Chapter Thirty-Four

Brandy

As the doors of the elevator opened, the fear that was inside me, paralyzing me and making me rooted to the spot, turned to anger. Resentment. Hatred.

None of those words were strong enough. I wanted to rip their head off. I wanted to tear their heart out. How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so stupid?

They’d played me.

And now there were camera people coming out of the woodwork to film.

“You made it, Brandy,” Phil said. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it, but you showed a tremendous amount of courage.”

I stood in front of him, clenching my jaw and my fists with the same rhythm and intensity. I wanted to leap at him and tear him apart, but I knew if I did, I’d lose my one chance at this.

“You lied,” I said through gritted teeth.

To my shock, he simply shrugged, smirking at me.

“I had to,” he said. “It was my only option. It was for the good of the show, you see. And that’s all that’s important in the end. The show. Without it, you and I are nothing, but with it… we are immortal.”

“Over a reality show?” I said. “You’re going to turn into a damned super villain over a reality show ? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me,” he said. “If anything, I am the only person who sees absolutely clearly. I see it all, Brandy.”

“What you did… it’s unforgivable,” I said.

“Good thing I do not require, nor even want your forgiveness,” he laughed. “You don’t matter, Brandy. In the grand scheme of all things, you are a blip on the screen. Don’t you see? It didn’t even matter that you were on a show before; most of the people who were going to watch this wouldn’t remember. They have millions of hours of content to consume, Brandy. You don’t rate highly.

“No, the only reason we chose you was because we thought you would be willing to participate. You’d already know the score and be willing to do what we needed.”

“You thought I’d just let you get away with filming me having sex? Secretly?”

He shrugged again. “Others have,” he said. “For that fifteen minutes of fame is more than most people make in their lives. You were desperate. You were going to lose the business, lose your best friend, lose your ability to care for your grandmother. We gave you everything you could ask for and then some, and all we wanted was access. Just access, Brandy. And you fought us tooth and nail on that.

“But I got the access anyway. You just didn’t know. You would have before the show went on the air. I would have given you warning. But no, you decided to go to drastic measures because your precious little relationship got threatened.”

“You are sick,” I said. “Absolutely sick.”

“Oh, come on, Brandy. Don’t be such a prude! It’s reality TV! I caught every little bit of your tryst on audio, but so very little on video. And you know, I couldn’t have aired anything anyway. Nothing really bad. The show is TV-14. Any nudity would have to be pixilated. If there was enough there for us to even concern ourselves with, we would have covered you. You would have been fine. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. We took care of you.”

“You took care of me?” I asked. “I fired you. But you got that footage anyway. And then what did you do? You blackmailed me.”

“Blackmail is such a strong word,” he said. “I enticed you to come speak with me. But I needed you to do it on your own. I needed you to do it without leaning on someone else for your emotional and mental stability. That meant no Basil. No Grandma. No anyone.”

“You broke your own contract,” I said. “You filmed me without my permission.”

“I was well within my rights to set up cameras anywhere in the building,” he snapped. The change from his cool, collected demeanor to this angry, spitting mad one was jarring. “I have dozens and dozens and dozens of signed contracts. Every person who came in there either signed a full release, or were at least clearly warned about the filming and chose to go inside anyway.

But you see, you signed a contract too. And just because we chose to compensate you doesn’t mean you were the endgame. No, dear, that’s what’s under the hood, so to speak.”

“Basil? This was all to get Basil?”

He shook his head.

“Madie,” he said. “The namesake herself. The reason for the restaurant, the reason her granddaughter became a famous baker and then came back to help. The person who kept a successful icon of Texas despite being in a tiny town along the highway. Madie was the focus of the show. Always.”

“You got me to sign on to do a show because you wanted film my grandmother?”

“She has a great story!” he said, smiling like a politician. “She was so successful, a pioneer of women business in a state known for being tough on women in non-traditional roles. She was a master of her craft and had a keen sense of business. But she shut the place down and had a tragic loss. Then even more tragically, she began to lose her memory, and who she was at the same time. The story of this once proud woman, wounded by the death of her daughter and her business and even her own mind… it is ratings gold.”

“You wanted to take advantage of a woman with Alzheimer’s,” I said, almost unable to believe what I was hearing. “You are that low, that soulless that you didn’t care if she hurt herself. If she burned the place to the ground. You just wanted to film it and put it on TV. For what? How much money do you make?”

“My salary is irrelevant,” he said, smiling evilly. “But it is substantial. No, the really important bit is that I need a hit, Brandy. The food television market is completely saturated. Everyone does food now. Netflix, Amazon, HBO… everyone has a food show. Dramas and comedies and reality shows all centered around food and the people who make it. In order to be successful, you have to be different. And I don’t do game shows, Brandy. I don’t make up whacky challenges for chefs to be annoyed by.

“I am an artist.”

“You are a scam artist and a lowlife.”

“I am an artist ,” he repeated.

“You are a piece of shit.”

He laughed. “Oh, Brandy, how mighty your high horse is now. When all you wanted was to be a star.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know your history, Brandy,” he said, condescension dripping off his voice. “How you moved out of your podunk town to go to culinary school. How you met your love and moved to New York. Tell me, did you not want to be a famous baker then. Did you just want to be in food, some random person working at a random shop, making random cakes? Was that your dream?”

“I wanted to be successful,” I said.

“You wanted to be famous . You and your love. Your love… who I found. Who I introduced to his wife. Who I offered a show in Thailand too. Yes. That was me, Brandy. I did that. I made him famous , just like he wanted. It wasn’t my fault he fell out of love with you and in love with Sarah. That happened completely independently. But I have to say… he made the right choice.”

“You bastard.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But a rich one. And the thing is, Brandy, I could have made you famous too. You could have had everything you wanted. You just needed to play along. Reality TV requires sacrifices. It requires you to debase yourself just a little bit. To show the audience that you are like them. Losers. Only you had something they didn’t. You had a show that could make you such a sympathetic figure. My God, Brandy. We were going to focus so much on your struggle.

“Your struggle to keep the place open, to reopen it at all. Your struggle with your grandmother who constantly meddled. Your struggle with your best friend who knew she was destined for so much more than being your sidekick. Your struggle, yes, with love! With finding someone to be a partner in a town of less than five hundred people! Of your whirlwind romance with a rich cowboy! It would have been a huge hit, Brandy. Absolutely massive.

“But you threw it away. You threw it away because of your ego. Because you couldn’t see how important this would be. How easy it would be to turn into something positive. Because you wanted to control it all, it cost you everything .”

“It is absolutely disgusting what you are saying,” I said. “You are a sick, sick person. And I am going to sue the hell out of you for breach of contract.”

“Are you?” he asked. “Are you sure about that?”

“What are you going to do, release the footage?” I thundered, unable to hold back the anger anymore. “Ruin my life? For a show? If you do it, I will have you arrested for it! You can’t do that to people. You can’t just lie to people and use them and hurt them and then run off free to do it to someone else. I will stop you!”

“You think you will stop me?” he laughed. “I will grind you to dust , Brandy. To dust. I will not just release this footage, I will film your every reaction to it. I will make sure to get it all on camera. And then I will use that footage to make money off your sorrow. Sure, you will get some of it. But I will get the lion’s share. And when I’m gone, you will be left struggling with this business, struggling with your family and friends, and now the whole world would have seen you for the whore you are. And me? I will move on to the next show. The next soulless woman who wants to be famous and is willing to sell it all to get it… and who thinks they can outsmart me and make me work by their rules! You are nobody, Brandy Shaw. Absolutely no one of consequence.”

“I am more than you will ever know,” I said. “And if it’s the last thing I do, I will bring you down.”

“You think you can do that? You think I’m some bad guy? I’m benign compared to most of the sharks in this industry. I am practically a saint. Welcome to Hollywood, kid. It, and its lawyers, are going to absolutely eat you alive.”