Strangers In Romance

Chapter 3: Options

"No."

Via gaped at me. "No?"

My jaw clenched as I stared back at her. I wasn't called the Spawn of Satan and whatever absurd name in my youth to just give in to peer pressure, especially for something like this.

Pacing the room, I pulled myself out—the Mayor that everyone loved and respected, not the pushover that she wanted me to be. "I said no. No, to everything that you demanded, Via."

"But our daughter—"

"Mayor Benning?" Tina, one of my staff, knocked from the already opened door, staring between me and Via. "The reporter will see you now."

I left my office without so much as a glance back, trying to hold all the information that Via just said inside me without bursting. That I had a daughter in the span of what? A day, ever since we had tantalizing sex when she acted as Veronica? Tantalizing sex aside, that was impossible. We were both women, and the child was a toddler now. I wasn't an alien.

"You know what to do."

Via's command though, and the way she put her foot on my shoulder to make me follow her command minutes earlier, made me almost salivate. She really was Veronica, wasn't she? Quickly, I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the thoughts. I was on the job. I was the mayor. I needed to be professional.

The interviewer, a forty-something man with a practiced smile, was sitting in the balcony on the other side of the building. I greeted him soon as I saw him.

"How do you do?" I said.

"Pleased to meet you again, Benning."

"It's Mayor Benning."

I was in the presence of the Raven. Gaze missing nothing, this reporter gave me a hard time last year too.

"It's Mayor Benning now," I repeated.

"But of course." He hadn't even gotten up from his seat, nor did he offer his hand to me. "You were promoted when the former mayor got sick," he prompted.

"Yes, former Mayor Holt entrusted me with the position."

"More like Mayor Holt didn't have any choice."

I sighed. In politics, you were never short on friends and enemies. But this reporter wasn't my nemesis. He just wanted a good scoop. Something I wouldn't give to him.

"Shall we start the interview?" I asked.

"The cameras are already rolling."

Tsk! The gall of this man. Either way, I glanced at the corner where the cameras had been placed. He was hoping to catch me unaware. Embarrassed. Perhaps saying something I shouldn't. Good luck with that.

No one could—

"Mama!"

Urk.

Via's child rushed to me.

"Yours?"

I glared around, looking for Via. Or Arthur, who was supposed to be looking after the kid. But both weren't there.

"Err, no." I chuckled. "Surely, you'd see me pregnant if I had a child—"

"Where's the leather mask?" the toddler mumbled in small but perfect English.

"Excuse me, what?" The reported leaned to the child.

"The mask." The toddler shrugged.

"She's my niece!" I snatched the child from the floor and pressed her to me, rocking her gently. Shut up, shut up!