.
 

From the look on the security guys’ faces, this was obviously going to be their next question.
 

“No,” I say, plucking at that hangnail again, needing to focus my attention on something other than the questions at hand. “I was hoping I could take care of this without her knowing. I…” I shrug. “I wanted to protect her.”
 

Ben reaches over, and cups the back of my head with his hand. He runs his fingers through my hair reassuringly, and he doesn’t look angry anymore. Just sympathetic, like for the first time since all of this started, he understands where I’m coming from.
 

“Hiding it from her isn’t protecting her,” he says gently.
 

“I know,” I say, feeling like I’m going to cry. I have to swallow past the painful lump in my throat. “I know that.”
 

“You need to tell her, Miss Blake,” tall security guy says. “We need information on the gentleman she was with that night. It might give us some clues as to who is behind this. If maybe he was part of it, too.”
 

I nod. I need to give myself a few minutes to mentally prepare for that. “Okay.”

“You’re staying with me,” Ben says. When I open my mouth to protest, he replies, “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
 

Part of me wants to make it incredibly clear that he can’t tell me what to do, that that’s not how this thing between us is going to work. But I desperately need his help, and this is the first time in days that I’ve felt safe. I’d be foolish to walk away from that, and I don’t want to be foolish anymore.
 

I want to get this taken care of and move on with my life.
 

“Okay,” I reply.
 

“Now you know what you have to do,” he says sympathetically.

Unfortunately, I do.
 

“Here,” he says, offering me his hand. He helps me up, and leads me down a long hallway into his bedroom. The view from here is amazing; he doesn’t even need to turn the lights on. The city lights coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows are all the light I need. The walls are brick, with no decoration. His bed is modern and neatly made, his watch and a few other things on his nightstand.
 

There’s nothing on the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, which is a strange thing to notice at a moment like this.
 

“Sit down,” he says, motioning to the edge of the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be out in the dining room if you need me.”
 

My heart skips a little at the thought of what I’m going to say to my sister, and part of me wants to ask him if he’ll stay with me so I don’t have to do it on my own. It would be nice to have a hand to hold onto when I deliver this news.
 

But, I’ve got to do it on my own.
 

Ben starts to walk away, but I tug on his hand, pulling him back to me gently. He knows exactly what I’m looking for, and doesn’t hesitate to lean down and press a soft kiss to my lips.
 

He whispers, “It’s going to be okay. She’s stronger than you think.”
 

I nod, and watch him walk out the door.

I give myself a minute, then dial Corinne’s number.
 

A soft knock on the door pulls me out of my thoughts.
 

I’m still sitting on the edge of Ben’s bed, with my cell phone cradled in my hands. I’ve been crying so much that my eyes are puffy and painful and throbbing. My cheeks are hot and covered with dried tears. I’m sure my makeup is a mess.
 

My head is pounding.
 

There’s so much left to be done, but all I want to do is curl up in a ball and fall asleep until the world looks bright and new again, and everything in my body stops hurting.
 

Corinne took it pretty well, all things considered, but I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less from my sister. She didn’t react so positively to me telling her that I had actually planned on going through with the blackmailer’s demand that I steal that program from Ben.
 

She was more upset by that than she was when I told her about the pictures the guy used to blackmail me with.
 

She cried and yelled, and asked me if I had learned anything at all from our parents, and reminded me that I didn’t have any room to hate them if I became someone just like them.
 

That didn’t feel very good.

She asked me to give her some time to think about things, and I told her that I would give her all the time that she needed. I let her know that Ben’s security team was going to be in touch with her, and that they were going to send new guys to make sure she was safe.
 

She didn’t fight me on it, so I knew this whole thing had her shaken up in a way that she didn’t want to admit.
 

“Hey,” Ben says as he pushes open the door. The light that is streaming in from the hallway strains my eyes, since they are already achy from all the crying. I squint, holding up a hand to block out the light. “Sorry.” He takes a step inside the room, and shuts the door behind him.
 

He walks over to where I’m sitting, and hands me a cup of something warm.
 

“Hot chocolate. With the tiny marshmallows that I know you like.”
 

I bring the cup up to take a whiff of the delicious smell, and let out a small moan.
 

The bed dips as Ben sits down next to me, and I blow on the hot liquid so I can take a sip.
 

“How did it go?” He places his hand on the small of my back, pressing his fingers into my skin. It’s reassuring and warm; it makes me cuddle against his side for a little comfort.
 

“Not well. Not terrible, either.”
 

“Is Corinne okay?” he asks, as his thumb slips underneath the hem of my shirt, and he rubs soothing circles against my skin.
 

“As okay as she can be. She’s shaken up, but I think she’ll be all right. She couldn’t give me much information on the guy. They had met at a bar that night.” She’d been reluctant to tell me that information, as if I of all people would judge her for having a one-night stand.
 

If only she knew all the terrible decisions I’d made in order to have sex. So, there’s no judgment coming from me, just concern. Because if she’s living in the kind of world where people are looking to fuck her for blackmailing purposes, then her life just got a whole lot more complicated, and probably a whole lot lonelier.
 

And that just makes me even angrier at my parents.
 

 
“The guys are going to call her now. They’ve got a team assembled, and they’re going to send them over to meet her, and look in on this guy.”

 
I look down, cradling my head in my hands. “She didn’t know him, Ben. What if this guy sought her out as part of this plan? I don’t want her living the kind of life where she has to be wary of every single guy who comes up to her in a bar.”
 

“It’s probably not a bad thing for her to be careful,” he says, running his hand up and down my back.

“It’s one thing to be careful, but it’s another to have to worry that the guy is just having sex with you so that he can use pictures of it to blackmail your sister. That’s a world I don’t want her living in.”
 

Ben sighs, and wraps me up in his arms. “That’s a world she’s living in now, regardless. And that isn’t your fault, Marisa. That’s your parents’ fault.”
 

“But we don’t even know why this man chose me to go after you,” I protest. “Maybe it is my fault.”
 

Ben shakes his head, then lets out a long sigh. “You know I’ve always been a fixture in those goddamn tabloids. We were in them all the time when we were together-”

“And when we were breaking up,” I add, because he’s right. The two of us were fixtures in all those gossip rags back when we were dating. As the children of two high-profile families, our relationship was seen as a business merger as much as it was a romance by some people in the press.