Free The Bluffing Game by Verona Vale

believe you had to go through so many different lawyers to find one who’d tell you this.”
    Finally. What I said had sunk in, and damage control now went to Sterling. He wouldn’t like his VPs telling him this was his own fault, but to an extent it was.
    “Miss Jansen isn’t the first lawyer to tell me this, it’s true,” Sterling said. “If we had simply blown them off, told them they were getting nothing, and not shown even a hint of fear that we couldn’t handle the bad press, that would have been the end of it. But I wanted to do right by all of you, and prevent this PR crisis from ever happening. So I tried to compromise. Despite my lawyer’s best advice, I tried to make things end amicably. I thought if I could make them happy again, I could turn an enemy into a friend. I didn’t realize what kind of people they were.”
    The angry man on the screen shook his head. “These are roaches, Sterling, not people. I thought you knew better. They saw a man with a sack of cash and figured they could bully him into sharing it. I’ve seen these people all my life. I come to places like your island to get away from them.”
    Sterling remained steady in his seat, and said nothing, just put on a smile for his biggest investor.
    The PR head said, “Jesus, Victor. Next time just let your lawyers handle it, okay? Stick to what you do best. Don’t worry, I think we got your back on this one.”
    The atmosphere of the room had completely changed now. No one was looking at me anymore. They saw Sterling the same way the people suing him did: as weak, fallible, and overconfident. Willing to bend under pressure. That wasn’t where I had hoped the meeting would go, but Sterling had brought it on himself. He hadn’t trusted his lawyers, he hadn’t trusted his PR department’s proficiency, and he hadn’t trusted his investors not to bail on him. No wonder that the day I met him he had been wound up tighter than a high-tension wire. He saw himself as alone. He trusted no one.
    Except, somehow, me. I wondered how long it would last.
    After the meeting, I found him alone by the piano in his living room. He wasn’t playing, just sitting there with his arms resting on his legs, hands dangling. He stared at the keys.
    “I finally do the right thing, and all they care about is how long it took me to get there. They trust me even less now.”
    “Distrust begets itself,” I said.
    “So you’re on their side.”
    “I’m on your side. But if you want them to trust you, you have to trust them.”
    “These days I can’t afford to trust anyone,” he said.
    “You should ask whether you can afford not to.”
    “I’ll do whatever it takes at this point,” he said.
    “All we can do now is wait.”
    His phone chimed, and he looked at it.
    “The hearing date’s just been set,” he said.
    “How long?”
    “Three weeks.”
    “They’ll wait until the last minute. Try to psych you out again.”
    “I know. That’s why I booked you a flight home tomorrow.”
    It felt like a slap on the cheek. “Tomorrow?”
    “Until they call another meeting, you don’t have a reason to stay, do you?”
    His look was enough. So that was it, then. This was his way of saying he didn’t want to continue our affair.
    “Not if you don’t have one for me.”
    He said nothing. I left him there to sulk while I packed my things. I passed Andrea in the hallway and she smiled, the subtlest hint of malice in her smile that sent a chill down my back at her happiness to see me go.

 
     
     
     
    Seven
     
     
     
    I didn’t see him in the morning, and I didn’t speak a word to Andrea either, taking my own suitcase and ignoring her offer to roll it down to the plane for me. If business was business, I had no reason not to be severe. I would fly back to the island when the opposition came dejectedly into a meeting and asked for whatever they thought Sterling might be willing to pay them to make the whole thing go away. And then it would be