“I’m not signing that.”
"We are not leaving this room until you sign this, along with the iron-clad NDA requiring you to never speak about me, my brand, business, or any of the other items specified on page three." I push the papers back to her, and begrudgingly, she pulls them close. Jackie flips through the documents and shakes her head before fixing me with a look I've seen many times—her attempt to assert control over me.
It worked before, but I’m not the same person I was six months ago. If she hasn’t noticed, she’s paid less attention than I thought.
"This is ridiculous—" Jackie says. I slide another packet of papers forward, ignoring her and continuing on.
"This removes you from all previous materials and rights, meaning you will rescind any right to ongoing royalties for past works and any future endeavors."
“You’re out of?—”
"You may retain all previous earnings, including those from brand collaborations you accepted for me and were paid directly to your personal bank accounts—not mine. If you do not sign this, along with the termination document and NDA, I will be pressing charges to recoup the entirety of what I am owed."
"I’m sorry?" she says, but her voice is frail. The last shred of hope I had fades away with the knowledge that she won’t fight—because she can't.
"You should be, because for years, you insisted I wear certain outfits, going so far as to get angry if I went off script. I thought it was a bit strange, but you know, it's all about the brand, so I went with it. What I didn’t know at the time was that many of those were high-value deals, often in the mid-to-high six figures,which you accepted on my behalf and never informed me of. If you refuse to sign these papers, I'll have no option but to pursue legal action for compensation. My private investigator estimates those missing payments total millions of dollars. You’d be entitled to your ten percent, of course, but once we factor in court costs and damages, I’m not sure how much you’d have left."
On Saturday night, after we called everybody up and made sure our friends knew I was safe, we called Jaime at Wilde Security. Between him and a few of his own PI and investigative contacts, we were able to quickly find everything we needed and more to paint the picture of the past ten to fifteen years.
Over the years, Jackie had accepted brand deals with dozens, potentially hundreds of brands, from clothing to workout gear to restaurants, promising them that I would get photographed by the paparazzi using their product if they paid me. It’s why Jackie was so determined to always have my clothing set out. It wasn’t that she needed to protect the brand, as she always told me; it was that she needed to hold up her end of the contract.
Silence rings in the room as Jackie slides the papers closer, hands shaking as she scans them over, then shakes her head before pushing them away with disgust.
“I’m not signing these. I’ll come out with my side of the story. I’ll tell the world the truth. If I go down, you go down with me.”
I smile then.
A big one.
Agenuineone.
One that probably edges on evil.
“And who would believe you?”
I ask, tipping my head to the side and looking down my nose at her.
“Excuse me? Everyone would. I would make a killing telling people this story, I bet I could?—”
“You built the brand, Jackie, and I’ll admit, you did it well. You’re the cutthroat agent to Willa, my closest advisor, my right-hand woman, but I amWilla Stone. America’s sweetheart. I am the one people love. Recently, I’ve come to dread the box you forced me into, but right now, it would work in my favor. To the media, to the world, I am sweet and innocent and untouchable. You could absolutely book fifteen interviews, try to tell the world ‘your side,’ but I would just have to go onone, tell my story, cry, bring the decades of receipts I’ve accumulated, tell everyone how you manipulated and used me, and I would win. And with that, I would destroy you. Your clients would all leave. You would be left with nothing. In fact, I think I am being incredibly generous by ending our relationship as amicably as I am.”
When the full picture became clear, Leo wanted me to do much worse than just end things with Jackie, but I just wanted it all behind me. “But if you want to try and beat me at this game you trained me for, have at it. We can battle both in the media and the courts,” I say.
With my words, I watch something change in her face, in an instant morphing from her being the one in charge, the one who controlled me, to seeing me as the one now in control of her. I put a hand on the stack of papers and make to slide them away. Panic flashes, and her hands slap over the papers, pulling them back to her.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me, after all of these years. After everything I’ve done for you.”
I sigh, genuine sadness in the sound. I’ve gone through the stages of grief, what feels like a dozen times in the past two days, and I’m sure I’ll feel it over and over for what might be years, each time I remember a small moment in time that twists the knife in my chest again. Something that was said or done or hidden that I ignored, a dozen of them that added up until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
There’s no betrayal like one of someone you trusted, someone you loved, someone you thought of as family. There is no worse feeling than a person who never actually cared for you, who used you for their own benefit, and now that you’re not complicit in it, you’re being shifted into being the villain.
But that’s fine: I can be the villain in her story, because I know she’ll be living in a revisionist history no matter what, putting a spin on the truth to create something she can live with.
“You know, it’s funny, because I thought the same exact thing.”
Silence settles before I slide a pen her way. “Now sign the fucking contracts so I never have to see you again.”
Then she grabs the pen and starts to read the papers, signing and initialing where I was kind enough to put little pink tabbies I borrowed from Wren.
