Tears stung the back of her eyes at the same time that bile and vodka burned the roof of her mouth.No one will take me seriously. The thought screamed through her racing mind.Not producers. Not publishers. And definitely not Vivian.
Vivian stopped tapping her screen and looked up at Bryn. The confusion on her face was the end of Bryn’s self-control.
For a heartbeat, Bryn saw every ugly possibility reflected in Vivian’s expression. She imagined disgust. Pity. Judgment. She couldn’t stand to see any of them.
“I have to go check something,” Bryn blurted with an embarrassing shake in her voice. “It was nice meeting you,” she lied.
She didn’t wait to see what Vivian would say. If she stayed one more second, she was going to start trying to explain. To justify. To apologize for work she believed in. That she was proud of. That she couldn’t stand to hear mocked.
Turning toward the exit, she tried to wait until she was inside the hotel to run. She failed.
The last thing she heard before the doors whooshed shut was Seraphina asking, “What’s the big deal?”
And over it, or maybe only in her head, Vivian’s, “Wait.”
ChapterNineteen
Vivian hated not knowingwhat the hell was going on. She wanted to follow Bryn out but she needed to understand what the actual fuck had happened first.
“Show me what the hell you’re talking about,” Vivian snapped, interrupting Richard and Seraphina debating Bryn’s overreaction.
“You really didn’t know?” Richard repeated like a clueless parrot.
She glared at him and snatched Seraphina’s phone. She looked at the app. It was like any music player but for the tagline burned at the top of the screen:where womxn’s fantasies find a voice. Scrolling the first page, the titles made the explicit and erotic nature of the app obvious.
“She has this one where she?—”
Vivian cut Seraphina off with a loaded stare that was nearly coupled with flames shooting from her nostrils. “Why the fuck would you confront her with this? Here? Now?”
“Confront her?” She laughed. “Vivian, take a breath. It’s not a big deal?—”
“Not a big deal?” Vivian resisted every urge to throw Seraphina’s phone over the balcony.
Vivian hated the metallic taste of rage in her mouth. It made it so much harder to keep her voice even and her wits sharp. She inhaled once, slow and deliberate, and when she spoke again her voice was low and deadly calm.
“Let me see if I understand,” she said. “You two found a juicy little bit of gossip that Bryn has chosen not to discuss publicly. You don’t know her. You cornered her at a work event, surrounded by her peers, and decided that was the moment to drag it into the open so you could… what? Network?”
Seraphina faltered. “It’s not like that?—”
“It is exactly like that.” Vivian trained her full attention on Seraphina, a dragon catching an intruder with their filthy hands in her hoard. “You’ve been in this business long enough to know how fast a whisper becomes a headline. If that wasn’t malicious, then it was breathtakingly opportunistic. Neither is something to be proud of.”
Seraphina’s neck flushed hard. “I was paying her a compliment. People love Siren. It’s smart business?—”
Vivian sneered. “No.” She wouldn’t tolerate another moment of bullshit. “A compliment is something you offer when someone has chosen to share a piece of themselves. What you did was pry. On a rooftop full of people who would be thrilled to have something salacious to talk about over breakfast tomorrow.”
She took one step closer and Seraphina had to tip her head back to keep eye contact, wavering as it was.
“You of all people,” Vivian continued even though Seraphina looked like she regretted having woken up that morning, “know what it’s like to be unwillingly exposed to strangers. You know exactly what you were playing with.” She didn’t have to mention half-naked photos from Seraphina’s trip to St. Croix a decade earlier. The ones that had been plastered all over the tabloids.
Seraphina opened her mouth, maybe to argue that it was different, but had the wisdom to shut it instead.
Vivian pivoted to Richard.
“And you,” she said, revulsion on her curled lip. “Do you hear yourself?”
Richard gave a short, nervous laugh. “Come on, I was just kidding. She’s the one who put this?—”
“You weren’t joking,” Vivian said. “You were drilling a young woman you’ve just met about whether people will pay to listen to you masturbate. That’s not a joke. She did not consent to that conversation with you, and using her work is a disgusting and flimsy excuse.”
