20. Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Noah
T he shit hit the fan on Saturday evening.
Royal called me when the news broke about a sex tape of Senator Baron Hunt's daughter, where she was calling herself a slut and a whore.
I was at home nursing whiskey while I worked. I seemed to be doing that a lot. I went out with friends, sure, but before, I'd usually find female company to fuck over the weekend, now, I was bucking for Celibate of Savannah.
The video had been released across various platforms, and it tore me apart to see the news articles and comments denigrating Stella.
What the fuck had I done?
I'd taken something private, something that was us, and had caused this. I'd be fine. No one would recognize my voice but Stella. Hell! I had already destroyed her life, now the media would take whatever pieces were left and run those through a wood chipper.
She was my first phone call.
After the tenth call went to voicemail, I went to her condo. She wasn't there, and there were no media vultures there, so I deduced they hadn't figured out yet that she'd sold her place and was renting now.
I tried Nina, Luna, Aurora, and Nova, and they all said the same thing. Stella had dropped off the face of the earth. Had she left because of the breaking news?
I had my head of public relations, IT & security, and Royal work to find ways to bring the video down from as many platforms as possible.
"I don't understand why you care," my head of PR asked, irritable for having to work on a Sunday.
"Cause I'm on that video," I quipped.
"But no one can tell so—"
"Just get it done."
"This is the Internet, Noah, and if we get the legal system involved, you will have to say you're on the video."
"Then do it."
I wasn't going to let her suffer through this alone. I had a fledgling plan in my head, but I needed Stella's permission to carry it out.
I called Neveah because I knew she'd hear about it and wonder. Baron Hunt's daughter, plus sex tape, would read improbable fucking coincidence to her.
"You did what ?" Her voice was reed thin when I told her about the video. I was honest with her. Told her what I did.
I hadn't meant to ask Stella to call herself a slut or a whore for the video. It was…hell, it was intimacy, it was dirty, it was sexy. It had been us. It was hot. She'd been so fierce that I had gotten carried away. I'd called her a slut again, when she'd sucked me off…she'd been on her knees, my cum dripping from her mouth. Gorgeous. Sexy. Sensuous. Mine .
"I did what Baron Hunt did," I defended myself lamely to Neveah, even though we both knew there really was no defense, no recourse.
"You're supposed to be better than that asshole, Noah. You're supposed to be the good guy. How could you? Poor Stella. I…how is she?"
"I can't find her," I confessed. "No one knows where she is."
"I wanted to disappear, too," Neveah cried. "Oh God, Noah, do you think…?"
Yeah, I'd gone there, afraid that Stella had hurt herself—done what Neveah had tried to do. The Sweet Stella I knew was full of life, but the woman I'd made her, the Sad Stella I'd seen the past few months—I didn't know what she was capable of. The light was gone inside her, and people did terrible things to themselves in the dark.
"I don't know," I finally said, feeling the bile rise inside me.
After that phone call, fear and shame made me throw up.
I couldn't stand the idea that Stella would die by suicide because of me. I couldn't bear the idea that there would be a world where she wouldn't be there.
This woman was my friend and my comfort for three months. She was kind and sweet. She cooked for me and made flower arrangements to brighten my home and office.
I repaid it all with vengeance.
By Sunday evening, when Baron Hunt released the statement, I was livid—not only because of what he said, but also because my security expert had told me the video released was a copy of the one I sent to Stella's father.
I went to his home. The opulent fucking house that Stella had told me she hated to live in. It was here she had spent most of her time in the garden, learning to tend to plants, because no one tended to her.
"You released the video," I bellowed at Baron as soon as he gave me a private audience in his office.
"It wasn't me," Baron snorted. "It was you."
"Fuck no. I have proof that the video released is the one you had. It's got your email's metadata on it. What the fuck, Baron?"
He collapsed onto his chair. "It wasn't you?"
"No. I'd never…hell, Baron, I'd never do that to Stella."
Baron raised both his eyebrows. "But you'd show her having sex with you to her father?"
I had no response.
Revenge had not been as comforting as I thought it would be. They said it was best served cold, but I realized that it was best to not serve it at all. Vengeance was a demanding mistress that sucked you dry of your humanity.
"Did you share the video with anyone?" I demanded.
Baron eyed me suspiciously. "How do I know you're not lying?"
"Get your own IT experts to check it out," I muttered. "Baron, did you share it with someone?"
He swallowed. "I may have sent it to JR."
I blinked. "Why the fuck would you send a sex tape with your daughter in it to your son?"
"It was for security purposes, to have a chain of evidence, to fuck you over when the time came," he admitted.
The irony that it had fucked him over instead was obviously not lost on him.
JR was summoned, and he confessed that he'd talked to Eden about it. They were friends, she was upset about Stella and me, JR had tried to reassure her.
"I wanted her to know that Noah was just using her and—"
"You stupid son of a bitch." Baron lost his shit with his son. I had to pull him off JR because he had him by his throat, nailed to a wall.
As JR coughed and tried to catch his breath, I added two and two together. After that, it was easy to track the IP address from which the video and its copies had been uploaded to platforms via anonymous accounts.
"How on earth did Eden even get the video?" Baron demanded.
JR shrugged sheepishly. "I showed it to her. I didn't share it with her, but I had a call and…I fucked up, Dad."
"You will testify to this," I warned JR.
"Fuck no," JR bellowed.
"Yeah, you will, because I'm going to insist the DA go after that bitch for invasion of privacy," I warned him.
Royal had already briefed me that, in Georgia, revenge porn was covered under the state's invasion of privacy laws with regards to non-consensual disclosure of private sexual images. The penalties were substantial.
"Noah, there is no way my son is testifying—"
I cut Baron off with a wave of my hand and a blistering, "Shut the fuck up, Baron. You do this, or I swear to God, I'm going to tell everyone and their fuckin' mother about what you did to Neveah."
JR looked perplexed. "Did what to whom?"
Baron sighed.
"Your father made a sex video of my sixteen-year-old sister a decade ago. That's how he got my father to step down from running for District Attorney," I explained.
JR stared at his father like he'd never seen the man before.
"She was sixteen?" JR seemed horrified.
"Water under the bridge, son." Baron didn't seem at all apologetic, probably because he wasn't.
"And you did to my sister what he did to yours?" JR now turned on me. "She was not at fault, was she? You asshole."
"Don't stand there pretending you give a shit about Stella." I gave him a murderous look. "I know how you treated her."
"My being an asshole brother doesn't mean her reputation was destroyed. You ruined her life. Dad pulled his investment out of Savannah Lace. She lost everything. I thought she fucking deserved it for being stupid enough to sleep with a pervert like you."
JR slumped into a chair, his face mirroring the agony in his words.
"I'm going to fix this," I finally said to father and son.
"How the fuck will you do that, Noah?" Baron demanded.
"Follow my lead, Baron. And no more statements to the media without talking to me."
Suddenly, Baron Hunt and I were allies. Yeah, the irony of that wasn't lost on me, either. The joke, the universe was saying as she cackled, was on me.
Nina didn't see the humor in the situation when I confessed all to her. I needed her help in implementing my plan.
Nina, Baron, JR…even, hell, Whitney, would have to be involved. I'd have to recruit Luna and Aurora, who were Stella's close friends, in case the media spoke to them.
"No one will want to work with her," Nina told me after we'd both drunk some of her fine Tennessee whiskey to calm our nerves. "Silas is going to fire her for sure now…maybe Savannah Lace, too."
"I'll handle Silas Rutledge," I told her.
"How?"
"It was his sister who put the video out. If he fires Stella because of that, we can sue him for breach of contract, and add him as co-conspirator with Eden."
"I don't know if that'll work, Noah."
"It will. He can't afford to damage his reputation before running for office."
Nina put her hand on mine. "You can't take this to the DA, Noah. You know that, don't you?"
I pulled my hand away. "She's going to pay and—"
"Damn it, Noah, all this happened because you wanted retribution. And now you want it again?"
I dropped my head in my hands. She was right. I was now making Eden the enemy, wanting to destroy her life.
"So, I should just let it go?"
"Oh, no, but maybe let someone else take care of Eden. You use the threat of a lawsuit to keep Silas in check," Nina suggested. "And then focus on making Stella whole. Fix what you broke."
Like that was even possible. "And Eden?"
"I'll take care of Eden," Nina vowed.
"I'm worried about Stella. Are you sure you have no idea where she could be?"
"She's not going to harm herself," Nina said confidently. "I know her. And, honestly, a part of me has liked the spunk the girl's been showing these past months. She was too sweet, and people took advantage of her. Now, she gives back as good as she gets. I like that."
"I broke her, and you like that?"
"It's like kintsugi . You know what that is?"
I nodded. It was a 15th-century Japanese practice of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold, strengthening and beautifying the areas of the break.
"Don't get me wrong," Nina continued. “What you did is reprehensible, and your mother would have been ashamed of you. I am. But I'm hoping you learn from your mistakes and do the right thing now that you know better."