Chapter 24: Sweet Man
"Thank you, babe." I smiled and pressed a quick kiss to Caspian’s cheek, then turned to Nicole. "You already told him about Liam’s event?"
Nicole’s eyes went wide and both hands shot up. "Don’t look at me. I didn’t say a word."
Caspian laced his fingers through mine, expression unreadable. "If I want information," he said calmly, "I get it."
I couldn’t even argue with that anymore. Men like Caspian didn’t build the kind of power he had by waiting for news to come to them. He always knew more than everyone else in the room, and somehow that had stopped surprising me a long time ago.
"Don’t worry," I said, smiling. "You’ve already done more than enough. I’ll handle the rest."
He didn’t tell me to be careful, didn’t promise everything would be fine. Instead he reached over and brushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear, and that simple gesture carried more comfort than a dozen empty reassurances ever could. I leaned into him without thinking and let myself have the quiet moment.
Nicole told me later that watching the two of us together felt almost surreal. We hadn’t even been married that long, and yet we moved around each other with the ease of a couple who’d had years to figure it out.
By the time the shoot wrapped, the three of us were on a flight back to New York. Caspian and I sat shoulder to shoulder the whole way, saying little, comfortable in the silence between us. The moment the plane landed, that changed. We walked through the airport separately, no glances exchanged, playing the part of two strangers who’d never crossed paths. Public appearances still mattered, and we both knew it.
Liam had sent my new manager, Quinn, to pick me up, and she wasn’t hard to spot. She stood near the arrivals exit in a lavender chiffon dress and towering stilettos, checking her watch every few seconds with dramatic impatience, oversized designer sunglasses hiding half her face despite the fact that we were indoors. A sign with my name leaned against the suitcase at her feet. She looked less like someone waiting for a client and more like someone expecting photographers.
I saw her. Then I walked right past her.
Nicole followed beside me, biting her lip to keep from laughing as we headed straight for the car.
"I think you’re finally developing an attitude," she whispered once we were inside.
"I’ve always had one," I said. "I just stopped wasting it on the wrong people."
Halfway back to the office my phone lit up. Quinn. I answered on speaker.
"Valerie, where are you?" she demanded. "Your flight landed almost thirty minutes ago."
"Already on my way to the office."
A pause. "You didn’t see me?"
"I did."
"Then why didn’t you come over?"
"You were wearing sunglasses inside the airport," I said evenly. "I figured you were more interested in putting on a show than actually picking me up."
Silence. Then the call disconnected.
I smiled to myself, picturing the color draining from her face right before embarrassment brought it flooding back bright red.
Quinn wasn’t exactly new to the industry, but she’d never been particularly good at her job. She’d managed a handful of promising talents over the years, and nearly every one of them had either torched their own career or offended someone powerful enough to torch it for them. Her reputation wasn’t impressive, and this assignment hadn’t come from Liam. It had come from Amara, who wanted someone close enough to keep tabs on me. Unfortunately for both of them, Quinn had already stumbled before we’d even been properly introduced. In her eyes I was still the washed up model everyone loved to underestimate.
That mistake was about to get very expensive.
I’d barely sat down in my office when the door slammed open. Quinn stormed in without bothering to knock, a finger already jabbing toward my face.
"Do you have any idea who I am? I’m your manager now. Who gave you the right to humiliate me like that at the airport? What is wrong with you?"
I rose slowly from my chair and walked toward her until barely a foot separated us. "What did you just call me?"
She folded her arms. "I asked if you’re a pig."
The slap echoed through the office before she’d even finished the sentence. Her head snapped sideways. I lowered my hand.
"That," I said quietly, "was to remind you where the line is."
Quinn froze, shock flooding her eyes. For a second it looked like she wanted to hit me back. Instead I calmly pulled out my phone.
"I’ve collected some interesting photos over the years." I unlocked the screen and held it up in front of her. "Because of those four words, I’m considering sending this collection to the biggest outlets in New York."
She looked down, and every trace of confidence vanished off her face. The image showed her wrapped around a well known director in a position that left nothing to the imagination. Her skin went pale, and I could tell exactly what she was thinking, some version of how could Valerie possibly have this, followed by a flash of denial, the desperate hope that it had to be fake, that it had to be.
"I know Amara sent you," I said. "If you’d simply shown up and done your job, I wouldn’t have wasted my time digging into your past. But now you’ve made this personal." I slipped my phone back into my pocket.
Her hands started shaking. Whatever confidence she’d walked in with was completely gone now, and I imagined that if she’d known from the start what I had on her, she never would have agreed to be anybody’s pawn in the first place.
She dropped to her knees without warning. "Valerie, please." Her voice cracked. "I was wrong. Don’t release those photos. They’ll destroy me."
I looked down at her without a hint of pity. "I’m only going to say this once." My voice stayed calm. "You stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours." I took another step closer. "But if you decide to come after me, I’ll make sure there’s no way back for you."
She swallowed hard.
"From today, you do your job. I’ll do mine. If you want to play games, go ahead." A faint smile touched my mouth. "I never lose."
Quinn stared up at me like she was looking at a completely different woman than the one she’d walked in expecting to find, someone who bore no resemblance to whatever soft, easy target Liam and Amara had described to her.
"I understand," she whispered. "I know exactly what I should and shouldn’t do."
The tension eased out of my shoulders. Satisfied, I walked back behind my desk and picked up the event schedule. "What time am I on stage?"
Quinn blinked several times before she found her voice.
"You’re... you’re still planning to attend?"
