Chapter 30: FIGHT THEM
"Valerie, I’m warning you," the representative snapped, his voice climbing with barely contained fury. "If you want any kind of future in this industry, you’ll go back out there and apologize. Or I’ll make sure you regret ever showing your face here."
I looked at him and let out a quiet laugh, my expression never shifting. "The words already left my mouth. How exactly would I apologize for something true? And even if I did, who’s apologizing to the consumers?"
He didn’t like that. "If you refuse to apologize and help us fix the damage you caused, we’ll be forced to take more extreme measures." He glanced toward the security guard standing nearby, and the guard caught the signal and started walking my way.
Nicole and Quinn moved before I could react, stepping in front of me and forming a wall between me and him. Nicole jabbed a finger at the representative. "Excuse me, what exactly do you think you’re doing?"
Liam stood off to the side, his face pale. He wouldn’t normally have gotten this tangled up with a client’s business himself, but he’d been so busy trying to fix Amara’s image that he hadn’t spared a single thought for what I might do. An outdated model had just announced her comeback on a live stage in front of his client, and he clearly hadn’t seen it coming.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, jaw tight. "Valerie, I know you hate me. But what you just did doesn’t hurt Amara. It hurts you. Any model who breaks the rules like that, no matter how proud she thinks she is, won’t find work anywhere in this town again."
"Really?" I lifted an eyebrow. "I don’t think so."
He wasn’t finished. "I don’t care what your reasons are or how jealous you are of Amara. You made a mess of this event, and you’re the one who’s going to face the client and pay whatever compensation comes from breaching this contract. Don’t even think about pushing that onto Xova." His voice had gone hard, flat. "And since you won’t cooperate on clearing Amara’s name, I’ll put out a statement myself. Whatever fallout comes from that, it’s yours to deal with."
I looked at him and felt nothing but a cold sort of disgust.
"President Liam, I think you’ve misread what I said today. What I announced was that from now on, I’ll fulfill every part of my contract that I’m legally obligated to fulfill. And I’ll also claim every right that same contract owes me." I kept my voice level. "My lawyers will be in your office this afternoon to go through it section by section. They’ll find every entitlement you’ve been withholding from me for years."
Liam stared at me like he was seeing a stranger. I’d backed him into a corner clean enough that he had nowhere left to go, and I could tell he had no idea what to do with a version of me that didn’t fold.
The representative pushed back into the conversation, jaw tight, stepping closer. "If you don’t give us a satisfactory explanation, don’t expect to walk out of here." His voice dropped low, almost a threat. "Don’t push us, Valerie."
The whole room felt like it was about to boil over. Liam didn’t move to help. He just stood back with his arms crossed, content to let the situation do what he apparently wanted it to do to me, teach me a lesson about what it cost to cross him. It didn’t seem to occur to him, not even now, that he’d been the one to betray me first.
Nicole pressed close against my side, eyes flicking nervously between the three security guards closing in. I could feel how tense she’d gone, how little room any of us had left to move. The guards clearly knew it too. There was something a little too satisfied in the way they were watching us.
Then the waiting room door slammed open.
A man in a sharp suit walked in with a briefcase, flanked by three or four bodyguards, and swept the room with a calm, assessing gaze.
"Who’s in charge here?"
The representative stepped forward, cautious now. "May I ask who you are?"
"I’m a lawyer representing Hairuit Entertainment. Qiao." He pulled a document from the briefcase and pressed it into the representative’s hands. "Your company’s advertisement last month used a photograph belonging to one of our artists without authorization. That’s a serious legal violation, and it’s caused measurable damage to Hairuit Entertainment. What you’re holding is formal notice. We are fully prepared to pursue this until there’s nothing left of your company." He turned and walked back out with the same unhurried composure he’d walked in with, leaving his bodyguards behind him.
I understood exactly what this was. Caspian had found his opening and stepped in to settle the score for me. Whoever had decided to bully me on that stage had picked a fight with his wife without knowing it.
The representative stood there frozen, the document shaking slightly in his hands. Small agencies cutting corners for a quick campaign wasn’t new in this industry. Pulling Hairuit’s legal team down on themselves definitely was, and from the look on his face, it hadn’t occurred to him that this was even possible until it was already happening.
The client had stopped thinking about anything I’d said on that stage. All that mattered to them now was that they’d just made an enemy of Hairuit Entertainment, and they clearly understood exactly what that meant.
Liam didn’t waste any time putting distance between himself and the mess. He slipped out of the room without a word, and his exit was so quiet that nobody even bothered watching him go.
"Valerie, let’s go," Quinn said.
We walked out together. Quinn kept glancing back at me the whole way, like she couldn’t decide whether to call it luck or something else entirely. I didn’t correct her.
Announcing a comeback meant starting over from nothing. But I believed that if I didn’t quit, I could get back to where I’d been three years ago, and then keep going past it.
Online, my name was everywhere again. People were looking at me differently now, with a curiosity, even a kind of respect, that hadn’t been there before.
Nicole practically glowed as she scrolled through the comments, reading the best ones out loud with a wide grin. "Amara has to be losing her mind right now. She probably thought this would be the thing that finally buried you for good." She laughed. "She’s probably already figuring out how to spin this to Liam and get him to come down on you even harder."
I didn’t bother answering that. I turned to Quinn instead.
"The scandal material. Has it gone out yet?"
"Everything’s in order," Quinn said, a quiet confidence in her voice. "It’s going to be something."
