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“You are married to your wife. I’m suggesting you stay hitched, for both your sakes.”

I go quiet, thinking.

“Jax, are you there? Are you hearing me?” Sas asks.

“Is this like the time you put salt on my cereal? Or when you switched your name in my phone to Mom and started sending me kinky messages intended for Dad?”

She snorts. Nice. “Both very funny, but no, I’m serious. Look, I’m well aware of the perils of fake dating but in this case, the court of public judgment will not be on your side.”

“Don’t fucking lawyer-speak me, Sas.” I sigh, scratching my head. How did that video leak? Sienna is going to kill me. “Supposing we do this…”

“Tell no one who doesn’t need to know,” she says, reading my mind.

“Mom and Dad?”

“I don’t want to say lie to family, Jax, but unless you want to hear how irate they are with your latest prank, lie like your life depends on it. Because, you know, it kind of does.”

I slump down into my locker stall. “Sas?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re fucking annoying.”

“Aww, little brother, I heart you, too. No one makes me feel more accomplished than my fuckwit brother. Call me if Sienna needs help trying to contain the video.”

She hangs up and I hang my head in my hands. Fuckwit is putting it lightly. What the hell was I thinking in Vegas?

If Sienna didn’t hate me before today, she sure will now. And I’m about to go find out how that goddamn video ended up online.

7

SEPTEMBER

Sienna

Department for Immigration

I have a ticket stub that might as well say I’ll be seen by a case officer in the year 3000 because the immigration services office is packed to bursting. It’s hot and humid and smelly. Full of people from every walk of life, though we all have one thing in common: we are grumpy as hell.

“Surely to God there’s got to be a more efficient way of dealing with citizenship and immigration in this day and age?” I mutter for my own ears, though the woman sitting next to me whispers, “Hear, hear.”

I open the laptop from my bag so that I can at least do something useful with this dead time.

From: Sienna

To: Carl

Subject: Constructive Discharge

Dear Chief Executive Officer

I hereby acknowledge your constructive discharge of me as an employee of the business I built from the ground up and to which I brought no less than half the turnover, clients and goodwill, on grounds that you shagged our secretary, while engaged to be married to me. In return for me not suing your adulterous ass, I accept your waiver of my restrictive covenants.

Have a wonderful life with Marcela until she realizes that you are significantly older than her, fast descending into midlife crisis, and that your dick is… tiny.

Yours,

Sienna