Chapter 7 #2
“…statement needs to be drafted before…”
“…we can’t confirm anything until legal clears…”
“…if this hits social before we’re ready—”
My pulse kicked, faster now, sharper.
This wasn’t an interview.
This was a situation.
I straightened slightly in my chair, my shoulders settling back into alignment, my posture shifting from prepared to present, even as the conversation continued around me without pause, without explanation, without anyone acknowledging that I had just walked into the middle of something already in motion.
The door behind me opened again.
The shift in the room was immediate.
Subtle—but undeniable.
Not louder. Not abrupt. Just… redirected.
I turned instinctively, and relief hit before I could stop it.
Ezra.
He stepped into the room like he belonged to it without needing to prove it, his presence steady, measured, already focused on the conversation unfolding at the table. His gaze swept once across the room, taking everything in with quiet precision before landing on me.
And just like that, something in my chest loosened.
“Bea,” he said, his voice warm, familiar, cutting through the noise without disrupting it as he crossed the room. “You found us.”
Not: Are you okay?
Not: What’s going on?
Just enough to ground me. Just enough to remind me I wasn’t completely out of place.
“I did,” I replied, my voice steady even as everything else still felt slightly off-balance.
His hand brushed briefly against my shoulder as he passed—quick, reassuring, gone almost as soon as it landed—before his attention shifted forward again.
“Where are we, Char?” he asked, already stepping into the flow of the meeting like he had never left it.
Momentum didn’t pause for him.
It sharpened.
“We’re trying to get control of the narrative.” Char’s tone was clipped as she watched Ezra take the empty chair at my side.
“No decisions until we understand the full picture,” he responded, his voice low, steady.
The room shifted around that.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
A counterbalance.
“We don’t have the luxury of slowing down,” the man Ezra’s right shot back, irritation threading through his tone. “If this gets out—”
“When it gets out,” someone corrected quietly. “Rawlings, you know it’s just a matter of time.”
The GM exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. “When it gets out, we need to be ahead of it.”
“We will be,” Ezra replied, calm, unshaken. “But we don’t react blind.”
Silence pressed in for half a beat. Then—“Müller was processed at approximately 2:14 a.m.”
The words came from the far end of the table, delivered in a neutral tone by a woman I hadn’t noticed speaking before. They landed in the center of the room and didn’t move.
Müller—The name hit something in me, immediate and visceral. I’d read a few headlines. Watched some interviews. But him being arrested was news to me.
“Booked on suspicion of misdemeanor assault,” the legal rep continued, her voice even, detached. “Held overnight. Initial appearance this morning. Released on bail.”
The words stacked, one on top of the other.
My stomach dropped, just slightly.
“The alleged victim?” Char asked, already moving forward.
“Male. Late twenties. Intoxicated at time of incident. Sustained a nasal fracture. Treated and released.”
Holy hell. A broken nose.
My mind filled in the image automatically—blood, impact, the kind of damage that couldn’t be explained away with a simple statement.
“He’s cooperating?” Rawlings pressed.
“Yes,” the legal rep confirmed. “He’s indicated he intends to request charges be dropped. He’s also accepted medical expenses being covered privately. Charges are still pending. Nothing has been dismissed.”
Of course not.
“Media?” Char asked.
“Nothing confirmed publicly yet. But the arrest record exists. It’s only a matter of time.” A voice came from a man that I could not see.
The room went quieter. Not still. But tighter. Like everything had narrowed to a single point.
“We bench him,” the coach, Dan Holloway barked abruptly, his tone flat, decisive. “We pull him before this molehill becomes Mount St. Helens.”
“No,” Rawlings countered immediately. “We explore trade options. If this escalates—”
“We are not trading him over one incident,” Ezra cut in, still calm, but firmer now. “We don’t make that call today.”
My gaze flicked to him, just for a second. His expression hadn’t changed. But his eyes were sharper now. He already knew what he was going to do. He just wasn’t saying it yet.
“Then what are we doing?” Rawlings demanded.
Silence stretched.
Then—Char turned her head.
Slowly.
Calculatingly.
Until her gaze landed on me.
I felt it before I fully registered it, the way the energy in the room shifted, subtle but unmistakable, as if something had been redirected without warning and was now bearing down on me instead.
The weight pressed in from every angle, expectation tightening the air, drawing every line of attention to where I sat.
My stomach dropped. A full, disorienting plummet. The same feeling of a missed a step in the dark and there was nothing solid beneath.
“Let’s see what you can do with him,” she sneered coolly, leaning back in her chair.
The words were almost casual. Almost. But there was something underneath them, something sharper, something deliberate enough that it didn’t feel like an opportunity so much as a setup.
A challenge I hadn’t agreed to but was already standing inside.
For a split second, everything in me stalled.
Not visibly. Not in a way anyone in the room would catch.
But inside, my thoughts scattered fast and uneven, trying to assemble something usable out of information I didn’t have, trying to bridge a gap I hadn’t known existed until it was already too wide to cross cleanly.
What do you mean, what can I do? I don’t even know what’s happening.
The question hit hard and immediate in the back of my mind, followed by a sharper one right behind it.
Why me?
Because this wasn’t what I had walked in expecting. This wasn’t a conversation. This wasn’t a coordinated meeting where I could anticipate questions, guide responses, prove myself in curated ways.
This was a situation already unfolding.
And somehow, impossibly, I had just been dropped directly into the middle of it without a single piece of context to hold onto.
Every muscle in my body pulled tighter, like I had braced for something I couldn’t see coming and couldn’t stop.
I was twenty-two. I had graduated—what—months ago?
I had written papers about crisis management, built strategies in classrooms where the stakes were theoretical, where mistakes lived on pages instead of headlines, where no one was watching you in real time, waiting to see if you broke under pressure.
I had never done this.
Not like this, at least. Not with a room full of people who already knew what they were doing, who were already forming opinions, already deciding whether I belonged here or not.
I don’t know how to do this.
The thought came fast, sharp, honest enough to sting.
And just as quickly—It was gone. Buried.
Because it didn’t matter.
Because whether I knew how to do it or not, I was already in the room, being watched, being measured in a way that didn’t allow for hesitation.
Every instinct in me clicked.
This was it. Not an interview—a trial by fire.
I didn’t move right away. Didn’t react the way they probably expected someone my age, in my position, probably would—wide-eyed, uncertain, asking questions that would immediately give away how far behind I already was.
Instead, I let the silence sit for half a second longer than comfortable, even as it pressed in harder, even as I could feel the edges of it tightening around me, waiting to see what I would do.
Long enough to think. Or at least to look like I was thinking.
Because the truth was, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was about to say. I was flying completely by the seat of my pants. Grabbing onto fragments—exposure, legal, timing—words I had heard in the last few minutes and forcing them into something that could resemble competence.
Then I leaned forward slightly, my hands resting lightly on the table, my posture open, using the steady pressure of my palms against the surface to anchor myself. “What’s the current narrative?” I asked, my voice steady, clear. “Internally and externally.”
Char’s gaze flickered, just briefly.
“Internally?” Rawlings scoffed, watching me. “He’s a liability. A big fucking liability for this entire franchise.”
“Externally,” Char added, “he’s a headline waiting to happen.”
“If nothing’s public yet,” I forced out, begging my voice not to crack.
Finally, my mind was moving, mapping out the angles, the risks, the possibilities, “we control first release. We shape tone before it gets shaped for us.” I turned my head slightly toward the legal rep before continuing, “Timeline on when arrest records become accessible?”
“Potentially within the hour,” she replied.
“Then we assume worst-case,” I declared, nodding once. “We prepare a statement that acknowledges the incident without confirming details we can’t legally confirm yet. Minimal, proactive.”
Rawlings leaned back slightly, his irritation shifting into something more measured. “And Müller?” he pressed.
“Where is he now?” The question left my mouth as the door behind me opened.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough to pull the air in the room in a different direction, subtle but immediate, like a shift in pressure before a storm fully breaks.
I felt it ripple outward from the doorway, tension tightening, attention redirecting, something unspoken passing between the people in the room that I was still too new to fully understand.
I turned before I could stop myself.
And then—I understood.
He didn’t rush. Didn’t hesitate. Alois Müller stepped into the room like none of this was urgent, like the weight of everything that had been said in the last ten minutes didn’t belong to him, even though it very clearly did.
Tall enough that he seemed to take up more space than the doorway should have allowed, broad shoulders filling out a dark hoodie, his presence hitting before anything else had the chance to.
It wasn’t just his size.
It was the calmness.
Everything in the room had been tight, sharp, moving fast beneath the surface—and he wasn’t.
He was steady. Unbothered. Like he had already decided none of this mattered.
Alois let the door fall shut behind him with a quiet click, his gaze sweeping once across the table before settling—without hesitation—on me.
“Apparently the team needs even more people to deal with me, I see.” His voice was even, almost bored, the words delivered dry enough to scrape, like he wasn’t trying to be difficult so much as he had no interest in being anything else.
He didn’t move toward the table. Didn’t take a seat. Instead, he leaned back against the wall opposite me, arms crossing loosely over his chest as if he had all the time in the world, as if this wasn’t a room full of people trying to figure out what to do with him.
Alois’s gaze didn’t shift. Didn’t soften. It stayed fixed on me, assessing in a way that felt less like curiosity and more like dismissal already in progress.
“And you are?” he added, the question directed at me—apparently the only stranger unfortunately present in the huddle.
The room held its breath. I felt it. Felt every set of eyes flick between us, waiting to see what I would do, how I would respond, whether I would shrink under the weight of it or step into it like I belonged there.
For a fraction of a second, everything inside me buzzed. The same sharp awareness cut through me—too much, too fast, not enough information, not enough time—Oh, shit. The thought flashed and burned out just as quickly.
Because it didn’t matter.
Because whether I was ready for this or not, I was already in it.
I straightened slightly in my chair, my shoulders settling, my spine aligning with something steadier underneath the pressure, even as a thread of irritation tangled unexpectedly with something far less useful.
“Beatriz Ribeiro,” I responded, my tone calm, even, matching his. “Communications.”
His gaze didn’t change. If anything, it sharpened. Like I had just confirmed something for him.
And in that moment, sitting across from him with the weight of the entire room pressing in and his attention locked on me, I understood exactly what I had been handed.
Not a task.
Not an opportunity.
But Alois Müller—the problem.
And I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to control him.