He hadn’t mentioned bringing anyone else along.
“Faith.” Vanessa nodded at her. “Hello again.”
“Hi.” Faith was surprised that Vanessa remembered her. They’d only met once, at Lilith’s Den that night. It seemed like so long ago. “Thanks for helping out with this.”
“It’s no trouble.” Vanessa sat down at the end of the table. “Besides, it’s in my best interests to resolve this. No one violates the privacy of my club and gets away with it. And I won’t stand for this kind of disgusting blackmail.”
Although Vanessa appeared calm and collected, the anger in her voice was palpable. That was reassuring. She really seemed to care about the situation. Faith sensed Eve relax a little too.
The door to the conference room opened again. In walked Harrison with that same confident swagger he’d shown the last time Faith had met him.
He looked around the room, his eyes clouding over. “I told you to meet me alone.”
“You said no lawyers,” Eve said. “You didn’t say anything about anyone else.”
Harrison’s eyes landed on Faith. He snorted. “You brought your nanny? The one you’re fucking?”
“She’s not just my nanny,” Eve said. “She’s so much more to me than that. And I brought her along for support.”
He looked between the two of them. “So this is the real reason you left me? Because you’re a lesbian?”
“Oh, please. Leaving you had nothing to do with my sexuality. ”
Vanessa cleared her throat. “Are you two done? We have more important things to discuss.”
Harrison looked at Vanessa, frowning. “I know you from somewhere.”
“Vanessa Harper,” she said.
Recognition dawned on his face. Apparently, on top of secretly owning Lilith’s Den, Vanessa
was some big-shot CEO. Her power and status were what their whole plan hinged on. It was clear from Harrison’s reaction that her name held a lot of weight.
“What are you doing here?” Harrison asked.
Vanessa gestured toward a chair across from Eve and Faith. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
Harrison sat down, a bemused expression on his face.
“Eve and I are acquaintances,” Vanessa continued. “She told me all about you and your little blackmail plot. You see, you probably don’t know this about me, but I own Lilith’s Den.”
Harrison’s face twisted with disgust. “You own that fucked-up place?”
“I do. And that ‘fucked-up place’ is patronized by lots of powerful people. They all take their privacy very seriously, for obvious reasons. It’s why the club has such strict confidentiality rules. By taking a video inside the club, you violated those rules.”
Harrison crossed his arms. “So, I broke some rules. It’s too late to do anything about it now. You can ban me if you like. I’m never going back there.”
“Oh, I can do much more than ban you.” Vanessa’s voice grew icy. “Before you entered Lilith’s Den, you signed a number of legally binding agreements. One of these was a confidentiality agreement, which included a clause prohibiting any photography or recording of videos inside the premises.”
“What, you’re going to sue me?” Harrison said. “You know as well as I do that we’ll just end up in a drawn-out legal battle. Are you sure you’ll come out on top?”
“I have no doubt I’d win such a case. My legal team created those agreements to be ironclad. But no, I’m not threatening to sue you. I could do that. But I could do much, much worse.” Vanessa leaned back in her chair. “We have a lot of mutual friends, you and I. Colleagues. Business contacts. Given your distaste for what goes on in my club, you may be shocked to hear that many of our mutual contacts are regulars at Lilith’s Den.”
Harrison tensed. Could he see where this was going?
“All those regulars are very private about the fact that they go to my club. And for a good reason, when there are judgmental people like you out there who are willing to expose what they like to do behind closed doors. How do you think they’d react if they knew you’d entered their sanctuary and taken a video in order to blackmail someone?”
“I wouldn’t do that to anyone else,” Harrison said. “Eve is my ex-wife. The mother of my children. It’s different.”