These Games We Play

chapter thrity two:makeovers with a side of im sorry

These were the facts: Ethan had tried to run my car off the road. He had a weapon that was a likely match for the bullets Oren had recovered. He had a felony record. The police took my statement. They asked questions about the shooting. About Ethan. About Pip.

Eventually, I was escorted back to Hawthorne House. The front door flew open before Alisa and I had even made it to the porch. Nash stormed out of the house, then slowed when he saw us.

"You want to tell me why I'm just now getting word that the police hauled Pip out of here?" he asked Alisa. I'd never heard a Southern drawl sound quite like that. Alisa lifted her chin.

"If she's not under arrest, she had no obligation to go with them."

"She doesn't know that!" Nash boomed. Then he lowered his voice and looked her in the eye. "If you'd wanted to protect her, you could have." There were so many lawyers to that sentence, I couldn't begin to untangle them, not with my brain focused on other things. Pip. The police have Pip.

"I'm not in the business of protecting every sad story that comes along," Alisa told Nash. I knew she wasn't just talking about Pip, but that didn't matter.

"She's not a sad story," I gritted out. "She's my sister!"

"And, more likely than not, an accessory to attempted murder." Alisa reached out to touch my shoulder. I stepped back.

"My sister is not a murderer and she wouldn't hurt me." I believed that. I needed to believe that.

"She wouldn't." That came out as a whisper. I just had to keep telling myself that, so I kept believing it.

"That bastard's been texting her," Nash said beside me. "I've been trying to get her to block him, but she feels so damn guilty-"

"For what?" Alisa pushed. "What does she feel guilty for? If she's got nothing to hide from the police, then why are you so concerned about her talking to them?"

Nash's eyes flashed. "You're really going to stand there and act like we weren't both raised to treat 'never talk to the authorities without a lawyer present' like a Commandment?"

I thought about Pip, alone in a cell. She probably wasn't even in a cell, but I couldn't shake the image.

"Send someone," I told Alisa shakily. "From the firm." She opened her mouth to object, and I cut her off.

"Do it." I might not hold the purse strings now, but I would someday. She worked for me.

"Consider it done," Alisa said.

"And leave me alone," I told her fiercely. She and Oren had kept me in the dark. They'd moved me around like a chess piece on a board. "All of you," I said, turning back toward Oren. I needed to be alone and by alone I meant I needed to find Cam and Lia. I needed them because if I couldn't trust Pip, they were all I had. I needed my friends.

Nash cleared his throat. "You want to tell her about the media consultant waiting in the sitting room, Lee-Lee, or should I?"

☆☆☆☆

I agreed to sit down with Alisa's high-priced media consultant. Not because I had any intention of going through with tonight's charity gala, but because it was the one way I knew of to make sure that everyone else left me alone. I had one condition though. That Lia and Cam were to be present the entire time and everyone else was to wait outside. Oren listened and within minutes I was in a meeting with the media consultant named Landon. Lia and Cam sat on the other side of the room eating snacks and sending me thumbs up.

"There are three things we're going to work on today, Evangeline ." Landon told me. I had no idea I had no idea if that was her first name or her last. She was an elegant Black woman with a posh British accent and I was trying my best not to be snappy at her since she was only doing her job.