Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
okay
MARK
The sun is shining, and I turn my face up towards it.
Light dances through my closed eyelids. I enjoy the warm rays caressing my skin, almost like her touch.
That’s how I spent this Monday morning, and all of yesterday, and the day before—Rey kissing every part of my face.
Rey brushing a hand over my cheek, smiling at me.
Rey dancing and laughing in my living room.
I step into the foyer of Infinio almost two hours after I’d normally be here, and beam at the receptionists.
They send me a nervous smile back, and I wonder if I’ve ever smiled at them before.
My mind is still full of Rey—her scent, her dimpled cheeks, her warmth—and I wish she didn’t have to go home this morning.
She should just stay with me, move in.
The thought brings a welcome heat to my chest, and I know I'm grinning like a fool.
The desks I pass, where developers usually plug away on their keyboards, are empty.
How odd.
I hear hurried footsteps behind me, and turn to find Nia practically sprinting towards me.
“Mark,” she breathes. “You need to come upstairs. Now.”
Her brow is furrowed and her mouth turned down, an expression I’ve not seen on her.
“What’s happening?”
“Not here,” she grits out, and pushes me along towards the lift. If I wasn’t so flustered from the surprise attack, I would get mad at her for behaving like this.
The ride up the lift is excruciating. Nia won’t look at me, and her jaw is working hard. Did someone tell her about Rey?
I follow her towards the boardroom, and a chill washes over me, making my hair stand on end. Why are we going to the boardroom?
“He’s here,” Nia states to someone who’s already there, and when I walk in past her, I’m met with a room full of dark-suited people.
“What the hell is going on?” I demand.
“Mark,” a deep voice comes from my side, and I turn to see our legal director, Kurt, and the faces belonging to the bodies in the suits start sinking in. I recognise them now.
Legal, HR, PR.
Kurt pulls out the chair for me at the head of the table, and Nia puts a laptop in front of me.
And there it is.
Rey’s naked back. My hands on her.
From my office.
Our special, private moment on display.
I rub a hand over my mouth and bite down on my fingers.
“Where’s this from?” I rasp.
“Is it real?” Kurt asks from behind me.
“From his reaction, do you have to ask?” Nia hisses. She sounds mad.
“In this day and age, you never know, but I guess that expression confirms it. However, I’d like to hear you say it, Mark.”
I drop my hand and close the laptop. “It’s real.”
“Bloody hell, Mark,” Nia says, and I don’t blame her.
“Reel it in, Nia. If you can’t stay level-headed, you need to leave,” Kurt says.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m Head of HR, and I’m Rey’s friend, and I’m staying here to make sure you conniving bastards don’t try to pin this on her. She’s terrified; there are reporters outside her house!” Nia yells, and my attention snaps to her.
“You spoke with her?”
“Yes, I called her and told her to stay home. I’ve had to suspend her, Mark. Temporarily, at least. You’ve really screwed her over with your selfishness.”
“That’s enough,” I bark. “You don’t know anything about us.”
She huffs and crosses her arms.
“Is Rey okay?” I ask, more gently now, and Nia shrugs.
“She’s not used to this. The press is all over this story, Mark. Last time is too fresh in their memories.”
Last time…
“What’s the story? That she’s my intern?”
“Primarily, yes,” Nia says and opens the laptop in front of me again. “Read it.”
I see the header now. “The fucking gossip blog.”
“This is a copy. It’s been taken down, but it was up long enough to go viral.”
I read it, and the knot in my chest grows tighter. The way they’re portraying Rey makes me see red, as if she’s not worthy of the role she has here. And they make me out to be the same as Damian.
I knew this would be the narrative, but I didn’t expect it’d hit me like a gut punch, anyway.
Kurt puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, it’s getting worse the more this spirals out of control, there are some forums that call the modelling agency a glorified escort service, and you can imagine where this is going. Neither of you look particularly good right now.”
I shake my head. What have I done? What’s going to happen to Rey? Infinio?
“Fuck, do we need to call an emergency board?”
“Already done, as per protocol. We’re meeting in ten minutes on Zoom,” Nia says, and checks something on her laptop. “Graham Freed, Sebastian Vincent, and Choi Hana are coming in person.”
Sebastian. Fuck. I’ve not told him yet. He’ll be entirely blindsided as a friend as well as an investor. Shit. I took my eye off the ball, and look what happened.
“Alright, I need a minute to call Rey.”
“No, we have to go through your legal standing, Mark. You’ve signed policies and contracts that you’ve now broken, you’ve misused company property, and before you go into this meeting, you need to be prepared.”
I swallow hard and bite the inside of my cheek. “Fine.”
If I could be sucked into a black hole right now, I’d welcome it. I was never the guy to get into trouble. Not in school, not at home.
Diligent. Upstanding. Reliable. Those are words I’m used to hearing.
Now all I hear are the people who used to look at me with respect and gratitude for my relentless dedication to the company calling me selfish, reckless, and the worst:
Damian.
“I told you I met her outside of work. Can we take that angle?” I ask.
“But you continued it after knowing it was against the rules. You should have come forward immediately,” Hana says. “This secrecy, breaking the rules—this is how Damian started.”
“But I didn’t know what it was early on, and I came to Graham once I did. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Hana presses her lips together. I meet Sebastian’s eyes, hoping for an inkling of support, but his black eyes are furious. I give him an apologetic look, and he shakes his head.
“Her backstory is plastered all over the internet already,” Graham says. “We don’t know what’s true, but with her erratic work history and current … situation, maybe you were an easy way out?”
“Don’t you dare.” I glare at him, not holding back this time, regardless of what he means to me. Rey means more. “She is not after my money.”
I shake my head at the ridiculous story they’re spinning.
“Are you saying I’m being accused of having poor judgement in women?”
“Sort of,” Graham answers. “She’s definitely not your ticket to success. You need to show yourself as a strong, confident leader so we don’t risk what we did with Damian. We need to keep the shareholders’ and our new talents’ trust. If they leave—if Horace Lin leaves—you’re back to square one.”
“How am I to do that?”
“You need to distance yourself from the intern,” Hana says.
“Come out and say it was a temporary personal affair that started outside work and ended once you learned she’s an intern, and it has not affected your performance or Infinio’s standards.
This office incident was a lapse of judgement, and it will never happen again. ”
The answer knocks the air out of me, and I gape at her.
“No.”
“This is your company, Mark,” Graham says. “You founded it and built it from the ground up. Is it worth throwing it all away for a fling with this frivolous girl?” He raises his voice now. He’s taking this personally. He practically built this business with me.
“Don’t call her that.”
“Have you seen her as an atmosphere model? What everyone sees online?” Graham asks and nods to Nia, who again turns the laptop to me, but I don’t miss the scowl she sends Graham’s way. She doesn’t like this narrative.
There’s a folder with photos of a girl, clearly Rey, in various costumes and levels of undress, leaning on men, laughing, dancing and prancing around. I shut the lid so hard I may have broken the machine. I can’t deny how it looks in this context, and I struggle to see past it.
Fuck, I can’t do this to her.
We just went through this.
She trusts me to accept her for who she is.
“It’s part of the job,” I say. I’ll defend her until I die, but I hate that there’s a small part of me that wishes I didn’t have to. “She’s a woman people love being around.”
My lead PR consultant pipes up. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is or what her intentions are. This is the story that’s being told online, and you need to distance yourself from it.”
“What exactly is the story? Tell me what the problem is so I can understand how to solve it. What’s within my power to do?”
“The primary problem is that she’s an intern,” the PR consultant says. “But with the stories online now, we can spin it so she looks like she intentionally reeled you in and—”
I stand up abruptly, sending my chair into the wall behind me. “Get the fuck out.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get the fuck out of this office. We’re not going to spin anything and especially not about Rey.” My gaze meets Nia’s, and she nods fiercely. “I pride myself on being honest. So I’ll be honest. How’s that?”
“What are you thinking?” the PR consultant asks.
“I’m thinking: what the hell are you still doing here? I told you to leave. Don’t make me say it again.”
Everyone’s silent while he packs up and leaves, his eyes the size of saucers as he looks at his team.
“Either of you have a better idea? Or do you want to follow your team lead out?”
“What is the truth?” the younger woman on the PR team asks tentatively.
I retrieve my chair and sit back down.
“I met her at The Orion. She made me laugh and I liked her. We stayed in touch, and when I went to meet her, I realised she’s Rey.” It’s easier to keep it short. Pushing the words out.
“And is that when the relationship started?”
I scratch a speck on the table. “No. Not then. I mean, I met her, but as me. She didn’t know I was … Robin.”
You could drop a pin in the room and hear it.
“Robin?” she asks. “Oh right, you met as Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood according to the blog.”