Alpha Billionaire Series
Valentine’s Day Proposal Chapter 13

CHARLES

I pored over those damn briefs for hours. My head was really not in this game at all, but this is the last court case I would argue before the election, and I had to smash it. A capital murder case involving a husband accused of beating his wife to death and hiding her body in their garage. He claimed innocence, but the evidence pointed to him. I didn't know how to get him off except to discredit every witness the prosecution brought to the stand-which by the looks of it would be simple. "Knock knock." Peter's smiling face appeared in my doorway, and he entered, holding a file under his arm. His winter coat had been replaced by a light windbreaker, spring finally arriving in DC. His hair was windblown though, an indicator of what was to come when I left work today.

"Come on in. Preparing for trial. Starts tomorrow." I gestured at the seat across from my desk. "I take it you have good news?" I hoped it was good news. I'd been rising in the polls for weeks, ever since taking his advice to marry Willow. I had to admit that was a genius scheme, and despite the added stress at home-which was getting lighter by the day now that I'd talked some sense into her-it was working.

"Well, I'd love to say good news was all I had, but I come with some things you need to think about." He slapped the file on my desk, and I looked up at him surprised. His expression was foreboding, as if what the file contained was dangerous.

I pushed the briefs to the side and took his file, opening it as he sat back in the seat and waited. There was nothing in my past that the media or my opponents could dredge up and smear me with, so whatever was in this file had to be about Willow. And given the fact that I'd just calmed the raging ocean of our bitter back and forths, I wasn't keen to rock the boat again.

My eyes pored over the document, screen grabs of Willow entering a women's clinic, images of her exiting the same clinic. There was a flyer from the clinic with all of the services they offered, the word "abortion" circled in red three times. And the last image was striking. Willow stood with her mother at the entrance. Both of them were in tears. I looked up from that file confused.

"I don't get it." I closed the file and shook my head. "What does this prove? Women go to that clinic for all sorts of things, not just abortion."

"True, but your opponents won't see it that way. All they will see is that Willow went to a place known as an abortion clinic to most people. They will smear you through the mud for this." He clicked his tongue. "Do you know her? Like really know her? Because what if she really did have an abortion? This was supposedly only about six months after your breakup. If that's the case..."

"Willow wouldn't do that. If she were pregnant, she would have told me." I opened the file again, looking at each paper in it. I missed the image of her in a pharmacy, timestamped at only a few hours after the clinic photo. She had a pint of ice cream in her hand and a white paper bag, the kind they put prescriptions in.

"No, Willow wouldn't have done that to me."

"Would she have told you, Charles? Or would she have run off, changed her phone number, never told anyone where she went, including her best friend, and pretended like you didn't exist?" Peter's expression of sympathy rattled me. I realized he wasn't here only as my campaign manager. He was offering his friendship to me, and by that token I was overwhelmed.

"You're wrong, Peter." I closed the file and pushed it back across the desk toward him. "Willow would never do that. And besides, we were really careful. She was on the pill; we always used protection."

"Always?" Peter leaned forward and took the file, eyeing me. "Every single time? Even the night you proposed?"

I wracked my brain, now worried that Peter could be right. "I swear it." I thought back to that night. I got pretty wasted, which was the reason why I wanted Willow to remove that image from her Facebook. "I don't know." "Because I have my sources, and they say there was talk about a pregnancy scare... Maybe she didn't tell you to spare you?"

"Who are the sources?"

"Sources... Listen, the point is you need to have a talk with her. If we come out with this first before anyone else gets to it, then we have the advantage. We can spin it any way we want-mom was going to die, baby was defective, you name it." "No." I stood, now angry. "And why the hell are you looking into her anyway?" Suddenly I felt defensive. Willow deserved privacy as much as anyone else.

"It's my job, Charles. It's what I do. I hunt up what the enemy might replace and hide it before they do. You run on a prolife ticket. Can you imagine the backlash if they see this sort of shit? Abortion or not, she's hidden something from you."

"I'm a moderate. I'm pro-choice. She had every right to make whatever decision she wanted." I argued for her, but the bile on my tongue was proof that this particular choice hit a little too close to home.

"Have that conversation and let me do damage control." Peter stood and walked out calmly, but I was left with this sinking feeling that my world was about to get a lot messier.