51. David #2
Inside, it’s cold, quiet, white, sterile.
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.
I staked my reputation,
sold her the dream,
said everything would be okay.
She felt safe enough to trust me.
Doors started opening.
She had one foot in, and now the label’s slamming it on her fingers.
My heart’s pounding hot.
It’s all I hear above:
“We have three active brand deals tied to her rollout,” Finance slams into the silence. “Two’ve requested emergency callback calls. One’s likely gonna exit. If we retain her, we not only risk losing all three, we risk partnerships with the label, period.”
PR: “Damage control.
“We need to act now.”
Legal: “If you act wrong, it’ll come back on us twice as hard. And every word you put out without facts is discoverable in court. So no, we are not rushing a statement.”
PR: “Silence is a statement.”
Legal: “So is defamation.”
As PR and Legal fight it out across the table, her manager interjects, “She didn’t leak it. You all know that. Why are we talking about her like she’s in the wrong?”
Finance: “Because perception doesn’t stand on truth.”
Her manager: “Ah, don’t you dare reduce her to a liability.”
Raymond yanks out his chair and drops into it, steepling his fingers. “Let’s stay focused,” he growls. “We’re not in the business of reactin’ emotionally. The question is how this affects the label’s reputation. We can’t have this landin’ on our other artists or partnerships—”
I try to swallow, but my throat feels tight and lined with chalk. Despite the nausea climbing up my throat, I pull up the sex tape again.
All it takes is a simple Google search.
Soon as I do, I sit taller.
“Wait. That’s the ex.”
Legal drops an exhausted arm onto the table. “We’re aware.”
I scoot the chair closer, almost crushing my plant. “No, listen. Bianca’s never hid from her past. Not from us or her fans. This guy?” I hold out the beginning of the video that only shows the side of his face. “He’s the abusive piece of shit she was scared of. The one she had to get away from.”
I click off my phone and toss it back onto the table. “This only confirms everything she’s been singing about.”
“She don’t look scared in the video, sweetheart,” a guy from PR snickers.
I ball my fist to keep it from punching his face off. “So we take her in ‘cause of her past, claimin’ her abuse is relatable, a story that’ll sell,” I say, shaking my head, mainly at myself.
'Cause I let it happen.
Didn’t matter at the time,
as long as she got signed,
as long as she got her chance,
her way out.
“And now we’re distancing ourselves?” A humorless laugh slips out of me. “Using her story when it sells then dumping her when it costs us. “Yeah. That’s a great look.”
“It’s called business,” Raymond states.
“It’s called bullshit,” I shoot back. “Using her up, then walking away. “We’re no better than the abusive ex fuckin’ her over.”
I’m trying to keep the heat contained.
I’m trying to be professional.
Really, I am. But I can’t.
They’re all looking at me—
Allison brought her in.
Allison owns this.
Allison’s fault.
Allison can’t get a solid grip on her job,
her artist, her Boys, her addiction.
Allison has no control of anything.
Raymond’s voice slides through the silence, calm and resigned.
“No one’s forgetting this. It’s an image that sticks.
A curse that follows an entire career, and anything it’s attached to.
” His chair creaks as he leans back, and he looks around the room, ending at me.
“We’re already underwater. We can’t save everyone. ”
My nails dig into my thigh under the table‘cause I know what this will do to her. Loyalty only lasts for as long as the perception holds. The second an artist falls out of the image a fan has of them, they’re gone. Backs turned. Ship abandoned.
If we don’t stand by her, no one will.
And now I’m struggling to breathe.
Because I feel the internal scream,
as if she were me.
I know how it feels to be an object.
To be touched, looked at, used like one.
To be chewed up
and spit out
and stepped on.
But here, it’s an entire world that ignored her consent. A million eyes raping her, again
and again
and again.
“This is a human being we’re talking about,” I scrape out. “Not just some asset to the damn label. A person. Who’s literally being fucked in front of the whole world by her abuser.”
Simon coughs into his fist.
I flick my eyes up, a huff leaving my nose. “I'm sorry, did that make you uncomfortable?”
Raymond bars his arms across his chest, his gaze sliding over me, landing on the frantic pulse at the base of my throat.
There’s a sadistic glint in his eyes, like he can feel the pull between my thighs.
He knows.
He’s mapped out the addiction,
what makes it salivate,
what makes it satisfied.
And the sickest part is how he drinks in my panic, the one thing that gives him power over me.
His voice falls gentle when he says, “No matter how much you want to defend her, the reality is this: we can’t afford to keep her under contract.”
Every part of me wants to shout in his face. To throw something. To scream this isn’t right.
“We need to come to a decision,” the board finally says. “Fast.”
Fast, fast, it’s moving too fast.
PR: “Partners are looking for decisive action,” they decide. “I say a separation is the clearest signal of containment to the stakeholders.”
My heart hammers as they go around the table, legal next: “Legally, we're safer if we end the contract now.”
Then Finance: “I agree. If we sever ties, we stabilize relationships faster.”
The plant rattles in my grip,
dirt sprinkling between my thighs.
Her manager breaks formation,
palm cupped over his mouth, shaking his head.
“You hear yourselves? She’s barely twenty,” he says, glancing around the room.
“She’s basically a child being publicly violated.
She trusted this room. She trusted all of you when you said you had her back.
” His cupped palm turns into a fist. “She doesn’t have the resources.
The safety nets. You do. And you’re choosing not to use them for her. ”
PR abandons all emotion: “At a certain point, association becomes a liability.” As if it’s nothing personal.
“I can’t believe this shit,” the manager mutters.
Raymond turns to me. “She’s your artist,” he says with mock apology. It would be appropriate for you to make the final determination. And do what’s right for the label,” he adds.
My breath stalls.
He knows how much this artist means to me. He knows I can’t carry that guilt on my shoulders.
Raymond tilts his head. “Allison. Do we stand by her,” he asks, “or do we protect the label?”
I glance around the room.
Everyone’s staring, waiting on me—heir to the throne, seeing if I’m capable of making the tough decisions.
The inside of my nose burns as I stare back at Raymond, chewing on my bottom lip until the flesh cracks.
There was never a choice.
Every department has spoken.
And now he's forcing me to be the one abandoning here in the end.
I look down at my hands—
my shaking hands.
I don’t know how to fight this, not with all their corporate bullshit in the way. “Not much of a choice, now is it?” I try to speak but it comes out brittle, breakable. “We protect the label.” I sigh. “We always protect the label.”
What they’ve all forgotten is:
the artists are the label.
The manager steps back,
arms falling to his sides, disappointed.
He’s done fighting the room.
“Alright, Allison. Just remember this moment. You’re in the room when it’s her today,” he says, staring right at me. “Someday you won’t be in the room when it’s you.” He shrugs. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Two minutes later, I’m standing in Raymond’s office, shouting as he steps in—
“Why’d you make me do that?”
He’s closing the door behind him, eyes narrowed. “Lower your goddamn voice.”
“I want out,” I say through clenched teeth, turning to set the plant on the corner of his desk. “This is all too much. Hunter’s out, Raymond. He’s out! Did you know?”