Read Online The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) by Heidi Joy Tretheway - Free Book Online

get me to take the tough-love angle and cut her off, but as a contract lawyer, I was pulling in double his carpenter’s wages. I overruled him.
    “Tell me what you really need, Mother. You don’t have to show up at my office to ask for a check.”
    “I wouldn’t if you’d return my calls. I have a new cell phone, you know. It works.” She fishes in her purse and flashes me a big one, expensive, at least a couple hundred dollars.
    “Why are you asking me for money if you can afford that ? And a plane ticket?”
    “Borrowed the cash from my neighbor. Told him you’d pay it back.”
    “You told him I’d pay?” I’m sputtering with anger.
    “Well, when my daughter’s on the news every other night, that’s pretty good collateral, right?” Again, she gives me that flinty smile, as if she’s just outsmarted the world.
    “Collateral damage is more like it,” I mutter, silently calculating how much I could scrape out of my checking account to make her go away. Twenty-five hundred, tops.
    “Don’t you get a snippy tone with me, Missy,” my mother rebukes me. “Do you know how many reporters have this number?”
    She shakes her phone at me again and it chills me. Ohgodno. Please don’t let my mother speak to reporters. And yet, Jared warned me about this immediately after my nomination. Reporters would be coming out of the woodwork to track down old friends, relatives, whatever dirt they could scrape up.
    Hence, Jared’s very thorough vetting process.
    I summon my mildest tone for my mother. “Oh? Are you getting calls? My campaign manager, Sasha, is the best person to talk to. I could give you her number to pass along to the press if they call.”
    “Don’t be stupid. They’re not calling for you. They’re calling for me. They want to interview me. The future vice president’s mother. They want to know all about what you were like growing up.” She says it in a sing-song voice but it’s so much more than a taunt.
    It is a cold-blooded fucking threat. And now I see that this isn’t the bailout on rent she’s expecting.
    This is payday.
    It’s extortion.
    “And you declined to be interviewed.” I try to keep my statement neutral, but I need it to be a prayer, a desperate plea not to do this. Do not fuck up my run for the White House by trotting out all of our dirty laundry.
    “For now,” she says. “But they offered me money. A lot of money. And it occurred to me that you might be willing to match their offer, maybe sweeten it.”
    I sit down in my desk chair, utterly defeated. “How much?” My voice barely carries, but her sharp ears catch the question. Of course they do.
    “They offered ten thou. So I thought, maybe twelve? Fifteen to make it even?”
    “Even for whom ?” I’m spitting venom again, against this woman who birthed me and raised me and knocked my self-confidence down to rubble on a daily basis. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
    “For me. I brought you into this world. Are a few handouts here and there all you’ve got for me? You didn’t even call me when you got nominated.”
    Because why would I call someone who’s always been disappointed in me? No, I spent my nomination night with the two women who love me unconditionally: Aliza and Mama Bea.
    “I’m sorry,” I say, the apology acid on my tongue. “I’m sorry for not calling you. I’m sorry these handouts aren’t enough. But I’m not rich. I spent most of Seth’s life insurance money on my first campaign and the rest on my condo. I get a congressional salary, which is less than I made as an attorney.”
    “A hundred and seventy-five thou is a lot more than I make. You get a condo and I get a shit apartment. How is that fair? And if you get elected, you’ve got a fifty-grand pay raise coming. You’ve got money to burn.”
    Shit. Damn the Internet and its instant answers about public officials’ salaries. “I haven’t been elected. And I don’t have ten grand just sitting around in my checking