Chapter 20 #2
“Not much,” she scoffed, lifting her shoulders only to slump them again.
“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s move the conversation back over to Celine.
” Becka met my eyes through the camera, and it was clear there would be no derailing her.
I made a mental note to come back to this, though. Clearly there was trouble in paradise.
“Okay,” I said easily. “What’s happening to her at Pisces?”
“Oh, she’s been fired.” Becka snickered.
“Fired?” I echoed, although I couldn’t say I was surprised.
“Oh yeah, like super, mega fired.”
“Serves her right, I guess.”
“Babes, wipe that look off your face right-the-fuck-now.” Becka pointed her Stanley cup at the screen in a semi-threatening manner, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the cutesy charms hanging off it.
I held my hands up in surrender.
“I’m going to apply for her job,” Becka neatly sidestepped.
“No shit?”
“No shit,” she laughed. “And if they have any sense, they’ll give it to me. I basically did her job half the time anyway.”
We laughed about that for a moment, before I sobered up as an unpleasant thought filtered through the glee of having one less conspiracy to worry about.
“What about TK?”
“With any luck, he’s rotting in a hole somewhere.” She took an obnoxious slurp of her drink.
“Besides that,” I said pointedly. “Did your snooping pay off?”
“Okay, first of all, I don’t ‘snoop’, I ask around. Secondly, keep in mind that contrary to popular opinion, I am not in possession of every tiny detail that happens at Pisces-”
“I don’t believe you.”
“But,” she continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “From what I was able to find out, he negotiated the release of his contract in March, on the provision that he doesn’t attempt to solicit work from any client of Pisces, past or present, for the next three years.”
She delivered this piece of information as though it had no more significance than a boring bit of admin. I watched her in disbelief.
“What?” I burst out on the back of a laugh.
“I know!” Becka’s placid mask dropped away and she grinned at me widely.
“He got so royally screwed over! Why on earth did he agree to that?” I blew out a breath in disbelief.
Honestly, that was a real dagger-in-the-front.
Pisces clients were numerous, and often famous, and by no means restricted to physically walking through the doors in LA.
Yes, the actual studio was the flagship, but the studio was more than just a building with recording booths.
Pisces provided foley services, orchestra, scoring, to say nothing of the actual ‘production’ side of it.
There wasn’t a whole lot the studio couldn’t do, and only about half of it amounted to recording artists being physically in the building.
To be barred from working with any Pisces client for the next three years was to bar him from working with a great number of people, companies and movie studios.
“He might as well just go on vacation for the next three years,” Becka said in satisfaction.
“And no one is more delighted than me.” I flashed her a thumbs up. “But why he would accept that? It basically means he won’t work for three years. What on earth happened?”
The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make any sense. While it was enormously funny on the surface, a non-solicit clause to a company that worked with pretty much everyone was… career pausing, if not ending.
Was this ENT at work? If so, I hoped to never come up against their legal team.
The grin on Becka’s face gradually slipped, until what was left was the barest approximation of a smile.
“That’s where it gets a little less funny,” she admitted. “Remember that recording you had?”
She didn’t need to elaborate. Immediately, I was transported back to the storage cave at the bottom of Pisces, sitting on the dusty, hard floor.
I could see Trevor Kyle coming in, pushing the door closed behind him.
Hear the way he says my name repeatedly.
See the way he looks at me. Then I remember pulling out my phone and pressing record.
“I remember,” I said quietly. Sending up a silent, but sincere thank you to Donna – the feisty receptionist who gave zero fucks for the hierarchy, and who was not opposed to busting in where she thought she’d be needed.
“Yeah, well. Turns out that wasn’t the first time he’d tried something like that.” Becka’s face was now grim, jaw clenched as if that would prevent the words from escaping.
“Oh shit,” I breathed, hand rising to my chest, clutching at my necklace – a little golden swallow, a Christmas gift from Joon.
“Holy hell.”
“Holy hell is right,” Becka nodded. “That’s why he’s been gone all this time.
It turns out Fenway was paying attention in your meeting.
” Her eyes narrowed on mine. “I think he really heard you, babes, because after you left, TK wasn’t around much, and then – poof.
” Becka motioned an explosion with her hands.
“He was just gone. He got put on administrative leave, and then in March he formally left, except now we know he got canned.”
Becka’s eyes widened as she blew out a breath.
“I don’t know all that happened, but there was apparently enough…
precedence to merit such an extreme exit.
He basically got outmanoeuvred. I guess he got to pick: a really sucky, but quiet termination of contract and a non-solicit, or a less-quiet firing over the breach of contract from the morals clause in his contract.
The studio wants nothing to do with him – that’s why the non-solicit is so harsh.
TK didn’t have a choice, unless he wanted to get sued and have it all come out. ”
Becka fell silent, but it was a heavy silence. My mouth was agape as I stared at her.
“Becka, how do you know all this?”
“Daddy.” She shrugged.
Mr Hanson was a lawyer. I didn’t know much more than that, but I’d always gotten the impression he was some kind of big deal.
“Isn’t that like, an uber breach of confidentiality, or something?”
Becka waved her hand dismissively.
“He’s not representing any of the parties involved and there’s no gag order. The sexual assault allegations are going to be made public eventually. We’ll be reading about it in the tabloids. We just know the story first.”
She grinned, but I could tell it was forced. It was hard to feel lighthearted in the face of such horrible information. I returned the smile, but it felt brittle.
“Urgh, what a pig.” The words tasted sour on my tongue.
“Agreed,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised by the allegations. There was a reason he had the reputation he did.” She sighed, and I saw the way her eyes pinched, the hard set to her mouth.
She cleared her throat. “You just know this is gonna drag on. It won’t be over quickly. Covid’s really gummed up the court system. He’s gonna be out there, doing whatever the fuck he wants for longer than he has any right to.”
I nodded. “Maybe. But he’s gonna get his, no matter how long it takes.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”
Later
Jihoon’s face filled my phone screen, and I immediately felt lighter.
I hadn’t realised how anxious the conversation with Becka had made me.
It turned out he’d heard a similar story from his management today, as well, but he’d only been told that the footage had been leaked by a member of the Pisces admin team.
I had to remind him of who Celine was. He’d met her a handful of times, but she was apparently quite forgettable.
“I was always focused on you, jagiya,” he said, making my toes curl in my slippers.
“Do you think ENT will go after TK?” I asked, chewing on my thumbnail.
He seemed to consider the question a moment, pushing his now blond hair out of his face. It was getting longer, and my fingers ached to feel the softness of it.
“I don’t think so. He has done too much work for ENT, and technically he did not externally leak the video.”
His mouth turned down in an unhappy scowl, and I knew he felt as I did about the blatant invasion of privacy.
For him, it was worse because his identity had always been out there, unambiguous and for all to see.
To have so many people openly speculating about who you were kissing had offended him, because so much of it came with the assumption that the other person – me – was unworthy in some way.
Not least of all because the idea I wasn’t good enough had the dual effect of elevating him onto a pedestal, and that made him uncomfortable.
“Will ENT pursue charges against Celine?” I asked, feeling like there was no good answer.
“No.”
My mouth popped open in genuine surprise.
Jihoon continued, “They decided it wasn’t worth the bad image of suing a private individual. It would look like revenge, especially since we’re already taking Pisces to court over it. They are satisfied she has been dealt with by Pisces.”
I nodded, feeling unreasonably grateful, even though I didn’t really believe Celine deserved the grace, it just didn’t feel right that her monumental stupidity be rewarded with a life-changing financial battle.
“So ENT is still going ahead with the lawsuit, then?”
He nodded, and I couldn’t help but see how tired he looked. I knew he was sleeping poorly. I tried to keep my face neutral as I watched him.
“It’s now just…” he frowned and waved a hand through the air as he searched for the English word that corresponded with the Korean word he was thinking. In the end, he sighed, and pulled his phone out of his pocket, spoke a word into it, and it chimed back with, “perfunctory.”
He nodded and said, “It is now just perfunctory. ENT is taking the failure to protect us seriously Setting an example.”
It made sense. Even though it was almost laughable, the culpability was still on Pisces, as the studio had failed to protect the confidentiality of a client, even if it had ultimately been down to the private retaliation efforts of Trevor Kyle. Who was getting away with it.
“They will win the case,” he went on, oblivious to my inner monologue, “the record studio will pay, the case will be over.”
“And they all lived happily ever after.” I smiled, for real this time.
“And then the princess came back to the Kingdom of Korea, and they lived happily ever after.” Jihoon grinned at me, but there was something brittle about it.
A sudden feeling of longing seized the air in my lungs, and I had to take a second to bring myself under control.
The urge to reach through the screen, to run my fingers through his hair, to grab the collar of his shirt and bring his lips crashing down on mine was so visceral that for a second, my hands balled into fists.
“I miss you,” I said, eventually.
“Saranghae,” he replied, and for just a moment, it seemed like he wanted to say more but he didn’t, and we ended the call soon after.