One Night Stand novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Steps

Mateo's POV

I did not go home.

I drove to the tower and sat in the garage with the engine off until it was light enough to see the concrete.

I had read the petition on the stoop, standing next to the woman I had spent four years being afraid of.

I had read my cousin's name at the top of it.

I had sent that man a bottle of scotch.

By eight o'clock the press line had grown along Market Street, because every outlet in the city had a photograph of my back leaving a ballroom.

My communications director met me at the revolving doors with her hands already up.

"Do not go out there. Let me draft a statement for the afternoon."

"No."

"Mateo, the board is watching. Anything you say..."

"Give me ten minutes and no script."

She stared at me, and then she stepped aside.

I walked out onto the same granite steps.

It was the same rope, and the same wall of lenses, and the same marble where two guards had walked a woman backward in front of a camera.

Forty microphones came up.

"Mr. Kincaid, do you have a comment on the allegations from Saturday?"

"Is it true she was paid to photograph you?"

"Did you walk out because it's over?"

I put my hands in my pockets so they would stop shaking.

"I'm going to say this once," I said.

"Not three weeks ago, on these steps, a woman told me I had a son.

"I told you all I'd never met her.

"I said she was here for money.

"I watched her walk off these steps with two of my guards, and I let you film it."

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