Chapter 5
Chapter Five
LEXI
Iopen the bathroom door half an inch and peek out. No sign of Tristan. I pad down the short corridor to my room, pulse wild, wanting to strangle my brother. He knew. I asked him point blank last night when Tristan would be here, and he said he didn’t know!
When I opened the bathroom door, I was expecting Evan.
He’s so sweaty after his run that he takes a quick shower in this bathroom before he dives into the pool, and he usually only strips off his shirt.
Those triathlon shorts he wears are made for swimming and he keeps them on in the shower.
Not for a second did I think I’ll bust in there and catch my brother naked.
I honestly thought Evan had left the faucet running when the slow dribble of water didn’t stop. At least Tristan was only shaving and mostly covered. It could have been worse. Oh God. I groan. So. Much. Worse.
But Holy Mother of God, the visual of Tristan in a towel was enough to rip me out of my sleepy haze.
In the years I haven’t seen him, he has matured.
I sensed it from his Instagram photos, but I didn’t truly see it, not like now.
A picture may be worth a thousand words.
The real thing, on the other hand… I snatch a breath as I close my bedroom door and crawl under the covers.
I want to hide. That stupid blush was so uncalled for. It took me right back to—
Ah, buzz off. I push the memories away and reach for my phone to distract my mind.
There are several notifications. Some are messages from Tessa. Now that she’s in LA, she sends them late at night when I’m already in bed. I smile as I scroll. She’s hooked up with old friends from New York and seems to have landed on her feet. At least one of us has.
A new message pops up. It’s from Sheila. She’s checked in several times since I left New York and has kept me quietly informed on developments at St Chalamet. So far, there’ve been none.
Sheila
We have a new problem.
She continues typing, those three dots dancing their jig as my heart sinks.
Shit.
Me
What now?
Sheila
Are you up yet? Better to chat.
No. This sounds even worse. My heartbeat rockets as if on a mission to Mars.
Me
Yes.
My phone vibrates seconds later, and I answer. “Hey, why does this sound so—”
“Shit, Lexi. We would’ve let you know yesterday, but we had to make sure—”
“What?” I sit up and toss the covers to the side, suddenly too hot.
“The hackers have figured out your identity from the video.”
“What?” The words hang like arrows in the air, paused midflight, giving their target a moment to register Sheila’s meaning before they hit. “How?” A fresh chill cruises down my spine to settle in the pit of my stomach, where it seems to morph into bile.
I’ve seen the clip. Several times. It lives rent-free in my mind.
Once I told management about walking in on Mia Reed, the security team scoured all video footage around the date and time for proof, because you know, it’s a St Chalamet hotel.
And it’s Mia Reed. And they’ve been hacked.
Up until my confession, nobody knew, or suspected, that there was a hackers’ gold mine in old security footage from a small banquet room at the back end of the hotel’s fortieth floor.
The video shows me full length as I open the door, step in, sliding my jacket off one arm as my hand reaches to my chest—to my blouse’s top button to get a head start on the business of stripping—then I freeze for two solid seconds midstride, my face a picture.
Then I slowly, quietly back out of the banquet room, not blinking once, my hands held up in defense.
By pure luck, taking off my jacket had hidden my name badge and the hotel’s crest. Not that it helped much, as they’ve still managed to figure out who I am.
“We don’t know, probably from employee photos,” Sheila says, distress clear in her voice. “It could be anything. Face recognition, AI, who knows. The hackers have all the advantage here, Lexi.”
I keep my emotions in check with pure brutal force by digging my teeth into my bottom lip. “How do you know?” I ask when Sheila says nothing more. “How can you be sure?”
“Because they’re demanding a million dollars from the hotel group to keep your name—consequently St Chalamet’s name—out of it.”
I slip off the mattress to the floor and hug my legs to my chest. This is how it starts.
This is how it feels to lose control of a situation.
Nothing screams career-ending move like your name plastered all over a sex tape on the internet.
This type of stunt might work for some, but not for me and the industry I’m in.
My name linked to a scandal. Again. How many iterations of Alexandra am I going to go through in life? I drop my face to my palm to stifle a sob.
“Lexi? You’re still there?”
I breathe out a shaky breath. “Yes.” But the Earth can spew me out to space, and I’d be glad to wave goodbye.
“Any chance they’ve reached out to you? The hackers, that is? Mr. McIntyre asked me to phone you to find out.”
“I don’t know. How would they reach out?”
“Social media? Phone? Your personal email? Anything really. They’ll have the information we had for you in our system, so whatever you used when you filled in the employee forms ages ago plus the New York updates. I can send you what we have? You can check.”
I’m hot and cold and feel utterly helpless.
The only thing left to rise in me is anger.
“Are they going to pay?” I ask. “Is St Chalamet going to pay to keep my name out of their security scandal? They’ve already gotten rid of me with a wrongful dismissal, which I could sue them for—” I break off.
I shouldn’t say anything more. Not without a lawyer.
For all I know, this call is being recorded.
“I’ve got to go.” I kill the call and switch my phone off, certain I don’t want to see what’s going on in my email or social media notifications.
I drop my head back against the bed and go limp. It’s way too early in the morning to deal with this level of drama. To feel this drained. I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet. It’s hardly eight o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake.
The temptation to curl into a ball and stay right here on the floor is big, but I’m better than this.
My name is worth at least a million dollars.
And St Chalamet will pay if I have any say in it.
I’ll do anything to keep my face from being plastered all over the news.
Ultimately, it’s their reputation to protect.
If they expose me, I’ll expose them. For a long moment, I let the consequences play out in my head.
My anxiety pops right back like a jack-in-the-box—as if I could ever really contain it.
This is a freaking nightmare. And I don’t want to deal.
Not with St Chalamet, which is about to show its true colors, and not with lawyers who might not be able to fight a big corporation once all the details come out in court.
I was in the wrong by not reporting the Mia Reed incident immediately.
I was also in the wrong by having an offsite sex fest with Brent Fisherman, which, if it came out, would char my reputation black.
Bottom line: company policy will serve my ass on a platter.
Rule #2 in the Lexi O’Reilly rulebook for staying happily employed and avoiding nasty lawsuits: stick to company policy and obey the rules.
Fuck it. That should probably be rule number one.
But a lawsuit is a different ballgame altogether.
Once The Head gets a name—which it will if this ends up in court—I’ll just become the poor girl nobody cares to protect, barely good enough for Brent Fisherman to use as a final up-yours to St Chalamet before he made his exit for a GM position at another hotel group.
He gave up on being promoted to GM at St Chalamet.
I can see it now. Nobody is going to spend a sleepless night worrying about me, that’s for sure.
Worst of all is, anybody who watches that video would only smirk and think who would want that if Mia Reed is spreading her legs.
I wipe my cheeks as kitchen noises come through my bedroom door.
Tristan.
I close my eyes and draw in a haggard breath. He’s making coffee. The life source. I need some of that. Preferably with a double shot of brandy.
Dealing with my first me-men-idiocy trifecta and teenage disappointment seems like a joke now that this other tsunami is rolling in.
I heave myself off the floor and reach for a T-shirt to pull over my head.
This silk cami leaves just enough to the imagination—to think I bought it to impress Brent Fucking Fisherman. I hope he grows fin rot on his junk.
I drag a brush through my hair, eye my phone, and leave it right there on the floor like an amputated limb. Evan is going to have to help here. My brain is too messy to make any decisions, but I’m going to have to, and soon.
With my head held high, I pad out of my bedroom. Faking it all the way. As soon as I step out of the short hallway into the open-concept living space, my gaze connects with Tristan’s.
His mug is halfway to his lips, but he stops as he takes me in.
“I think you need this more than I do,” he says as I clamber onto a barstool by the kitchen island.
His eyes are on me, chestnut brown, with lighter flecks of amber shining like rays from his irises.
“You still like it with double cream and one sugar? This one’s close enough. ”
That he can recall this detail years down the line is enough to make me ache. “Yes.” I groan as I reach for the mug he’s pushing in my direction. “Thank you.”
“What’s wrong, Lexi? If it’s about earlier—”
“God,” I cut him off. Earlier like in-the-bathroom earlier or like five-years-ago earlier?
We’re going to have that conversation at some point.
I feel it in my gut. But not today. Please.
“No. I spoke to a colleague—an ex-colleague.” I cup the mug between my hands and lift it to my nose for a slow inhale.
I take a sip. Ugh. Tristan still makes the best coffee—something he does with the mix of evaporated milk and condensed milk that’s on the counter.
“I am so fucked I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
” Well, I’m not coming. And going somewhere seems like the only solution right now. Going somewhere very, very far away.
“Okay.” He pops another pod into the coffee machine and puts a mug under the spout. “Care to share more details?”
I glare at him over the rim of the mug, and he smiles that smile that always melted me on the spot.
“No worries,” he says on a chuckle. “Have your coffee first.”
It falls quiet between us—not uncomfortably quiet, thank God.
Five years is a long time to cradle a broken heart.
Thank the universe that we all get to grow up.
For years I used to be crazy, madly, blindly in love with Tristan.
Just look at him, for starters. As if the bathroom scene wasn’t enough, dressed Tristan somehow seems even sexier.
Nobody looks like that in a white T-shirt.
His tan. His hair, now a dry crop of tangled curls.
The cut of his clean-shaven jaw. The fit of his shirt over his broad shoulders and the way his biceps fill the sleeves without wanting to show off—
I groan inwardly. Obviously, there was more to my teenage infatuation than his looks, but it didn’t matter. In the end, I meant nothing to him.
As he studies me with an equally intense gaze, I swallow and look away.
The coffee machine gurgles and does its thing.
Tristan’s kidney pops back in my mind, and Evan’s opinion that he’d give one to go to Ne’emba Island.
I dismissed the whole notion as ludicrous last night, but the idea brews afresh.
I even dreamed of white sandy beaches last night between snippets of Mia Reed walking the red carpet with a suckerfish between her legs.
Getting a foot in the door with Beaumont—before this whole St Chalamet disaster explodes—could be my saving grace.
If I have a job lined up before the Mia Reed scandal hits the internet, I could be gone and gainfully employed before anyone is the wiser.
I could sit out the worst in a place where guests wouldn’t even take stock of me as a human.
How many people could stay on an island with twelve rooms over a period of three months?
Most of them would have serious money to be able to afford such an exclusive vacation.
It’s not as if I’ll be hosting all of People magazine’s subscribers in one sitting.
Scandals come and go at such speed, the worst will be over in weeks.
Eight weeks, max? For now, my reputation is squeaky clean.
But for all I know, anybody who googles Alexandra O’Reilly a month from now will find a gazillion hits linking me to a porn-gone-wrong viral video.
I can see the headlines already, and puke stirs in my gut.
I take a deep pull on my coffee, but it has a hard time going down past the tight panic in my throat. “What are your plans?” I ask once I’ve managed to swallow. I need to get my head out of this tailspin. “I hear from Evan that you’re working on a TV series or something?”
“For that, I need my coffee.” A smile tugs at the corners of his lips, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “To sum up, let’s just say I’m currently so fucked, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
I laugh. This is the Tristan I fell in love with: playful, sweet, and honest. “Care to share?”
He chuckles. “I’ll share mine if you share yours.”
“Ha!”
“Maybe not on an empty stomach.” Tristan reaches for the eggs and bacon on the counter. “Want some?”
“Yes, please.”
The front door opens and Evan walks in, sweat-drenched, with a pastry box.
I have no idea how fast or far he runs, but he’s training for the Texas Iron Man in April.
His gaze jumps between me and Tristan, and a smile spreads over his face as he comes towards us. “Excellent. I see you two reconnected.”
I shoot him a killer glare. It’s too late now; Tristan’s here, and I can’t run. I don’t have the energy in any case. I have much bigger problems on my hands. “Yep. Thanks for the heads-up, asshole.”
“You’re welcome, Pick—”
I lift a finger to stop him midstream. “Yeah, the pickle business stops right now. I hate that freaking nickname.” It only seems to jinx me, and to be honest, my future isn’t something I want to mess up.
Going forward, I’m going to call the shots, play by the rules, and be a good girl.
“We need to talk. And I need a lawyer. Do you know someone cheap?”