VLV Ent
I felt sick. “Wait a minute,” I said. “This is impossible. I never shared my proposal with him.” But what were the odds of Ralf dreaming up the exact same idea as me?
Sol squinted at the card. “That’s the creep from the photo shoot!” She spun to me, eyes widening. “Lucie, he was all up in our grill about your idea, remember?”
“Yeah but … how has he done this?” I demanded. “I never discussed it with him in detail or anything.”
“I’m confused,” Janice said. “Was this Ralf’s project or yours?”
Sol was trying to pronounce the company name on the card. “Vilv … Vul … Vulv … Oh my God, why does his company name sound likevulva?”
“VLV. Vivian LaValle.” I raised horrified eyes to Janice. “RJ’s assistant, Vivian, she must have started her own company with Ralf and somehow stolen my idea and passed it off as VLV Ent’s project. Oh my God, it really does sound likevulva.”
Janice glared at me. “You have proof of this?”
Furiously, I looked across the party to where Noah was still hyperventilating and something slid into place. A malfunctioning laptop, strange metadata. “Give me five minutes.” As Janice assured me to take my time, I stomped over to Noah, all pain from my shoes forgotten. It was nothing compared to the rage that boiled within me. At the sight of me, Noah paled, and I knew my gut instinct was correct.
“Did you help Vivian and Ralf steal my idea?” I demanded.
Riley grabbed my arm. “What are you talking about?”
I shook her hand off. “He knows.”
Riley turned to Noah. “You didn’t steal anything, tell her.”
Noah gulped. “Vivian’s been RJ’s assistant for two years. He treats her like crap.”
Riley’s eyes glittered. “What did Vivian do?”
“We all know her dream is to set up her own film production group,” Noah said desperately. “Financing. She’d be awesome – she has such taste, you know it and RJ knows it. He’s been promising for ages now to mentor her, make the right introductions, but he’s let her down time and again.”
“And this has what to do with Lucie?” Riley yelled.
Noah screwed his eyes shut. “I’m a sucker,” he said. “Lucie, when your laptop malfunctioned, Vivian suggested I install spyware in your new one.”
“Noah, tell me you didn’t,” Riley said.
“He helped Ralf and Vivian hack into my laptop,” I snarled. “Ralf knew I had a project in development, one that Sol was very interested in collaborating on. The other night, I saw that very project had been accessed on my laptop at a time when I was asleep. That must have been when they stole it.”
“I only installed the spyware!” Noah yelped. “I thought I was helping with a corporate issue. Vivian told me you had a pitch that was actually RJF property, that you shouldn’t have saved it on your work machine, that we were entitled to it.”
“Bullshit!” I snapped.
“Um, contractually it isn’t,” Riley said miserably. “If you use a work machine for your own, original projects … technically, RJF owns it.”
My rage was quickly replaced by cold dread. “No, that can’t be right.”
“I’m so sorry,” Riley said. “It’s true. I don’t like it, but there it is in all our contracts.”
“But what if I didn’t sign a contract?” I said, desperately. Iwas on secondment, after all, and I knew damn well no such clause existed in my contract with Temper.
“I … I don’t know,” Riley said. “But it is company policy. Either way, it doesn’t make it okay what they did.”
“Well, they didn’t steal my work for the sake of RJF,” I said, “Not only has Vivian already set up her own company with Ralf as MD, but they pitched my work to Janice today as if it were their own.”
“I’m so sorry,” Noah said. “I didn’t work out what exactly they were doing until too late. Vivian said Ralf had some software he could use to—”
“Ralf ran my pitch through AI,” I realized, nausea creeping through me. “He must have been able to wipe the watermarks with it too. Noah, I may have made a mistake in saving my work to an RJF laptop, but it’s my work.Mine.” My legs wobbled and I had to lean against a nearby tree. Either way, I was fucked. RJF could lay claim to my project if they had a mind, but Ralf had stolen it and rewritten it with AI. I didn’t know which was worse.
