RP:The Truth about Sterling Townsend

Part of the Through A Glass, Darkly Arc

Summary: Hudson confronts Candice after finding a 'personal picture' left in her safe, signed to him, when Meri, Milo, and Hudson searched the former actress's house. She delivers interesting news about Sterling's whereabouts and makes a brazen pass at him. He warns her against any more funny business (been there, done that) but Candice isn't ready to give up yet...

In Route

The longer Hudson sits with the unsolicited tasteful nude sent to him by Candice Snow, the more irritated with her he gets. What is this, a game of cat and mouse? And he's the mouse? That's not how this works.

"It's a really sexy picture," offers Milo, after they've stewed in silence in the carriage for long enough.

"Shut up, man," snaps Hudson. "The last thing I want to receive is that picture from her. I'm not over here like, 'cool, nudes from an actress I hardly know and have no reason to trust, let me go cheat on my wife.'"

"I'm not saying anything, boss, I know you guys are good and you'd never," Milo is quick to clarify.

Hudson grunts, saying nothing to that. He'd never, except he did. Except that's not what this is about. He's the mob, he knows a message when he sees one.

"So you want me to put eyes on her?" prods Milo.

"Not yet," answers Hudson, leaning forward to address the driver, "Take us to the house Candice is staging."

"You're going to confront her?"

"Yeah," Hudson holds the other man's gaze. "She's just some actress, right."

"Not sure if reassuring," murmurs Milo.

"No," agrees Hudson.

Staged House

Milo gets put on patrol duty outside the house when they get there. The door's unlocked, and Hudson doesn't knock, he just lets himself inside. She's done a good job with the entryway, the console table is a nice touch, the kind of thing that helps potential home buyers visualize themselves in the home. "Candice!" he bellows. He doesn't take his shoes off, moving straightaway into the living room.

Candice is in the upstairs bathroom, arranging a small, decorative vase of flowers and then, when she hears Hudson’s foghorn entrance, her hair. She winks at her prim and proper self in the mirror before half descending the staircase to call back down to him. “I’m just putting the finishing touches on the rooms up here. What’s wrong? You don’t like it?” She frowns, knowing full well why he might be mad and it’s not the luxurious rugs. She tucks a stray blonde tuff behind her ear, innocently before her heels click down the polished oak stairs to meet him at the bottom. She can see Milo circling outside and pretends not to notice.

Hudson strides through the staged living area, about to descend into the finished basement, when he hears the sound of footsteps on the second floor. He waits at the foot of the stairs, the hairs on his forearms stiff with rage. His eyes lock on Candice the moment she appears, gliding downstairs gracefully ... and playing dumb.

He snorts faintly at her question, giving it no verbal reply and quitting his post by the staircase to stalk after her into the living room. "Have a seat," he says instead, choosing one opposite her once she does. He settles the full weight of his attention on her once more and lets a pause sink in between them before speaking again. "Candice," he says her name like a pointed object. He reaches into his coat pocket and unfolds the parchment that had been taken from the safe, flattening it on the coffee table between them. He turns it so the picture is facing Candice, so that the text 'Did you like invading my privacy?' is upright for her. Hudson gives her a humorless smile. "I think we both know that I'm here to talk about this note you left me. So, are we going to be honest? I searched you house." A beat. "You apparently knew I would." And another. He cracks his knuckles while continuing to hold her gaze. "So what's up, Candice?"

Candice takes her time settling just so in the chair she’d picked, taking care to cross her legs purposefully. Hudson’s weighted stare was luscious and full bodied, like a fine rare wine.He looked at her differently now that he’s seen the portrait she’d left for him. She furrows her perfectly manicured brows at his tone before the picture’s produced. One painted nail pushes the picture back in his direction brazenly. “Aren’t you going to answer my question first, Hudson?” She says his name with exaggerated sweetness. The way wive’s say their husband’s names so they know they’re going to fight later. She feigns surprise. “I’m pretty sure I’m being honest by leaving this picture. Worse case scenario, you didn’t find it. But now you did, which means I was right.” She crosses her arms, nodding with visible amusement. Still, she took him seriously. She’d play along the razor’s edge but pull back just in time in a gracious fashion. “Now that we’re both being honest with each other….” She sighs, crossing her arms. “I know it was you.” Their eyes lock and she holds his stare.

Hudson barely suppresses a growl in the base of his throat, his expression hardening as Candice continues to play coy, addressing him with an intimacy and fearlessness that isn't earned and riles him to the core. It's for the best that doesn't continue. Later, he'll reflect on how she didn't shake like a leaf, or burst into tears. That her words came out smooth, like velvet. The actress in her. "I'm not apologizing for doing diligence on an employee," says Hudson in response to her smug declaration that he'd only proven her right. He cants his head and continues to steadily regard her, wielding the power of his intimidating silence like a fisherman's line to tug free what really motivates her. There 'it' is. The leak to the papers about her and Sterling. It's a shot of adrenaline between them. "Yeah, it was me," he confirms without missing a beat. He leans forward, steepling his hands. "You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet," he says with quiet menace. "I sort of figured you knew." He leans back once more, gesturing at the picture between them. "So, what? You trying to shake me down? You do know that's not how this works and that I don't owe you anything, right?"

Hudson's excuse about due diligence is highly amusing. He breaks into all his employees houses and opens their safes? The power Hudson exudes feels almost childish after this omelet portion. “Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid.” She lets that hang in the air before pumping up his ego. “I know you can still destroy me.” It wasn't a shake down per say. “I thought you should know the extent to which you ruined our lives.” Candice takes a moment to stare dramatically past him to ‘gather herself’. “You humiliated me. I thought you'd have a little more tactic to keep MY name out of it but sure. What's done is done. But you did more than ruin the election for Sterling. You ruined his whole life. He couldn't recover from the scandal of our relationship and he just…” She breaks with a heavy sigh before finding his gaze again. “He…” She tries again but there's a shiver of grief. “He killed himself.” She whispers, wide eyed and expectantly, waiting for it to sink in. Hudson wouldn't care about killing a man, she heard the rumors that he'd done it before and he'd do it again. “We were being honest, weren't we?” A sliver of blonde hair falls against her cheek from behind her ear. She sincerely hopes she's reminding him of that blonde witch he supposedly had an affair with. Why did he get to rebuild his life after a public scandal but Sterling didn't? It wasn't fair. “Now you have everything - the upper hand, the power…” She leans her chin atop the nest of her interwoven fingers. “... And this lovely keepsake.”

Hudson snorts. He isn't sure he sees the point of 'the principle' as articulated by Candice here, and he assumes an attentive but bored expression as she makes her futile effort at finding in him a sympathetic ear, or trying to teach him a lesson, or whatever this is. Clearly her life as a famous actress has given her a sense of entitlement and as a result she thinks this is appropriate. It's not that he doesn't care about other people. It's that he cares about the people who are important to him, the proverbial castle he must protect, and anyone within its walls. Sterling Townsend and Candice Snow were expendable outsiders and the story she's telling him is weak. Of course it's embarrassing when people find out you had an affair. He's well aware of that. Most people don't kill themselves because of it. Sterling's tragic end is not on him. If Sterling has passed away, though, he's not the shadowy figure pulling strings behind the curtain with his family in the crosshairs. Candice looks like she might cry, and Hudson softens his facial expression because it's what you do. Inwardly, he wonders if her emotion is real or embellished, if within her there resides the capacity to ruthlessly carry out a cultivated vendetta, whether she's really just a beautiful woman playing the part of broken winged bird in the hopes that he'll want to help her fly again. If the latter, he feels disappointed to realize that she thinks he could just be lured to an empty house with an unsolicited nude and be quickly seduced thereafter. Is that what she's tried to do?! Either way, he can't continue being mean to her now that she's acting thirsty. "Candice," he says her name, meeting her gaze and sighing at her. "I'm very glad to help you get on your feet again, after everything that happened." He dislikes the part of being a boss that requires that he say this. It's like eating sand. "But this conversation," he gestures between them, "I don't want to revisit things in the past. Things between you and me are going to stay professional." He rises from his sofa, leaving the picture on the table. "Don't pull anything like that again."

Candice adopts a thoughtful gaze as he stands to go. The front door’s still open, Milo undoubtedly outside waiting on him. She brushes a wild lock of hair back behind her ear again and pinches her bottom lip with her teeth. She is the vision of a lover spurned; crossing her arms against her chest as if trying to hide herself from him. It’s clear she’s not used to rejection. “I’m sorry…” Her voice is elegant, even, and apologetic while she stares at the floor. “Things have been so hard since...and having to deal with it all alone has been…” She sighs, hand covering her mouth to stop herself from saying more. She’s silent for a beat. “And Aubree...she’s too young to understand. With the scandal I can’t show one idota of weakness to anyone or the papers or parents or press will tear me apart.” She lets her hand fall away from her face, looking up to meet his gaze. Hudson, standing tall next to the couch and Candice, curled up and shrunken below him. “I just can’t do it all alone.” And Hudson already knew the whole story. She was with Sterling, had his child, they got kicked over to Rynvale to hide out while Sterling’s depression suffocated him. Of course Candice wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. NOT ANYONE. Perks of being ‘famous’. The facade of single mother with it all together was hard enough. She felt so isolated from everyone around her. He was the only person she could reach, and using her charm and body were all she had. Maybe she didn’t even have that anymore. Candice pulls herself up off the couch and straightens her skirt, pushing the pieces of her face together in a polite professional frame just as Milo calls Hudson from the foyer. She keeps her arms wrapped across her chest, as if she was freezing and flashes Hudson a wounded smile. “Everything’s almost ready, just a few minor details to fix upstairs.”

Hudson endeavors to reset the situation, to look like as oblivious as possible to this very jarring attempt at flirting, just keen to stop the shenanigans and get back to work. He wishes Candice would not apologize this way, her emphasis on 'all alone' only confirms how he'd read the situation. He stays silent, watching her take the hint and move whatever this is - an apology for acting 'womanish' it would appear - along. Except she closes it all out with another 'all alone.' He sighs and considers her. It is, on some level, flattering, but it's a delicate maneuver, pretending he can't hear the subtext to what she's saying. It stays impossible to be severe with her, the moment for bearing down on her with his power has passed. She's just an actress, looking to latch onto him like a remora to a shark, and now she's played her cards and come up short. Milo calls for him at the front door. "You're going to be fine," he tells her, a platitude to which she responds by changing the subject to the staging process. He draws in a shallow breath. "Great," he tells her. He bends slightly to take the nude off the table, folding it smaller along the indentations. "Don't want to leave this here," he tells her, putting it into his pocket. His gaze briefly connects with hers, and he offers her a smile that's impenetrable and doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Thanks for your hard work," he says, turning to leave. "No more funny business."

Candace can’t help but watch Hudson pick up her gift to take with him after he’d shoved it back at her in disgust moments before. There’s a satisfaction in that; that she was scolded and denied but he still took it as a parting gift. He wouldn’t show it to the papers or his wife, it left only one other option. He wasn’t as immovable as he pretended to be. Hudson was still a man and Candace was a beautiful woman who knew how to keep a secret. She had mistress experience and wouldn’t want much from him. His protection, his money, the occasional late night booty call. She was confident she knew and would do things his sweet little wife wouldn’t dream of. That would be why he came to the actress, because she offered a variety of ways to entertain him when the ‘passionate, soul mate love making’ stopped doing it for him. Without appearing smug, Candice flicks her long lashes up to look at Hudson one more time as he goes and gives him a broken bird smile. “Thanks for being so understanding.” Then she waves and starts back towards the staircase, dissolving into the shadows of the unlit hallway to contemplate her next move. The cat and mouse game was cute but she played to win.