High Card Bluff (House of Cards Series 5)

(16) The Lull

Adrianna sat surrounded by a council of women, hosting their diverse opinions because something truly unfortunate had happened; after the episode of 'To Build a Model' aired, her name had gone viral. Someone, likely one of the contestant models, had filmed the incident with Desmond Pope on their cell phone and posted it online.

The internet had lost its collective shit from there.

It was a hell of a thing to wake up to for a Friday she'd been expecting to take it easy on. Jerred's weekly text to Tom had indicated that the girls had poker and the guys would be racing, and she wanted to have a lazy day before going to Tom's for the weekend. Instead Honey James had woken her up with the news.

Less than four hours later she'd gotten Honey, Ophelia, Maddison, Grace, Maya, and her mom all together. The first thing they did was watch the video posted, something Adri immediately suspected was the doing of the anarchistic Erin. She'd been the least impressed with the modeling world, and had enough back bone to do what she felt was the right thing. That didn't make it any easier to see a pretty up close if shaky view of the takes leading up to Desmond reaching out and actually ripping her top open on camera. All her years of no nudity and using modesty covers basically went up in flames because that was definitely her nipple piercing on the goddam internet.

"I got a tattoo around mine, don't worry, I get it." Maddison James had offered with a comforting pat to the back of her hand at one point as they continued to watch the video. It helped, a part of Adri feeling understandably exposed by all of this.

But it was properly eerie to see what her face looked like as she reacted to the show host's attack.

Her face went cold in a way she hadn't seen before and her hand snapped his fingers back with an audible crack before the more familiar sight of her kneeing him in the balls. "I expected better of you Desmond Pope" she sounded almost... bored by his actions, as if he were beneath her anger and the clip cut off after that.

After watching it with half her family, and knowing the men would see it too eventually, Adri expected to cry, feel angry, or even have a rare panic attack. Instead she sighed. "$20 on dad saying he's going to skin him," she put the bill on the table and a second later her mother slapped her own down.

"$20 he's not able to talk at all, just goes all scary quiet." she wasn't exactly laughing. "That's the finger break Salali did to Stuart when they moved me out of that house."

Grace put the next $20, "Nitwit is going to flip his shit, not just for all this Ads," she waved at the tablet that they'd watched the video on, "but also because you gave me those shorts I see you wearing in the video."

"As often as possible I ask wardrobe if I can take items home. Most of the time they're happy to get rid of it instead of cleaning it and repacking, and often items are altered to fit me anyway so they're not reusable. Those and the top I took but the boots were murder." Adri shrugged as if it were no matter. "Keep the shorts and corset, I never wore the one and the other already has better memories from your use."

Honey James straight up dropped a $100 on the pile of twenties, " the sisters when I say that Westley is going of hang that man out a window before the end of the month." Her bet made Ophelia give that marvelously disgusted sigh but she didn't argue.