Chapter Eleven
River
Iknow something is wrong as soon as I get to Alice's office in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. Everyone is eyeing me sideways. They're also giving me a wide berth, like they expect me to erupt at any minute.
What the fuck?
I pull my phone out of my pocket to dial Samantha, hoping she can give me a heads up before I walk into a shitshow, but the call goes straight to voicemail. I'm not entirely surprised.
I apologized for threatening to fire her, but she's still not completely over it. I don't blame her for that, but I'm not sure how to fix it, either. She crossed a line by trying to dictate my personal life. I won't tolerate that, no matter how much she does for me professionally.
Maybe I shouldn't have jumped straight to threatening to fire her, but she needed to know that she has no place in a damn thing that I decide to do with my personal life, particularly when it comes to Jasmine.
She isn't my mother. She isn't my older sister.
She's my assistant. I value the hell out of what she does for me, but there's a limit.
"River." Alice pokes her gray head out of her office, her expression somber. "Come in."
I climb to my feet, stalking across the reception area toward her. She holds the door open, not saying anything. I step inside, taking a quick glance around.
Alice is nothing if not predictable. Her office hasn't changed at all in the ten years I've known her.
The same books are on the shelves, the same framed photos hang on the wall.
Hell, she's still using the same exact chipped pencil cup on her oversized, cramped desk and the same eucalyptus oil in the diffuser in the corner.
I wait until the door closes before spinning to face her.
"What the fuck is going on?" I ask, pinning the petite, middle-aged woman with a firm look. "Your entire staff has been looking at me like they're expecting me to lose it all goddamn morning."
She blinks wide gray eyes at me. "You don't know."
"Know what?"
"River, a big chunk of your latest manuscript was leaked online," she says, her voice soft. "It's all over the place."
"What?"
She motions for me to follow her to her desk, then spins her laptop around to face me. I stare at the screen, my stomach churning.
"Jesus Christ," I whisper, trying to process what I'm seeing. That's pages from my manuscript, pulled up on some fucking website I've never even heard of before now. "What the fuck, Alice?"
"That's what I was going to ask you," she says.
"I didn't leak the motherfucker!" I growl, glaring at her. I pace away from her desk, then right back to stare at the screen again. "What the fuck?"
My stomach churns, bile crawling up my throat. Who the fuck would leak this? Who even had access to leak it?
"I don't…" I shake my head, tugging on strands of my hair.
"You need to file a police report," Alice says, moving swiftly around the side of her desk. "Try to get ahead of this now."
"Get ahead of it? It's already out there!" I remind her, pointing at the screen. "The whole goddamn world has access to pages from a book that isn't even finished yet." I shove a hand through my hair. "How much of it is out there?"
"More than you'd like," she admits. "The first six chapters. And we don't know if there's more coming. Who has access to it other than you?"
"Just Samantha and…" I trail off, refusing to even say her name.
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter," I mutter. "She wouldn't have done this." There isn't a chance in hell that Jasmine would have leaked it…right?
You had her arrested, a little voice whispers.
I fucking hate that little voice. It sounds like betrayal. Hell, it feels like betrayal. Jasmine has never done anything to make me suspect she could do something like this, not even after I had her arrested.
"Someone did," Alice says sympathetically, squeezing my arm. "And you really need to find out if this is the extent of it, or if they have access to anything else."
"Jesus Christ." I sink down into a chair, hanging my head. This is a fucking disaster. "What does Roni think?"
"Roni is pissed, but we're on your side in this," Alice says carefully. "You aren't responsible for someone posting your manuscript without permission. Our IP lawyers are all over it already. DMCAs and cease and desists have been going out all morning, but…"
I jerk my chin in a nod, but don't say anything.
What the fuck am I supposed to say? Once it's on the internet, it's forever.
She doesn't have to say it. I'm well aware of how this shit works.
There's no forcing overseas entities to comply with a DMCA, especially in piracy-friendly countries where most of the servers are housed.
Hell, we're lucky if we get Google to stop indexing those sites in search results.
But this is bigger than just the IP laws that were violated here.
I've poured my feelings for Jasmine into every line I've written since meeting her.
This manuscript is steeped in her. And the whole goddamn world has access to parts of it before it's finished.
Before she's even read it and given me permission to move forward with publishing it.
Before she even knows that I'm in love with her.
It's my work, work I wasn't ready to share with anyone except her yet…and someone has taken that right away from me. IP law aside, the loss of control of something not meant for everyone else is seriously fucked up.
Alice's desk phone rings. She snatches it up, placing it at her ear. "Alice," she says, her voice sharp, her eyes locked on me. "Hey, Roni. He's here now."
Fuck.
"I'll put it on speaker," she says, then hits a button and drops the phone back into the cradle.
"River," Roni says, fury in her raspy voice. "What the fuck happened? Who are we suing?"
"I don't know. I only just found out it's been leaked."
"I need names," she growls.
"The only two people who had access are my assistant and my girlfriend," I mutter wearily. "Samantha signed an NDA, and she's been my assistant for five years."
"And your girlfriend?"
"She wouldn't have done it," I say, my voice flat…deadly.
"I need a name, River," Roni says impatiently. "The whole upper floor is currently losing its collective shit over this. I need to give them something."
"Her name is Jasmine, but you aren't giving them her name, Roni," I say, climbing to my feet. "If you do, I'll spend every fucking dime I have voiding our contract so those pages are the only part of this manuscript anyone ever sees."
I've already sent Jasmine to jail once. I'll be damned if I let my publisher threaten to do it a second time over something she didn't do.
"We need to do something."
"No, I need to do something," I snap. "And I will. Just give me the day, please. I'll have answers for you by morning."
Silence rings down the line, and then Roni mutters a curse.
"Fine. You have until morning, River. And then I'm putting our legal team on it.
The series is under contract with us. They didn't just fuck you over when they leaked these pages.
They fucked us over, too. It's nowhere near publication-ready. "
She hangs up before I can say anything else.
"That went well," Alice mutters dryly.
I shoot her a dark look.
"It did," she says. "Trust me. She isn't threatening to sue you, and she's giving you until the end of the day to find out who to sue. Usually, she's a pit bull."
"I don't need a pit bull right now," I mutter. "I need to find my fucking assistant."
Alice's face falls. "You think it was Sam?"
Do I?
I don't know, but I know in my bones that it wasn't Jasmine. Who the fuck else could it be if not Sam? I don't know, but the fact that Sam is avoiding my calls isn't giving me high hopes here.