The LA people were crushed to hear I wasn’t joining them, but I invited them to send their staff to New York and promised to train their new employees. Judith ran from place to place around the newsroom, her cheeks flushed. Kate, Jessica, and Elijah seemed glad I hadn’t left, and Brianna smiled guiltily and waved her hand every time I shifted my eyes to make sure she wasn’t reaching for her top drawer to take a mini bottle out.
Five hours into our workday, while I was knee-deep in something in the newsroom, I got a phone call from the sixtieth floor.
“It’s your father.” Brianna came as close as she could, holding the corded phone in her hand.
No, it is not, and thank fuck for that.
He hadn’t even called my cell. Instead he was making a whole fucking show about it, like I knew he would.
“He wants to speak to you,” she said.
“He knows where to find me.”
“He’s asking if you can come up to his office.”
“I can’t. But he can come down. Or not. Giving a shit is not on my agenda today.”
“He said he’ll call security.” Brianna’s face was so red, for a moment I worried she might explode.
“Tell him that’s a very good idea. I’ve been thinking about getting rid of his ass for a long time now.” The room fell quiet, everybody staring at me. I nodded my chin to the phone.
“Tell him that, Brianna. You’re just following my orders. Word for word, please.”
She repeated my message to my father, wincing the entire time.
Jude appeared at my side, squeezing my biceps and looking up at me with a smile. I pulled her into a hug and kissed her forehead. I had a lot of damage control to do when it came to the way people perceived us as a couple in this place.
When Brianna ended the call, there was a pause, after which the entire newsroom erupted with a lengthy standing ovation. She laughed. I smirked.
When I turned around to walk back to my office, Mathias was standing at the door, waiting for me. Next to him stood my mother, fresh off of her private plane, judging by her casual clothes.
Her eyes were horrified.
I knew mine were dead.
Showtime.
“Can I offer you anything? Bourbon? Whiskey? Water? Perhaps a lie-detector?” I motioned to the mini bar in my office, my smile casual and charming—the way they’d taught me at the Swiss summer school my parents had dumped me in every year.
My mother seated herself on the couch in front of my desk, staring at her hands in her lap, and Mathias paced, pulling at his ear in a nervous tick. I was the only person in the room whose heart didn’t seem to be beating a mile a minute, and that’s because I knew something they didn’t.
“I’m so mad at James for telling you,” my mother muttered. “I was only trying to protect you, Célian. Think about the way it would have been perceived in our circle. In any circle, really. You’d have been a bastard. Your blood is blue. You are a Laurent.”
“My blood is red, and being a bastard is better than being his son.” I walked over to the front of my desk and leaned against it.
“Listen, Célian,” Mathias raised a hand.
“Not even a word, Mathias,” I warned, arching a brow. “Not. Even. One.”
“I don’t know what you think you have on me—”
“Oh, I think you do. That’s why you’re shitting your pants as we speak.”
“You can’t use it in court. Dan was not supposed to record those private conversations,” Mathias stressed, his left eye ticking.
He had a point. After I’d left James’s apartment last night, he’d emailed Iris and Mathias a file with the recording, along with a brief note about how he’d come clean to me.
Ignoring his words, I threw Mathias a pointed look. “You will drop the ads, terminate the dodgy contracts, and hire back every single person you have fired from my team by the end of the day. And if any of them are unavailable, you will find me a top-notch replacement. If I were you, I’d start working right now. Work is a foreign concept, so it will take you time to get the gist of it.”
Mathias laughed. “What makes you think I will do anything for you? Nothing has changed, other than the fact that you now know why I couldn’t stand your face from day one. You weren’t mine. Your mother messed up. The only good things about my marriage to her were LBC and Camille. And you took them from me, too.”
My mother darted up from the couch, walked over to him, and slapped his face, hard.
I watched them, emotionless. What a fucking mess. Surely I could dump some of the responsibility for me being a heartless prick on the fact that these two clowns had raised me.