My (Mostly) Secret Baby - Penelope Bloom Page 0,74

without a moment’s pause.

Luna gave me the most triumphant smile imaginable, and I couldn’t help laughing.

“What?” Damon asked. “It’s the tastiest color,” he said, winking at me.

Oh, I thought. Luna already had this conversation with him. It was a set up. Sly little turd.

I noticed someone walking by our table had stopped before I saw who it was. When I looked up, I felt a jolt of disgust to see Trish Jameson standing there. She didn’t quite have the same cocky, superior air about her that she usually had.

“Really, Damon?” she asked.

Damon calmly took off his sunglasses and looked up at her. “Is there something you needed, Trish?”

“To tell you that you’re making a big mistake. You realize the reason I was able to steal clients from under your nose was because this little dream of yours is so ridiculous, right? It scares away athletes. It makes you look soft, and the best don’t want to be represented by someone soft.”

“Great,” Damon said. “Because our new business model doesn’t rely on getting the best. I can feel good about what I’m doing, and coincidentally, I also get to know you don’t have anything to hang over my head.”

A little tick of rage flashed across her features. In that moment, I suspected keeping Damon under her designer heel had meant far more to Trish than I’d even imagined. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Speaking of mistakes,” Damon said slowly.

I felt goosebumps spread across my body in preparation. He and I had been working on something in secret for the past couple weeks, and I knew he was about to drop it on Trish’s head like a pile of rotten eggs. I couldn’t wait.

“We hired a few accountants to look into your agency. A few little red flags popped up for me over the years, but I never had time to really look into them. The numbers you liked to brag to me about, the deals your clients had, their publicly listed earnings. There were some discrepancies. But once you took Tia and Trevor off my hands, I had enough time to really look into it.”

Trish’s face was getting progressively redder by the minute.

“I wonder what your athletes would say if they knew you’ve been embezzling money from them? If they knew you are skimming percentages off their earnings in every single way you possibly can?”

“Who did you talk to?” Trish demanded.

Damon laughed. “Nobody, yet. We wanted you to know what we know—to know we have all the proof we need to bring your shit-caked empire down brick by brick. And when we feel like it, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

“You’re wrong,” Trish said. She waved her finger between us—even at Luna, who pretended she was trying to bite at it. “You’re so wrong.”

With that, she stormed off as she jabbed her long nails at her phone screen.

“What do you think she’ll do?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Damon said. “But I think she bought it.”

“What did she buy?” Luna asked.

“We played a little bit of a trick on her. But she was a mean woman, and sometimes mean people need to learn lessons.”

Luna nodded wisely. “Jimmy at Pre-K bites people. We should get a tiger to bite him.”

“Uh, not exactly like that,” I said.

The truth was, Damon and I had investigated Trish like we said. Except our digging hadn’t turned up any hard evidence. All we had were clues and hints, but nothing concrete enough to do anything with. We ultimately decided to bluff and see if we could force her to panic. Our accountants were watching every angle they could of her finances, and the way she reacted to our accusation might end up bringing the truth to light.

Whatever happened, it had been almost entirely worth it to see the look of pure fear in her eyes.

“No,” Luna said quietly. “A hippo.” She whispered the word like it held some sort of mystical power. “Jimmy needs to get bit by a hippo.”

If the hippo was willing to bite Trish while he was at it—maybe Tia and Trevor, too—I’d personally go pay him for his services.

39

Damon

Luna was riding the pink scooter I’d bought her around my apartment. In just a few days, she’d mastered all sorts of dangerous maneuvers that had Chelsea constantly reminding her to be careful. At the moment, she seemed to be trying to learn to drift around the corner from the dining room to the library.

My laptop screen was open to a story about Trish Jameson and the fallout when