Page 277 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

Like stepping into a refrigerator.

The sudden silence makes me turn.

Twenty people are piled around a table.

Legal and Finance stacked on the left.

PR on the right, phones face-down and eternally buzzing.

Assistants pinned against the walls, paid to be invisible, holding the label’s panic in their iPads.

I pull out my chair, eyeing Raymond,

who’s pacing at the head of the table.

Soon as I sit, clutching the plant close to my chest, he grips the backrest of his chair and leans into it.

“Talk to me,” he bites out across the table. “Gimme the update.”

Elaine from Legal jumps in first, sliding a folder across the table. “Her contract includes a morality clause. Public controversy, regardless of fault, is grounds for termination. But maybe if we move fast enough⁠—”

“Too late,” PR cuts in next. “It broke forty minutes ago, and we already got millions of views across platforms, mirror uploads, memes. There’s no making this go away.”

What the fuck is happening?

Fingers shaking, I slip my phone from my bag. Tap into my group chats that’re blowing up.

Bianca Vega. Sex tape scandal.

My heart plummets,

lands on my gut.

I tap into X, Reddit, Lipstick Alley.

Sex tape. Sex tape. Sex tape.

Still images of Bianca’s dark, mascara-smudged eyes glancing up with her lips around a cock.

I stumble to my feet,

my chair screeching across tile.

Raymond’s head snaps in my direction.

“Where do you think you’re goin’? We’re in the middle of a crisis.”

“I gotta call her.” My voice crawls out small, fading at the edges. “I have to check on her. Someone has to check on her and make sure she’s okay.”

Raymond’s brows jump high as he stares at me wide-eyed. “Okay?” He chuckles once, empty, bitter. “Course your mind goes there ‘cause forget about the damage this will do to the label,” he mutters. “Sit down, Miss Soundwave. This is your artist. You got us into this mess.”

My phone slips out of my hand and drops onto the table as I sit, a loud echo clattering through the room.

He’s not wrong.

I found her in a dive bar in Brooklyn.

I brought her to the label.