CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By nine the next morning, Hailey’s tearful video had been shared, stitched, mocked, defended, dissected, and summarized by three Newport Vista gossip accounts, two local lifestyle pages, and one automotive industry blog that used the phrase brand ambassador bloodbath with entirely too much enthusiasm.
Tiffany watched it only once more in Vanessa’s office, seated between Vanessa and Marisol while Nina Bell paced in front of the window with the tense energy of a woman who considered public emotion a biohazard.
“We shouldn’t respond directly to the tears,” Nina said. “She wants a fight. If we engage with the emotion, we validate the narrative.”
Marisol looked at the paused video on the screen. Hailey’s wet eyes shone beneath the caption Women should support women. “I’d like to validate my foot against her butt.”
Vanessa did not look up from her notes. “Please don’t say that in writing.”
Tiffany sat quietly, hands folded in her lap. Hailey’s words had struck where they were designed to strike. Younger. Threat. Jealous. What you can’t be anymore. A cheaper woman might have flung those words in a hallway. Hailey had put them in soft lighting and let the internet carry them.
Tiffany respected the tactic. She intended to bury it.
“We respond with a company statement,” Tiffany said.
Nina turned. “Yes. Clean, professional, no emotion.”
“No names beyond what is necessary,” Vanessa added.
Tiffany looked at the paused image of Hailey. “No. We name the standards.”
Nina’s eyebrows lifted. “Meaning?”
Tiffany rose and crossed to the window. Below, Newport Vista glittered under a brutal blue sky, beautiful and hungry. It loved youth, wealth, scandal, reinvention, and a woman bleeding prettily enough to call it content.
“The statement should say Beaumont Chambers doesn’t award public-facing contracts without qualifications review, conflict disclosure, legal approval, and board authorization,” Tiffany said.
“It should say undisclosed personal relationships and misused corporate resources are not pathways to representation. It should say our next public campaign will center trust, leadership, and legacy.”
Vanessa’s pen moved across her pad. “Good.”
Nina nodded slowly. “That’s sharp without sounding defensive.”
“I’m not defensive.”
“No,” Marisol said. “You’re educational.”
The statement went out at noon. By twelve twenty, the comments had shifted, and by one, Hailey had posted again, this time without tears. Tiffany did not watch that one, but Nina summarized it in a voice that suggested she had suffered for the team.
“She says you’re hiding behind corporate language because you can’t handle being replaced.”
Tiffany signed the showroom event approvals without looking up. “How sad for her.”
“She also says she plans to attend tonight’s customer preview because she was invited before you decided to ruin her career.”
Marisol looked up sharply. “She wasn’t invited.”
“No,” Tiffany said. “But she’ll come.”
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want security instructed to keep her out?”
Tiffany considered it. The evening event was not large.
It was a private preview for top customers, a soft launch of the coastal luxury expansion, and an opportunity to steady public confidence before Thursday’s board vote.
Keeping Hailey out would be reasonable. It would also let her cry about being silenced.
Let her walk in, Tiffany thought. Some people only understood a door after it closed on them in public.
“Let security know she isn’t to access employee areas or private documents,” Tiffany said. “But if she wants to stand in my showroom and perform, let her.”
Nina smiled despite herself. “You scare me.”
“Good. Use that in the statement tone.”
At six thirty, the flagship showroom looked like wealth under glass.
The vehicles had been arranged in a clean diagonal line beneath sculptural lighting.
Champagne circulated on black trays, a string quartet played near the reception desk, and customers wore linen, silk, diamonds, and the pleased expressions of people invited to something exclusive before everyone else could buy into it.
Tiffany wore a deep ivory pantsuit with a silk camisole and gold heels. No black satin tonight. No mourning. No armor disguised as grief. The suit fit her like a decision.
Guests greeted her differently now. Not as Alan’s wife, not even as Mrs. Chambers, but as the woman the video had revealed to people who should have recognized her sooner.
“Tiffany, the statement was excellent.”
“Ms. Beaumont, my husband and I wanted you to know we stand with you.”
“I always told Alan you were the smart one.”
That last one came from a woman who had definitely never told Alan any such thing, but Tiffany accepted the lie with grace because Newport Vista was built on decorative revisions.
Alan arrived at seven. The room noticed but did not bend toward him, and that was its own punishment.
He wore a dark suit and looked polished from a distance.
Up close, the strain showed around his mouth and eyes.
He did not approach Tiffany, which was smart.
Instead, he stood near the bar, receiving cautious greetings from men who had slapped his back two weeks earlier and now treated him like a wet railing.
Tiffany saw the moment he realized it. His smile stayed in place, but his hand tightened around his glass.
Then the showroom doors opened.
Hailey entered in pale blue. Even Tiffany had to acknowledge the staging.
Hailey had chosen innocence over glamour tonight: soft curls, minimal jewelry, wide eyes, and a dress that suggested she had come to be understood, not photographed, though of course she paused in the entrance long enough for phones to find her.
Nina, standing beside Tiffany, murmured, “She’s good at this.”
“Yes,” Tiffany said. “She certainly is.”
Hailey crossed the showroom with her chin lifted. Guests parted because people always made space for conflict when they could pretend they were doing the opposite.
Alan set down his drink and stepped forward. “Hailey, you shouldn’t be here.”
That was the first useful thing he had said in days.
Hailey ignored him. Her gaze fixed on Tiffany. “I think we should talk.”
Tiffany handed her champagne glass to Nina. “Then talk.”
The quartet faltered. Poor things. No one had prepared them for warfare.
Hailey stopped a few feet away. Up close, Tiffany saw the strain beneath the makeup. The girl was frightened, angry, humiliated, and still convinced she could turn the room with the right angle.
“You made me look like some kind of opportunist,” Hailey said.
“No. I corrected an unauthorized business announcement.”
“You humiliated me.”
“You participated in an attempt to humiliate me.”
Hailey’s face flushed. “You’re acting like I stole something from you.”
Tiffany looked around the showroom. Customers, employees, managers, Alan, phones, all watching. Perfect.
“You tried to accept a public role in a company you didn’t understand, under a contract that wasn’t approved, after entering into an undisclosed relationship with the married executive who promised it to you,” Tiffany said. “If that feels like stealing, you may want to sit with that.”
Hailey’s mouth tightened. “You think because you’re older and rich, you can just crush me.”
“No. I think because I’m the controlling owner of this company, I can decline to let you represent it.”
A few murmurs rippled.
Hailey lifted her voice. “You’re jealous because Alan chose me.”
The sentence hung there, tacky and bright. Tiffany saw Alan flinch, and some part of her appreciated that he still had enough shame left to recognize vulgarity when it stood in heels and quoted him.
She stepped closer, not much, just enough to make the room feel the shift.
“Hailey, pretty is not a qualification. Access is not achievement. And sleeping with the face of a company doesn’t make you fit to represent the name on the building.”
Someone gasped.
Hailey’s eyes filled, but the tears did not fall quickly enough to save her.
“I loved him,” she whispered.
Tiffany’s voice softened by one degree. “Then you should be angry with him for promising you a crown he didn’t own.”
Hailey looked at Alan then. For the first time, Tiffany saw the fantasy crack all the way through.
Hailey had believed Alan was the gate, the king, the brand.
But there he stood at the bar, silent and pale, unable to give her the campaign, the room, or even a defense that did not make him look worse.
Hailey turned back to Tiffany, but the fight had lost its shine. “You’re cruel.”
“No,” Tiffany said. “Cruel would be letting you keep thinking proximity to a powerful man is the same as power.”
The room was silent.
Then Mrs. Alvarez, holding a champagne flute near the customer lounge, turned to a security guard and asked in a clear, calm voice, “Is Miss Andrews on the guest list?”
Hailey’s face went red, not pretty pink or tearful rose, but full public scarlet. Security didn’t touch her. They didn’t need to. Two guards approached with professional courtesy, and Hailey stepped back before they could speak.
Alan took one step after her, then stopped when half the room turned toward him.
That was the moment Tiffany knew Hailey had truly lost. Not because she left the showroom, but because Alan had finally chosen his own image over hers in public, and she saw it.
She left on her own, walking too fast, blue dress fluttering around her knees. Alan watched the doors close behind her, then looked at Tiffany with anger, regret, and fear in unequal measure.
Tiffany returned her attention to her guests.
Nina appeared beside her and handed back the champagne. “Every phone in here caught that.”
“I assumed.”
“That was risky.”
Tiffany looked toward the doors Hailey had exited through. “No. Risky was mistaking my patience for permission.”
Twenty minutes later, while Tiffany was speaking with a customer about the coastal expansion, Nina leaned in and murmured, “Hailey’s skincare partnership just deleted her repost from their page.”
Marisol appeared on Tiffany’s other side, phone in hand and satisfaction poorly concealed. “Comments are not going her way. Someone clipped the line about the crown he didn’t own.”
Tiffany accepted the information without smiling because the night still belonged to the company, not Hailey. Still, when her phone buzzed in her pocket a few minutes later, she already knew whose name she hoped to see.
Christian: That was the face of the company.
Tiffany read it once, then looked across the showroom to where Alan stood beneath a screen that no longer displayed his image. For the first time, she let herself believe Christian might be right.