Need To

“I’ll be right back, I’m gonna check this voicemail,” Emmi announced in her peppy tone as she whipped around to excuse herself out the door.

Bella and Dean nodded and waved her off. The both of them made sure she was out of earshot.

“We can’t let this get out. It could burn the crap out of her whole campaign,” Dean grumbled through his teeth.

“But it’s going to get out. We either get her ahead of it, or we decide how we survive the firestorm,” Bella said as she nervously tugged at her rich brown lockes. Her retort transferred her worry to Dean, making him grimace and pace.

“OK, okay, let’s say we get ahead of it. We need a way we can spin this into a positive,” Dean said as he pulled out his smartphone to start taking notes. Bella walked over to get Dean to focus on her.

“No, stop. We need to tell her. We are supposed to be on the front lines for her, we need to be the one’s who break the news,” Bella corrected him. Dean stopped and looked her in the eye. He nodded, putting away the article.

It followed a lot of hard swallows. The two budding agents had to sit Emmi down and reveal an emerging smear campaign from a tabloid. Emmi’s past wasn’t going to stay buried forever and it was going to come out with a bang.

Emmi got real quiet as she combed through the details. Bella and Dean guided her to a secluded booth table. When Emmi finished reading, two glasses of water later, she set the phone down on the table in front of her. Her hands shook, her shoulders shook and Bella could see the inner seething boiling over.

Emmi’s jaw clenched tightly. She drew a sharp breath in and brought out the most serious tone she had. “Everything in this was said in confidence.”

“I believe you, we believe you,” Dean told her.

“Can we go over this with you?” Bella asked her.

“Yes,” Emmi stated flatly.

“Great, wine or cocktail?”

Emmi thought to herself, rubbing her temple to push the stress down and keep herself from crying. “Double vodka,” she answered. Every new detail made her shudder. Combing through response strategies brought out her rude teenage years highlighted in the article. What started as stunned shock was quickly fanned into flames of righteous anger.

“No, making a late night call would NOT be a good idea,” Bella agreed to one of Emmi’s more conservative approaches.

“Then how else can I throw this back in their faces?” Emmi asked loudly, desperately wanting to even the tables.

“You wanna own up to it? Play the responsible woman acknowledging her past blah blah blah?” Dean asked, simplifying the follow through of the response.

“As long as it works,” Emmi said with a scowl.

“Darlin’, you got the reputation and popularity swell to ride. You attack this with an honest apology tour and we’ll see you come out even more wholesome. Kill them with kindness,” Bella said with a sweetly sinister grin.

Emmi raised her shot of vodka to announce, “It’s gonna be a slaughter.”