She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 144

(Chase)

I’m in the car before my mind really catches up with what just happened.

I have a vague auditory recollection of my own voice saying something with the words vapid, manufactured, and parasitic in it.

Then there’s a perfectly crisp visual recollection of Chloe tilting her head to the side with her phone in her hand.

I knew it had been recording inside the first three seconds of our conversation.

I watched her keep hold of it when she asked her question.

And I answered anyway.

This is the part I’m going to spend the rest of my life thinking about.

Reeves is driving.

He hasn’t said anything since I got in and told him to take me home.

I roll the window down two inches.

We’re on Sunset before I have my phone out and unlocked.

The clip is already up.

On more than one platform.

I watch it once.

It’s twenty-four seconds long.

Chloe cropped out the question. The clip starts in the middle of my answer.

What the world is now getting to watch is Chase Warren in a tuxedo, glass in hand, leaning into a small woman in white at a children's cancer gala.

He calls her vapid, manufactured, and parasitic in a voice that is, I have to admit, considerably louder than it needed to be.

Without the question, I look insane.

With the question, I would still look bad but I wouldn’t look insane.

I’d look like a man who had been asked, in front of many witnesses, whether it was true that I was trying to take a sick child away from her dying mother.

Chloe must be confusing dehydration with dying.

Or she was pushing my buttons on purpose.

Either way, I don’t get to attach the question.

The internet doesn’t work that way.

What’s been published is what people will see.

Chase Warren is an aggressive misogynist. Possibly with a drinking problem.

I close the app.

I open it again, because apparently I’m going to do that to myself a few more times tonight.

The hashtag I’m being given is #WarrenUnhinged.

I hadn’t previously known that the people who write hashtags worked this fast on a Saturday.

I close the app again.

I put the phone face-down on the seat next to me. I look out of the window.

"Reeves."

"Sir."

"Take me home, please. Not the apartment. The Estate."

"Yes, sir."

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