Another Notch in the Beltway Read Online Free PDF Page B

after you slept with every slut on the Beltway?”
    Her voice was loud, bordering on angry hysteria. They were both standing and facing one another now.
    â€œMake love? I don’t think we ever made love. Had sex is even a questionable statement. You’re the most frigid woman I’ve ever seen.”
    Wham! A crystal perfume atomizer narrowly missed his head, crashing into the wall. The smell of Chanel No. 5 began to overpower the room.
    He was lucky he’d ducked or he’d have been knocked out, maybe killed, based on the crater in the wall.
    â€œGet out! Get out!”
    â€œI’ll be more than happy to, you insane bitch,” Senator Maxwell said quietly, in stark contrast to her high-pitched scream. He then turned and closed the double doors softly behind him.
    Corrine sat at her vanity table and sobbed, face in hands, until all her make-up needed to be replaced. She gazed at herself in the mirror again. She was nothing but a dried-up has-been or maybe, even more pathetically, a never-was.
    ****
    Senator Byron Maxwell retreated to his office. As he sat in his leather chair, he swiftly turned over all the obligatory family photos that were in his line of sight. He wasn’t in the mood to stare at the fucked-up lot of them.
    His father’s photo was last. Byron placed it upside down in the darkest drawer of his desk. He no longer wanted to see the man’s arrogant face. The son of a bitch was long dead, and if Jacob Maxwell hadn’t nearly bankrupted the family business, VB&T, with gambling debts and other vices, he wouldn’t be here today.
    His father had needed money to save the bank, and Corrine Kennedy had been the answer. Not only did her father have money, she was wealthy in her own right through a trust set up by her maternal grandmother. Furthermore, she was an only child, so when her parents died she would be even wealthier.
    Corrine had been young and beautiful. Byron believed that even if he didn’t love her, he’d enjoy her as a companion and a lover.
    While he had been surprised to discover she was a virgin, he had found it equally intriguing. They’d had a wedding fit for royalty. He remembered how his loins stirred as his virgin bride walked down the aisle on their wedding day. Corrine had taken his breath away. Her gown was designed to make the most of her alluring shape and her breasts swelled over the top of her bodice…
    â€œJesus,” he said aloud, looking down at the bulge in his pants. He was getting a hard-on thinking about his young wife, who was now a worn-out woman. If he was honest with himself, part of that was his fault or his father’s.
    Corrine had been an eager student of carnal knowledge and had gotten pregnant on their honeymoon. He remembered how beautiful and ripe she looked when she told him, her face glowing and eyes bright… he shook his head and closed his eyes.
    Then came the closed-door meeting between his father and father-in-law. Jacob Maxwell was in big trouble and needed Andrew Kennedy to bail him out.
    Needless to say his papa-in-law was less than happy. Andrew had seen the match not as a marriage but as a merger to amass more power and money. If word got out that Jacob Maxwell was on the verge of bankruptcy, he and his daughter would be a laughingstock. Kennedy made the decision to purchase Maxwell’s bank and take it over.
    Andrew accused Byron of marrying Corrine for her money and getting her with child to lock her into the union. The first part of the statement was true, but the second was only chance. The older Kennedy made it clear that Byron would never get a penny of his money and took legal steps to make sure that he was totally dependent on Corrine for every penny he had. Andrew told Byron he was to enter into politics—run for the senate—one day the presidency, but only if it didn’t get out as to how hopelessly stupid he was.
    When Corrine confronted Byron herself, needing to know