Cinderella Blackmail (Barely a Fairy Tale - Sweet Version Book 1) Read online

  Cinderella Blackmail

  Barely a Fairy Tale (Sweet Version)

  Maggie Dallen

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Snow White Espionage

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Jacob woke to the sound of metal clanging. Before he could even open his eyes, the misery set in. His head throbbed and his stomach churned, and even though his eyelids were squeezed shut, the light behind them seemed to stab his brain like an ice pick.

  “Rise and shine, princess,” a low voice boomed, echoing through his skull and making him wince as the throbbing intensified.

  But physical misery was nothing compared to the cold, hard pit of despair that had him moaning out loud as his brain slowly kicked into gear and the reality of his situation became clear.

  He was in jail.

  “Up and at ‘em, sunshine,” the voice called. The tone was mocking, the volume mercilessly loud. And close.

  Jacob finally managed to open his eyes and found himself staring up at an overweight cop with a haircut that hadn’t been seen since the eighties.

  He tried to say something, peeling his sandpaper tongue from the top of his mouth and cringing at the horrible taste of death and decay. He wanted to ask questions—where am I, maybe, or what day is it? Either would have been a good start in sorting through the jumbled collections of drunken, scattered memories from the night before. But all he managed to croak out was, “Water.”

  The throwback cop smirked down at him. “What do I look like, room service?” He turned and headed toward the hallway. “Come on, hotshot, we don’t got all day.”

  Jacob managed to ease himself up into a sitting position, unleashing a whole new set of aches and pains. He thrust his hands through his hair, attempting to wake up fully, but the move only managed to make his left cheekbone scream with pain. With tentative fingers, he touched the sore spot and found it swollen.

  Wonderful. He had a shiner.

  “Good news, kid,” the cop said from where he was waiting in the hallway. “They aren’t pressing charges.”

  Jacob nodded. He should be pleased, he supposed, but at that moment it was difficult to conjure up any positive thoughts. He just wanted to be home, in his own bed, buried under the comforters with a giant bottle of aspirin by his side.

  The cop continued speaking at a volume that was better suited to the hard of hearing rather than the hungover. “That means,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “That you are free to go, your highness.”

  Jacob gave a short nod. Free to go. That was good. He shoved himself up and out of the hard cot, trying not to look at the dirty metal toilet to his left, afraid his body might succumb to the urge to vomit at the sight of it.

  He followed the cop out of the cell, into the hallway and up to the door leading to the public area. Stopping mid-step, he froze as a horrible thought occurred to him, temporarily overshadowing his physical misery. “Are there any reporters out there?”

  The officer smirked at him. Oh yeah, this guy knew exactly who he was. And by the looks of it, he was enjoying his misery. “Just one,” he said.

  “Tell him there’s no story here,” Jacob said, rubbing his eyes trying to force himself fully awake. Even as he said it, he knew this cop wasn’t about to do him any favors.

  “You tell her yourself.” The cop sounded highly amused.

  So glad he could entertain. Jerking his head toward the door, he said, “All right then, let’s get this over with.”

  The moment the door opened Jacob was blinded by a flash.

  Jeeze, that was rude.

  He blinked until his vision returned and when it did he blinked some more to ensure he was seeing correctly. The reporter who had thrown herself in front of him to snap what was sure to be a hideous photo… she looked familiar.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Her wild curls were blonde now, not dyed black. Gone was the nose ring. Her lips, curled up in a mischievous grin, weren’t sporting the siren red lipstick she’d always worn in high school. But that pixie face, those vivid blue eyes, the petite figure… there was no doubt.

  “Morning, Prince Charming,” she sang in a ridiculously chipper voice.

  He groaned, dropping his head into his hands. This couldn’t be happening. As if his morning wasn’t bad enough, she had to be here to witness his humiliation?

  When he dropped his hands and looked up, she hadn’t gone anywhere. She was still blocking his path, that damned camera going off with a dizzying display of flashes and an incessant whirring-clicking sound.

  Belatedly the pieces clicked together in his fuzzy hungover brain. “You’re the reporter?”

  Her grin grew wider. She looked entirely too pleased with herself. The cat that ate the canary. Or the reporter who’d gotten the scoop on the newspaper heir’s latest debacle.

  He let out a string of curses under his breath, ignoring her soft laugh. Her laugh—that hadn’t changed at all.

  “Anything you’d like to say for the record, Jacob?”

  His eyes snapped open at that. The reality of his situation sinking in as details fell into place. He’d heard that she’d become a reporter. And she was here. Now. With his picture.

  He bit back another groan, which he was sure would only add to her amusement. She’d always disliked him and now she had his picture coming out of jail. When his father found out….

  No. He wouldn’t go there. Not now. Not until he had coffee in hand.

  Straightening his shoulders, he met her gaze with as much dignity as possible. “A pleasure as always, Cinderella.”

  Her laugh followed him as he strode out the front door of the police station and into the unforgiving sunlight.

  Now that had not been expected. Mackenzie watched her mark head out into the sunshine and turned to grin at the cop who was standing next to her. “Thanks again, boys. Catch you on the flipside.”

  One of them called out that reporters like her weren’t welcome back. But that was just Pat with his gruff sense of humor so she turned back to give him a jaunty salute.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Mack,” Angelo called after her. Angelo, sweet and dependable Angelo. He’d been the inside source to tip her off that a celebrity was being held overnight. “Celebrity” was a bit of a stretch, as far as Mackenzie was concerned. Entitled brat was a far more accurate description. But Jacob Hartley’s last name alone made him newsworthy, whether she liked it or not. The only son of the city’s version of royalty—the Hartleys, the media moguls who just about monopolized the world of TV and print news. Luckily they hadn’t yet gotten their hands on Mackenzie’s little corner of the online news world—she’d created a unique niche with her HeatMap site—or her struggling company would be put out of its misery once and for all.

  Stepping out of the dark, dingy police station and into the glaring morning sun that was pounding down on the Lower East Side, she took a quick look at the pictures she’d taken.

  Oh man, he looked bad. Really bad. His classically handsome face was marred by a nasty bruise, a five o’clock shadow, and some seriously dark circles under his eyes. His dark hair was matted and sticking out in all different directions. But the best part was the look of horror she’d captured the moment his eyes had focused on her. She shouldn’t find that so satisfying, but….she did. Call her petty but being able to witness Mr. Perfect’s humbling morning-after firsthand made her day.

  A laugh escaped her, startling the couple that passed by with their morning coffee. She fell into step behind them, heading back toward the subway. She should head straight to her home office in Brooklyn but her stepsister was probably already at their breakfast spot waiting for her. And the idea of filling Jenna in on this latest bit of gossip was too tempting to resist.

  As expected, Jenna was already there and waiting, sitting at an outdoor table on the cobblestoned street in the Meatpacking District, taking in the summer sun. Tall, with flawless fair skin and a perfectly coifed black-haired bob, her step-sister was pretty much the walking embodiment of everything Mackenzie was not. That used to be an issue, when they were teenagers rudely thrust into one another’s lives thanks to their parents’ whirlwind romance. But fortunately for all involved the marriage was nearly as short-lived as the courtship, and in the aftermath, when their parents’ relationship had turned caustic and toxic, the two girls, then in college, had found an odd sort of friendship—the kind that could only come from surviving a warzone together.

  Mackenzie fell into the seat opposite Jenna and whipped out her phone. “You’re never going to believe who I got photos of leaving the police station.”

  Jenna groaned and picked up the menu in front of her. “No business over breakfast, Mack. You know the rule.”

  “This isn’t business, this is news—”

  “News is your business,” Jenna reminded her, only half paying attention as she perused the menu.

  “Not news-news,” she said, powering on her camera. “This is more like gossip. East Harbor gossip.”

  Jenna’s head shot up at the me
ntion of the boarding school they’d been shipped off to their junior and senior year—Jenna willingly, Mackenzie? Not so much.

  “Don’t tell me one of our friends is in trouble,” Jenna said with a mix of dread with a dash of eagerness—that particular blend of curiosity that kept tabloids in business.

  “One of your friends. I didn’t have any friends, remember?”

  Jenna’s answer was automatic. “And whose fault was that?”

  Mackenzie clamped her mouth shut. High school was an ancient memory, there was no need to revisit that hellish period of existence. Unless, of course, it was to gawk at the school’s answer to Prince William.

  She turned the camera over to Jenna with a flourish and watched with glee as her stepsister’s eyes widened in recognition. “Oh. My. God. Is that Jacob Hartley?”

  Mackenzie nodded. “The one and only. Your favorite luv-ah,” she drawled.

  Jenna gave a snort of annoyed amusement. “He was not my lover.”

  “But you did have a crush on him.” Mackenzie’s tone had taken on the sing-song tone of a child taunting her sibling. Which was exactly what she was doing.

  “Did not,” Jenna shot back, sounding equally juvenile.

  “You totally did.”

  “Everybody had a crush on Jacob Hartley.”

  Mackenzie leaned forward. “I didn’t.”

  Jenna looked up with her brows arched knowingly. “Everybody normal.”

  Mackenzie shrugged. Fair enough.

  Jenna glanced back down at the image on the camera. “I’d heard he’d gotten his act together. Tabby said he’d really matured last time she saw him.”

  Mackenzie cared about Tabby Bradshaw’s opinion about as much as she cared about the latest episode of The Real Housewives. Which was to say, not at all. But the name still made her cringe. “You still talk to that crowd?” Her nose scrunched up in disgust before she remembered her vow that they would not go there today. Those people no longer had any influence over her life. Sure, Jenna had been in with that group in high school, but even she had outgrown her clicky, arrogant high school friends once she went off to Brown for college.

  Jenna lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I keep in touch with some of them.” She leaned in to study the picture even closer. “I haven’t seen Jacob in ages though. Last I heard he’d gone to work for his father—”

  “Ugh,” Mackenzie let out a rather loud groan of disgust that had the table next to them looking over in surprise. She ignored them.

  One side of Jenna’s mouth curled up in amusement. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The waitress came over and took their order but when she walked away, Mackenzie picked up where they left off. “I’m just saying, of course he went to work for his father. The entitled, spoiled son is probably being groomed to take over the empire.” She grabbed a croissant from the bread basket in the middle of the table and started tearing it apart with a little too much force. She couldn’t help it. It may have been nearly a decade, but seeing Jacob with that smug face and that perfect smile….

  Not so perfect today though.

  Some of the old bitterness faded at that thought. She took the camera back from Jenna so she could revel in the sight one more time.

  “I don’t know what’s so wrong with that,” Jenna was saying. “If my dad owned a company like his, I’d probably go work for him too.”

  Mackenzie set the camera down so she could level her stepsister with a glare. She hated it when she stood up for her old friends—always had and always would. “You could have taken a job at your father’s law practice but you didn’t.”

  Jenna shrugged again, as if striking out on her own was no big whoop—when it fact, Mackenzie knew cutting those apron strings had been one of the hardest things Jenna had ever had to do. Luckily for Mackenzie, controlling, ambitious parents had never been one of her burdens to bear—her real father hadn’t held a stable job for more than three months at a time and her mother seemed perfectly content to live off of her alimony payments.

  But for Jenna and all of her prep school friends, following in the family footsteps was no joke. Mackenzie might dislike the group as a whole—barring Jenna, of course—but she’d always felt a little pity for the pressure they faced.

  But just a little. And in the case of Jacob, at least, he’d made sure that tiny hint of empathy hadn’t stood a chance of survival.

  “So what are you going to do with it?” Jenna gestured toward the camera. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to put that up on your site.”

  Mackenzie wiggled in her seat, grateful when the waitress came over with their drinks—orange juice for Jenna and a giant Bloody Mary for Mackenzie. She prided herself on running a legitimate news site—she and her small staff had won multiple journalism awards for their exposés and hard-hitting news pieces.

  She shoved a piece of roll in her mouth. Unfortunately though, hard-hitting news wasn’t exactly the best way to get readers. During the first year of HeatMap’s creation, she’d figured out her own brand that put a unique spin on the typical news. Using pop culture, entertainment, and yes, gossip, she lured readers in. She’d been told her site was addictive, hypnotic, entertaining—which was icing on the cake as far as she was concerned. Because once they’d been drawn in, the readers tended to stick around and read the real articles. The news that wasn’t super sexy but that had meaning, depth. That was the part she was proud of.

  So no, she didn’t relish the idea of throwing up Jacob’s worse-than-a-mugshot photo. Not out of any sense of loyalty to Jacob but because it treaded on that fine line that separated her from the tabloid paparazzi that made her want to vomit.

  Jenna was watching her, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said in all honesty. “I mean, all I know so far was that he got into a fight of some sort, and judging by the way he reeked of alcohol, I can guess it was a drunken brawl. But no one is pressing charges and I’d have to do some major digging to find out what the fight was about.”

  Jenna nodded, her lips pressed shut. Mackenzie already knew her sister’s opinion would be to take pity of her old friend, but her sister had always had a soft spot for Jacob. She, like all the other girls at East Harbor, saw him as some poor little rich boy in need of saving.

  As if. He was just another spoiled brat, raised to think he was too good for honest work. But somehow his pretty looks and charming dimples had all of the girls fooled. Even her smart-as-hell stepsister.

  Jenna didn’t voice her opinion, though, excusing herself to go to the bathroom instead.

  Mackenzie took the opportunity to do what she always did when she had a moment to herself—she scrolled through all of her rivals’ sites to see what she might be missing or get a heads up about stories that were brewing.

  It wasn’t until she hit Page Six, the gossip page for The Post, that she got that feeling. The tingly electric feeling of a newsworthy morsel. It was a little blurb—just a blip on the radar—but it set Mackenzie’s neurons firing. “Hartley Group Annual Gala This Weekend: The media mogul’s representatives are being tight-lipped about the exclusive party, well known for its celebrity attendees and exclusivity. Our sources tell us a major announcement is expected that will have industry insiders buzzing.”

  Our sources. Oh please. The Post had just as many sources inside Hartley Group as she did—zero. Jacob’s father, Martin Hartley, ran the place like a cold war nuclear facility. Mackenzie snorted as she Googled to see if anyone else had mentioned this potential announcement. Nothing. This could just be rumor, or even completely made up to add a bit of interest to the annual party.

  It was true that the annual gala was a star-studded event, but since the company kept it locked up tight, with no press allowed, the only stories to come out of it were usually after the fact and hearsay.

  But still—Hartley senior had been known to use the gala to drop huge news in the past. The man knew how to use publicity and secrecy to his advantage. The only thing news writers and readers liked more than a huge press release was a super secret reveal.

  “What do you look so serious about?” Jenna asked as she plopped back down into her seat. The waitress followed just behind her and they both waited as she set down their plates before Mackenzie answered. “Just work stuff.”