35. Take Care
Take Care
Cam
There's an architectural kink that LA's legal district wants you to feel: the buildings are glass and steel, mirrored so you can watch yourself adjust your lapels as dozen times before you hit the revolving doors.
The elevator smelled of fresh carpet and corporate ambition.
I checked my phone for the fourth time on the ride up, scrolled past three "last warning" texts from my agent, and thumbed open my Notes app to stare at the list I'd written at two a.m., titled "Things to Say if They Try to Shake Me Down. "
Top line: You can't blackmail someone who already posted the nudes herself.
Under that: Don't say you're gonna sue unless you're ready to sign the check.
The rest was mostly cuss words and one generous invitation to "eat my entire ass," which, looking back, was maybe not the legal approach my team would appreciate.
Twenty-seventh floor. You could see all the way out to the Hollywood sign through the smog.
I walked the length of the hall, ignoring the framed magazine covers and music memorabilia that lined every inch.
They were all the same faces anyway: the beautiful, the doomed, the legends that got in before streaming turned the world to hell.
I let myself into the waiting area, which was empty except for the receptionist and a dude in a maroon suit.
She smiled as she buzzed me in, then went back to whatever disaster was unfolding on her desktop.
At exactly 9:04, my lawyer appeared—Liz, who had the crisp walk and razor cheekbones of a former D1 athlete and the gleam in her eye of someone who actually enjoyed contract law. "Camryn," she said. "Glad you made it."
"Would've come earlier, but I wanted to skip the small talk," I replied, gesturing at my face, which was aggressively un-made-up.
I wore my sharpest dress suit—a tailored black blazer over a crisp, open-collar button-down, slim-cut trousers, and a pair of low black heels that meant business but still let me move.
Liz didn't smile, not really. "They're waiting for us. Let's go."
Liz led me into a conference room the size of a small gym.
There was one long table and a spread of coffee, water, and pastries lined up at the far end.
My label's general counsel sat on one side, already flipping through a spiral-bound agenda.
Across from them, in a neat row, were three people: the lead MikkiLeaks counsel, her junior partner, and, unexpectedly, Skye.
If my stomach hadn't been in my shoes already, it would've dropped. Skye looked nothing like her last Pixogram post.
Blush swept across the freckles she usually hid, a natural lip, the glasses she almost never wore, a wrap dress like every other woman in the building. Everything soft but the mouth underneath it. Somebody had told her how to look. She'd taken the note perfectly. She always did.
When I walked in, she looked up for half a second.
Eyes flicking to mine, then darting away, like she couldn't hold the stare.
She dropped her gaze straight to the phone in her hand, but her face was tight.
The MikkiLeaks reps looked how you'd expect: perfectly ambiguous, skin so flawless it had to be bought, the type of androgynous style that played equally well to an algorithm or a paparazzi lens.
Nobody stood up. Nobody did introductions. In this room, you knew who everybody was, and if you didn't, you lost.
"Let's get started," said the main Mikki counsel, who had a voice like good whiskey—smoky, almost sweet, but capable of stripping paint.
Liz took the chair beside me and slid her laptop open with a snap. "We appreciate everyone making time today. Our understanding is that this is a final settlement conference, not a negotiation."
"Correct. We're here to resolve all outstanding issues and close the book. Unless Ms. Wolfe has new demands." She smiled, and every tooth was perfect.
My label's rep coughed, then dove in. "The basic terms are as follows: Ms. Wolfe's label agrees not to pursue any further action regarding the posts, provided MikkiLeaks, LLC and Ms. Rooks pay damages and sign and abide by a full and perpetual NDA.
In perpetuity, on all platforms and print, in all possible future versions of the internet. "
They stopped speaking on me, and we wouldn't sue their asses back into the next tax bracket.
Simple enough. But the label figured out they were more likely to settle and pay 'we're sorry' money than take it to court.
It would suck to wake up and know that five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now you'd need written permission to spend your own money because you still owed someone.
"That's the gist," said the junior Mikki counsel, who couldn't have been older than thirty but had the dead eyes of a veteran shark. "Though the NDA requires our client to drop not only the public claims, but the private ones, including those relating to…interpersonal entanglements."
Liz had warned me about this part. The last thing anyone wanted was for the details of my private life—especially the Romi angle—to end up as court record.
"We're not here to discuss Ms. Wolfe's personal relationships," Liz said, all steel.
"We're here to ensure she's not targeted by your client, now or in the future. "
Skye looked up for a second, but her face didn't betray a single thing.
MikkiLeaks—or one of them, anyway—sipped from a heavy glass tumbler—cold brew, I guessed—and nodded. "So noted. I assume we're all clear on the scope?"
"Actually," said Liz, with a faint smile that could have been painted on, "there's one small addition. As we discussed prior, we'd like to extend the same protective language to cover Ms. Sweet. As a courtesy."
The room went dead silent. Even the AC seemed to pause.
The lead Mikki counsel tilted her head. "Ms. Sweet's not a party to this. Is she?"
"She is to the extent that your client and Ms. Rooks have repeatedly used her name to harass and humiliate Ms. Wolfe," said Liz, clicking on her screen.
"We've compiled a list of over thirty separate mentions in the past twelve months, all of which contributed directly to the harm we're here to address. "
I was the one who pushed for Romi's name to be included.
Liz called it "a courtesy," but fuck that.
I'd seen what those stories did to her. How every random blogger with an axe to grind could use my mess as an excuse to come for her neck.
Romi always fronted like it equaled part of the game, but I caught her going quiet after the worst headlines.
The mean comments who forgot they were picking apart a real person with feelings.
They never saw her put her phone face-down and leave it there, like if she didn't look, it couldn't hurt her.
I couldn't fix what they'd already written, but I could lock the door on them using her name for clicks. If that meant going to war in a boardroom, so be it. These MFs were done turning her into their content. Both of us. Period.
The junior Mikki counsel started to protest, but Liz cut in, voice flat, "It's a non-issue. Clear as day. We're asking your client to pretend Romi Sweet doesn't exist, same way you will for my client. You can sign or you can spend the next year in depositions. And undergo discovery."
For the first time, the junior counsel looked genuinely rattled. "That wasn't the original understanding."
"It is now," said Liz.
The back-and-forth got uglier from there, but in the lawyer sense.
The MikkiLeaks side bluffed and threatened to walk, but my team never flinched.
The label's rep, who'd been silent for most of the meeting, finally cut in with, "If this isn't settled today, I'm prepared to move for an injunction against your entire platform.
Which means your writers, your contributors, and your affiliated accounts will be enjoined from using any Peachtree artist's name or likeness until a judge says otherwise. Is that what you want?"
It wasn't. Ten minutes later, the head Mikki counsel passed the first page of the NDA to sign, then passed the pen to Skye, who quickly scrawled her name.
While they countersigned, I let myself glance down the table.
Skye's hand was steady, her face expressionless, but I caught the faint twitch in her other hand, the one not holding the pen.
I thought about all the years we'd spent circling each other in the scene, about how it took two weeks for the Wolfepack to turn her from queen-in-waiting to ghost. It was the same thing that happened to Niko after she crossed Romi.
One minute you're on every playlist, the next you're a punchline, your own label pretending you never existed.
When it was my turn, I signed fast, barely glancing at the text. It was over. For real, this time.
As Liz packed up her bag, she gave me a sideways nod. "You handled that well," she murmured.
I shrugged. "I just wanted it to be done."
I nearly made it to the end of the elevator hall before Skye caught up.
She must've ran, or had a sixth sense for where I'd go when cornered.
The way she blocked my path was familiar—she'd done the same thing in a dozen green rooms and backstage hallways until I pressed her up against the nearest couch.
This time, I didn't feel the usual heat in my chest. This was a flat curiosity, like watching an old scene play out on a movie I'd already seen.
"Cam, wait." She sounded raw, not rehearsed. A voice I knew best in the dark, not out here in the light.
I looked at her. Minimal makeup, no armor, dress hanging off her like she forgot how to fill it out. She was smaller without the hype, or I was just over her.
"What."
"I hate how you say it like that. Like I'm a stranger." She twisted her hands in front of her as she walked closer. "The wild part is, some part of me really did think I was helping you." A short, bitter laugh at herself.