Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Tatiana

“Ipromise, it’s all going to work out, one way or another,” I whispered, cupping my hand over the phone. Market Corner was quiet around me, the second floor dim as rain streaked over the window under a dark, drizzly sky, and my steak fries—a nominal meal I’d gotten with a Coke just to have food in front of me while I waited for Gary to show up—were getting cold.

“How can you just promise something like that?” Morgan’s voice said, small and shaky down the line. “I… haven’t figured out how to tell you this yet, Tati, but I got a letter this morning. At my house.”

My blood ran cold. Gary had only been making the threats against Morgan to me directly so far. A letter to her house was a spine-chilling level of escalation. “A letter?” I said. “Who from?”

“No return address,” she breathed. “It’s a picture of the two of us. I don’t know who got it or how—it’s a little far-away and blurred—but it’s us at Clover. You’re giving me a kiss here.”

“Clover?” My stomach lurched. Our date to Clover, a little bakery café up in Aberdeen Hill, had been before I’d even started at Morning Magic.

“There’s a list of addresses for people I know in here, too,” she said. “People who I… wouldn’t come out to.”

“Jesus. The whole reason he went after me to hire me was because he knew he had blackmail on us?” I rubbed my forehead. “Morgan, I don’t know what to say. I’m so—”

“Don’t be sorry, Tati. You couldn’t have known. Besides, if he had this before you even worked for him, he would have just blackmailed you either way. I’m sorry I’m holding you back. If I were safer coming out, we wouldn’t have this problem. And you’d actually be able to promise people it’ll all work out.”

I took a shaky breath, glancing at my phone. Still another five minutes before Gary was due to arrive. Another fifteen before Parker and Cassie were set to show for negotiations.

Even if all this worked, I wondered how Parker would see me. Wondered if she’d really hire me back. Hell, I wouldn’t trust me again. I just wanted to do anything to make up for this.

“I can, and will,” I said, finally. “Keep that letter in a safe place, okay? We might be able to use it to trace something back to them. Gary and I are meeting with Parker and Cassie in a few minutes.”

“What is there we can possibly do?” Morgan sighed, her voice heavy. “Tati…”

The hopelessness in her voice weighed on me. “I got Parker supply contracts this morning,” I said. “Express is still viable. They’re not going to thrive with it—they’re not very good contracts—but they can survive.”

“Tati, they’ve had good contracts this whole time, and Morning Magic has been grinding them down. All this is doing is delaying the inevitable.”

“Dammit, I know, but I’m going to keep fighting,” I said, gripping the table tight with one hand. “And we’re going to find something. Okay?”

I caught a glimpse outside the window of a red-and-blue umbrella I recognized as Gary’s, coming up to the building and shaking out as he stepped under the overhang. I grimaced. A little early.

“Tati… I think you should do what you have to do,” she whispered. “If it gets me outed, I’ll just… I’ll find some way to get out of it all, to stay safe. Okay?”

“Morgan, no. I’m not putting you in that position.” I sat up straighter. “Look, sweetheart, Gary’s here. I have to go for this meeting. I’ll call you back after and let you know, but I know we’ll find a way.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she sighed. “Please be careful. I love you.”

“I will. Love you too.”

I hung up just as Gary stepped through the doorway from the stairwell, eyes down on his phone as he walked over to our usual spot and dropped into a seat on the booth next to me. Only a second later did he set the phone down and look at me. “Tatiana. How are you doing?”

About ready to strangle you, thanks for asking. “Yes, sir. I’m doing well. I’ve arranged the documents to handle onboarding for Cassie, and the shift in her planned content.”

Gary folded his arms over the table, shoving my food aside and leaning in, staring down at his hands. “I am sick to death of her acting like she runs this show. And Parker, too. I’m going to love seeing her grovel, after all the shit she’s said to me.”

I pursed my lips. “I’ve arranged for the payouts to Parker’s personal account—”

“You know something?” He sat up straighter, giving me a sidelong smile. “Let’s just not pay them.”

I frowned. “Sir—”

“What? What’s she going to do, take me to court? With nothing to her own name?” He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, Tatiana. I’m a good man, and I conduct business fairly. But some people need to be taught a thing or two about respect. Parker’s had this coming to her for a long, long time.”

The man’s obsession with the two of them was going to be his undoing. And as much as I wished it would be, it wouldn’t tear him down soon enough to keep him from ruining Express before he went down—and Parker’s whole damn life, with it. Cassie’s, too.

“We’ll be opening ourselves up to extended liability—”

“You can handle that. You’ve always been good at it.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Cassie’s grown a lot, hasn’t she?”

The man’s conversations were impossible to follow when he was high on one of his power trips. “She’s come a long way as a content creator. I think she’ll be an excellent addition to our brand—”

“Do you think we could create some kind of position of personal assistant for her?” he said. “Secretary?”

I felt my stomach turn when I realized what he was actually asking about. With a girl eleven years younger than him—and a lesbian, at that. Who he’d torn away from her girlfriend.

This was probably where Parker would have come up with one of her incredibly specific and evocative descriptions. If I were her, I’d say something here like Gary, sir, no offense, but I think the world would be a better place if you were chained up and eaten alive by rats.

Ah, I missed working with Parker. That unique way of thinking that had led us to the best cure for feeling crap is breaking shit really had always been the key to our success. I just wished I had the guts to break shit, too.

“Let’s just focus on getting Cassie on board, first,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “The apartment we’ve procured for Cassie—”

“Get me on with the apartment manager, too,” he said. “I think I should have my own key to her place. Just to keep her safe.”

That did it. I sat up straighter. “Gary,” I said, feeling a shudder in my chest just saying the simplest reprimand. I forced the next part out. “What you’re suggesting is illegal and disgusting.”

He narrowed his eyes, and I saw the twitch in the corner of his lips, but he forced on a sympathetic smile. “I guess it could look the wrong way from the outside. I do need to keep media perception in mind. By the way, speaking of media perception, I heard something nasty earlier about how someone’s been stalking our upper-level executives, trying to get incriminating information or pictures… probably an Express op. You should be careful, Tatiana. Your girlfriend, too.”

My blood boiled, and I clenched my hands under the table. “Sir,” I said, a quiver in my voice.

He put a hand up, a satisfied smirk on his face. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but just fair warning. Keep an eye out.”

I forced the words out like pushing barbs through my throat. “We’re not afraid of you, Gary.”

He stopped, and I saw a storm of emotions play out over his expression before he turned to me, a horrible glare on his face. “Come again?” he said, his voice gravelly.

Every tendency I had said to back down, to deescalate, to calm the situation. I swallowed. “We’re not afraid of you.”

A vein bulged in his neck, and something twitched in his eye, but before he could say anything, two pairs of footsteps came up the wooden steps, and he flicked like a light switch into outwardly charming, smiling and relaxed Gary just in time for Parker to step out from the stairwell, Cassie in tow. The gravelly expressions they had didn’t spell anything good.

“Cassie,” Gary said, standing up, reaching over the table for a handshake, smiling like he hadn’t just been saying the most horrible things in private. “I’m glad you made it. It’s good you brought Parker, actually. That will streamline signing the contracts, getting everything lined up for the payments to her account.”

Cassie looked down, not taking his hand—and Parker stepped up, grabbed his hand, and squeezed. I could see her knuckles straining from the force, and Gary’s hand went red. He tried to tug it back, but Parker refused to let go.

“Hey, you blotchy, diseased mule,” Parker said. “I’m impressed. You’re even uglier than I remember, and I last saw you yesterday. Nice tie, by the way. Cat vomit on it, or is that just the trendy style among people who look like vomit?”

Maybe my estimation of her eaten alive by rats comment was actually short of the mark. She held nothing back.

With some force, Gary wrenched his hand back. I saw the muscles tighten on the back of his neck that signaled he was on the verge of a meltdown, and I cut in. “Best to not get ahead of ourselves, sir,” I said. “We still don’t know for sure if Parker is going to sell the company to us.”

He relaxed a fraction, sinking back into the booth next to me. He gestured to the two chairs across from us, and Parker and Cassie sat down. “Parker’s selling,” Gary said. “You want your dear mother getting her check, don’t you?”

It sent a chill down my spine. Even I didn’t know how Gary had found Parker’s parents. I wasn’t even sure she had parents. But he’d come into my office looking self-satisfied last week, with that look in his eyes I’d learned was only for Parker. The manic look obsessed with taking her apart. I just found our winning move, Tatiana, he’d said, throwing down an unofficial, unprofessional-looking statement for Amy Parker Ferris’s debt to her mother.

Amy? I’d never even known Parker wasn’t her first name. Amy really didn’t suit her.

But it didn’t faze Parker, who just leaned forward and set her cup of iced coffee down on the table. “Eh… honestly, I don’t like her that much, so I wouldn’t go so far as to say dear.”

Gary just laughed. “I’m sure she’d be hurt to hear you say that, Miss Amy.”

“Well, I’m sure she can get over it,” Parker said, leaning in and taking a sip of her coffee. She spoke with the straw still in her mouth. “Anyway, I just came here to tell you to shove a box of nails up your ass. I’m not selling anything to you.”

“Well,” Gary said, turning to Cassie, who still hadn’t so much as looked up from her lap, fussing with her hands under the table. She was like that every time around Gary—shutting down immediately, avoiding looking at him, her voice going small. It made my chest ache to think of how bad it was for her, back when they were together. “Luckily, it’s Cassie I’m interested in talking to here.”

Cassie spoke in a small voice, still not looking up. “You threatened to out me if I didn’t go along with your demands. Do you think that’s okay?”

Again, Gary tensed, the muscles in his neck tightening. My stomach churned, but I wasn’t surprised. He’d been doing the same with Morgan for a long time. I spoke up, leafing through the documents in front of me. “Cassie, I apologize for the personal altercations from Gary—”

This time, though, Gary didn’t back down. “Cassie, I would never have done something like that,” he said. “You misunderstood what I meant. I know you’ve always been a little jumpy, prone to assuming the worst—”

“Hey, dipshit,” Parker said. “What starts with G, ends with ‘aslight,’ and gets my drink thrown over you again?”

Gary didn’t even look at her. “Cassie. I would never want anything to hurt you. I support you in exactly what you are. And I want to work with you. Morning Magic wouldn’t exist without you. I need you, Cassie.”

The man’s manipulation tactics made me sick. I’d had to watch so many poor, pretty young girls get duped by the same strategies. I drummed up excuses to fire half of them, just getting them out of Gary’s way, but with how obsessed he was with Cassie, there was no way I could sneak the same thing for her. “Sir—” I started, but Cassie straightened her back, looking up with a shaky gaze at Gary’s collar.

“You’ve threatened me, and you’ve threatened Parker, who I really—really—care about. I could never leave Express. Least of all to work with you again.”

Gary sank back in the booth, rubbing his forehead. “Cassie… I know you form these little attachments and don’t know how to let go, even when it’s for the best. The truth is, I’m paying off Parker’s debt in exchange for this not for her, but for you. Because I know sometimes you need some help in recognizing an opportunity, and letting yourself have it—”

“No,” Cassie said, and I winced vicariously feeling just how much effort it took her to say the one simple word. “I told you, I’m not leaving Express. I’m not leaving Parker.”

“It’s for her own good, Cassie,” Gary said, his voice growing severe. “If you care for her, you’ll do this.”

“Hey, Gary,” Parker said. “Answer me this. Do you realize how shitty you are and just choose to do it consciously, or do you genuinely not know what a hideous, horrible life form you are?”

“I’m not talking to you, Parker—”

“But you are,” Parker said, leaning in, an uncharacteristic intensity there in her eyes. “You’re talking Express. And Express is me. Maybe you don’t realize you’re talking to me, but I’m talking to you. I’m here to negotiate. What do you say we draw up contracts right now to decide what things will look like between our companies? Trying to sell to the companies we’re already partnered with is off the table, for starters.”

My heart pounded watching as Gary just stared at her. I cut in before he could respond, trying to keep him from a full meltdown. “We’d be best served by going through these negotiations properly,” I said. “And we are engaging directly with Parker. We have two separate negotiations here—”

“You have some nerve,” Gary said, his voice low, raspy. My blood ran cold, hearing it—the voice before he exploded at someone, the one I’d usually hear from his office next to mine and know to sprint for it and find a way to distract him before he went apoplectic. I knew what happened if I didn’t. “Your pitiful little company has nothing. Sure, you can start a little brand presence, get some people behind your catchy slogan, but what do you actually do? I have you on every supplier’s blacklist for the next year, Parker. And how do you plan on coming back from that?”

“Parker and I talked it over,” Cassie said, looking over at Parker. When Parker glanced back, the look in their eyes as they looked at each other—there was no faking it, online or off. The two fools were in love. “I’m not leaving Express. No matter what you bribe her with. I’m staying right here. And I still know Parker is going to come out on top.”

“Oh, we can try it,” Gary said, his voice guttural, gripping one fist so tightly on the table his knuckles turned white. “Tatiana and I have everything in place to make sure. You walk out of here with Cassie still on your team, you are going to regret the day you were born, Amy Parker Ferris.”

“Go for it,” Parker said, reaching into her bag below the table and pulling out a sheaf of papers—the supply contracts from HRS, the ones I gave her. She slapped them down on the table, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms. “Because we still have a supplier.”

Gary strained every muscle in his body, picking up the contract. Wordlessly, he read through the beginning, and I watched with my heart pounding, a dizzy feeling in my head. The moment of truth. Our one shot.

Gary laughed, and he tore the paper in two down the middle. My stomach dropped.

“Try it,” he laughed, throwing the papers down on the table. “With Hugo, huh? Sure, go for it. Sounds great. Six hours. Six hours, and I’ll have your contract broken just like that. You walk out of this meeting, and six hours from now, that contract will be annulled. I can tell you the names of five different people in HRS who can tear up your damn contract as easily as that. And so what if I didn’t, anyway? This contract is completely nonviable. Why don’t you just let go of your damn pride and admit you’ve lost?”

The room was quiet for a minute, everyone else on the floor staring. Parker, the only person who looked unbothered, spun her straw in her cup, took a sip, finished off the last of her coffee, and slurped at the nothing in the ice cubes, like she always did. Once she finally set the cup down, she said, “Well, first of all, it’s because I haven’t lost. Second of all, it’s because I’m not admitting anything to a slimy, shit-eating dung beetle with a hideous tie.”

“Sir,” I said, seeing Gary tense up. “Please. We can’t just intimidate Parker out of this. Let’s go over the contract tenets.”

Gary stood up.

He shoved the table back, nearly toppling Parker and Cassie both, and he jumped to his feet, slamming his hands down on the table. “It’s over!” he bellowed. “You’re either going to hand it over right now and get the damn compensation for it, or you’re going to watch while we take apart every last little thing you’ve built, and then when you come crawling back begging for another chance—”

“Like I’d beg to you?” Parker snorted. “I may not look like it, but I have some standards. I’d probably throw up. That said, I might get on my knees and beg please, please, Mister Founders, sir, please go drown in a tub of vomit.”

“Parker,” I sighed, a hand to my forehead, even though it wasn’t like I didn’t support her. “Please don’t antagonize him—”

“Oh, I’m antagonizing him,” Parker said. “You wanna go, dude? I bet I can take you. I’ve been doing yoga lately. I’m all toned and fit now. I hate it.”

“You think you’re so damn funny,” Gary growled. “Just always having a laugh riot, not giving a damn who you screw over along the way. Apparently common decency died a while ago. Your mother said the same thing.”

Parker laughed. “Dude, really? A glorified your mom joke? That’s the best you got?” She sucked loudly on her straw. “That was your mom on my strap-on last night.”

“Parker,” Cassie said, pale.

“Make your jokes,” Gary said, standing taller. “Fine. We’re done here. Negotiations are over. I’m not paying a cent to Express. When Cassie comes begging to join us after your little company goes under, maybe I’ll consider it. And Tatiana and I are stepping out the door and getting your contract cancelled, and getting every one of our sponsors to make a public statement against you. The whole damn scene of Port Andrea united to make sure everyone knows Express is a scam, and its associated cafés are going under. And then—after you’ve watched your whole damn company collapse around you because you were too damn stubborn to ever admit you were wrong—then, when you come begging for it to stop, I’m going to remind you of every last shitty little thing you’ve said. And I’m going to shut the damn door in your face.”

“Gary.”

Cassie stood up, cutting in between him and Parker, and she looked him in the eye. My heart skipped a beat. She looked like she’d just flipped a switch. There was fire in her eyes.

“I know you’ve always liked to indulge in your little power-trip fantasies,” Cassie said, her voice steady as she held his gaze, “but leave my girlfriend out of them. We’re never coming crawling to you no matter what happens. You don’t own me, Gary. And you couldn’t pay me enough to leave Parker.”

Gary clutched the table in his hands, white-knuckled. “I don’t know what Parker did to you—”

“Don’t try to patronize and infantilize me again, Gary,” Cassie said, leaning in to match him. “I’m done with it. And feel free to try telling the poor girls on your brand whatever you want. Most of them have already released their own statements against you, after the announcement.”

I glanced down at her hand. Her phone, lit up. She hadn’t been staring down to avoid looking at Gary. She’d been watching her phone. Announcement? I fumbled for my own phone, heart racing.

“What are you talking about?” Gary said, shaky bravado in his voice. “What announcement?”

“You can’t out me,” Cassie said, “because I outed myself. Feel free to check my page. And my friends’ pages, too. We filmed and released my coming-out video together. And the exposé on everything you’ve done to manipulate, threaten, and lie to me.”

My phone was exploding with notifications. Tags on the official Morning Magic account were out of control. I saw pictures pour in when I opened it, videos of our sponsors, present and former. Cassie’s video popped up again and again—posted the minute before they showed up.

I couldn’t believe it. The arguing, the posturing—they’d been getting Gary angry on purpose to keep him from checking the account, to buy just a little time. And judging from the number of tags flooding in of BoycottMorningMagic and IStandwithCassie, her friends had been busy. I’d never seen so much boil over in twenty minutes.

“You’re lying,” Gary said, his face pale. “Tatiana—”

“It’s true,” I said, looking up from my phone with a smile I couldn’t fight down. “Looks like they were distracting you while their friends got the word out. This is some awful publicity.”

“You don’t have any proof about anything,” Gary shouted, his voice breaking. “This is all just empty accusations. I wasn’t going to out you—”

“That’s enough, Gary,” I said, setting my phone down. “It’s over. I have enough people lined up to organize an internal walkout. With the drop in morale and the sponsors leaving, I think everyone will be heading out. And I’ve taken reports of all your threats to extort me, so… I think I’ll be going to the authorities with them. Alongside everyone else you’ve been threatening.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Gary snapped, looking at me with a wild panic in his eyes. “You know what this means for you. If you want your girlfriend to stay safe, you need me.”

“Gary,” Cassie said, putting a hand up. “Do you realize how many other people are in here? People Parker and I asked to come here ahead of time to be witness?”

Parker slurped at her empty coffee cup. I hated when she did that. “Word to the wise, one of them has been streaming this live. Including before we got here, when you were scheming in secret to cheat us and sneak into Cassie’s home. It hasn’t been the best look for you, dude.”

Gary paled, his grip on the table loosening. The way his gaze checked out completely, I was afraid he might have passed out then and there.

“It’s over, Gary,” Cassie said. “Don’t ever come near me again. For the last time, the answer is no. I left you because the answer was no. I didn’t want to join you again because the answer was no. And one more time because you don’t listen—the answer is no. Goodbye.”

She stood up, a look in her eyes like a massive weight had just been lifted from her shoulders—and how could she not feel that way?—but then she stopped, a curious look on her face.

“Oh, and before I forget,” she said. “Sorry, Tatiana. I’ll buy you another.”

She picked up my drink, popped off the lid, and she dashed the whole thing down Gary’s front.

When I told her everything had worked out okay after all, Morgan was going to love that last little detail.