by Cynthia Dane
“Yes. Who do you think buys them for him once a week?” Mr. Monroe didn’t have to ask anymore. Sarah always had one waiting for him on his desk every Wednesday afternoon. Easy enough to pick up during her break.
“Let me know when you’re off for lunch. We can talk about how it went with your boss. Anyway, I have to go now. Something’s up.”
Sarah went about getting ready for work. It was the only way to take her mind off the inevitable.
Monday mornings weren’t easy at Monroe Industries. She was already making calls on her boss’s behalf while waiting for lights to change. It was a brisk ten-minute walk to work from where she lived. With the surge of early morning commuters and buses roaring by every five minutes, Sarah had developed listening skills that rivaled anyone else’s.
It also meant she didn’t pay much attention to what went on around her. Oh, she paid enough attention to know when to cross the street and when not to bump into someone, but she couldn’t tell anyone what the billboards now advertised or who went out in public wearing the latest Gucci looks. That was for the tabloids to keep track of – and she read the social papers religiously, not because she enjoyed them, but because her boss needed to know when he was mentioned and his PR agent hadn’t gotten around to telling him yet.
She didn’t have time to check out the latest headlines, though. By the time she reached the office, she was finishing up a conversation with a hotel in Macau.
“…Thank you, yes, that should be satisfactory. I’ll let you know.” She hung up before entering the elevator that would inevitably drop her connection. Sarah rode up with a man she didn’t recognize. Probably an employee of one of the advertising agencies that rented office space in Monroe Tower.
He kept staring at her.
Sarah checked her appearance in the mirror. Had she smeared her makeup? Had the morning wind disheveled her hair? Had she spilled cream cheese on her lapel?
When she glanced at the man, he looked away. The elevator doors opened. He stepped out, and Sarah was alone.
She reached the top floor with an ill feeling in her stomach.
The office was quiet. While it didn’t bother Sarah most mornings, today she noted how many people were in the office… and suddenly quiet the moment she walked in.
What did you do, Luke? Had word traveled that quickly already? Shit, why would they care? Why would they give a fuck to the point of…
“Sarah?” Alisha stood up from their desks. “You’re… here?”
“Yes.” Sarah put her bag down in her chair and tossed her phone down. “Contrary to the vibe in this place, I haven’t quit. What’s going on?”
“You… you are…”
She swallowed, refusing to show any confusion. “I’m here. Can we get to work?”
“Sure.”
Sarah attempted to shake off the whole office’s gawking. Bask in it, assholes. I’m dating Lucas Blackbourne. Might as well face the boss.
Alisha made the sign of the cross when Sarah walked into Mr. Monroe’s office to go over that day’s schedule.
“Oh, my favorite gentlemen…”
Sarah stopped halfway across the room. Mr. and Mrs. Monroe looked up from the desktop computer on Mr. Monroe’s desk. Alice gasped, her cheeks so red that she looked like she had been caught masturbating by her mother. Damon’s reaction to Sarah’s presence wasn’t much better.
“Shut it off!” Alice reached across her husband’s keyboard, but her pregnant belly got in her way. By the time her hand was on the power button, Sarah had lunged forward to find out what everyone was in a tizzy over.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you guys! Angel’s been waiting…”
Sarah stopped before her boss’s desk, bile shooting up her throat.
She knew what that was…
How long had it been? Five months? Four? She couldn’t even say it was the last time she had a threesome or more. Well, since Angel did.
Unfortunately for Sarah (and Angel,) she had no idea that the gangbang she participated in one night in a New York hotel room was filmed. Let alone leaked.
And they’re watching it…
“Ms. Clayborn.” Damon finally turned his monitor off, but not before Sarah saw her naked body being enjoyed by at least three men, none of whom she remembered. A fourth filmed the encounter on his phone. “I… I mean we…”
“We should not have watched that,” Alice supplemented.
The door flung open. Lucas stormed in, his face as pale as a ghost’s the moment he saw Sarah standing there.
“Sarah!”
She had no idea if he had told Damon about their relationship yet. The cat was out of the bag anyway when she ran right into her boyfriend’s arms and screamed into his vest.
Chapter 20
The media shitstorm that ensued made sure Sarah went home early.
More than one businessman had been outed as a pervert in the video, but that wasn’t the point, was it? Not when most of the faces had been blurred out. Everyone’s but Sarah’s, which was always front and center, regardless of what that face was doing.
Oh, she watched it. As soon as she got home, Lucas right behind her, she sat on the edge of her bed and played that atrocity on her laptop from beginning to end. She needed to know how bad it was.
It wasn’t the whole night. Just snippets from the guy’s phone that had been edited together with amateurish transitions. A total of ten minutes of Sarah Clayborn wearing a blond wig and engaging in the kind of shit that ruined careers.
The viewer count was already in the thousands. Every free porn site on the internet had featured it on their own servers. The news danced around the contents while reporting on this CEO or that VP being embroiled in a “sex scandal.” At first, nobody except those who recognized her face knew that the woman was Sarah Clayborn.
Then the gossip blogs started talking.
All it took was one bitch saying “Isn’t that Sarah Clayborn? The executive assistant to billionaire Damon Monroe?” While that in itself wasn’t newsworthy, the photos of her and Lucas on their weekend getaway some pap got a hold of was.
“Don’t watch it,” Lucas implored her. His phone blew up with messages from his PR manager and predatory “journalists” who dug up his number. He ignored it, choosing to kneel before Sarah and yanking her laptop out of her grasp. “Don’t watch that trash.”
“That’s trash I’m in, Luke.” She snorted, defeated. “If it’s trash, then I’m trash too.”
“Damnit, Sarah, don’t…”
“Don’t what? Face reality? You’re kidding me, right? Half the world knows we’re together now.” She leaned away from him. “It’s not a coincidence that it came out the same day as that video.”
“You’re right.” At least he didn’t fight her about that. “Someone deliberately outed us.”
Sarah peeked at her laptop screen. There she was with her fake O face.
It certainly wasn’t flattering. Luckily, Sarah was detached enough from her life as Angel that she could look at this situation (somewhat) objectively. The male faces had been blurred to one degree or another while hers was left completely recognizable. The video was leaked early in the morning when the world was waking up and checking their phones and laptops for gossip. The scandal regarding the two businessmen people were able to identify – blurred faces or no – was allowed to fester before the pictures of Sarah and Lucas on their romantic getaway were leaked by the same supposed sources. The connections were immediately made in the headlines. “EURO-AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE HEIR DATING SEX TAPE FLOOZY?”
“Someone’s targeting us,” Sarah said. Lucas gently closed the laptop lid. “They’re trying to humiliate you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You.” Sarah told him exactly what she would have told her boss had he been in this situation instead. In fact, he practically was a year ago, when he met his wife and nearly threw his image away to have her. “This was carefully released to reflect on you. This isn’t about shaming t
he businessmen in that tape, or even me. It’s about you, Luke.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s the only explanation. Because someone followed us all weekend and took pictures of us together, so they could leak them with this tape. They wanted the connection made. Someone wants the world to know that you date a degenerate like me.”
“I don’t think you’re…”
“For fuck’s sake, Luke!” Sarah leaped up, pushing past him and hitting her hand against her bedroom door. “That’s a video of me blowing and fucking four guys! At once!”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
Lucas bit his lip before turning away, hands flying above his head. “All right! I care! But I care more about how this affects you than the actual contents of the video. You think it surprises me? You think I’m disgusted with you, Sarah? You think I hold the fact that you’ve had a sex life before me against you?”
Sarah slowly shook her head. “You know it’s not a ‘sex life’ on my part. I’m fucked up, Luke. Anything the media says about me – and I took a peek – isn’t wrong. Let’s be…”
She cut herself off. Because Nigel was in her doorway, fresh from work and with a look only she could read.
“Is it fucking true?”
“You need to go,” Sarah quietly said to her boyfriend. “We need privacy.”
Lucas opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. “All right. I’ll be in the living room making a few calls to see how we can smooth this over. I promise you, Sarah, by the end of the week everyone will have forgotten about this.”
Not when that tape is on porn sites for the rest of time, dumbass. Sarah had never done professional sex work before, yet she would soon have her own porn star profile on so many of those sites. I wonder how long it will take for more videos I didn’t know about to surface. Angel was a fucking idiot when it came to her privacy once the fun started.
No… I am. I need to take responsibility for this.
But how could she, when she looked into those eyes identical to her own?
It was the heartbreak and disbelief all over again. It was the same face Nigel made when he found out that his sister was pregnant with their boss’s father’s child. The same look when he found out about the miscarriage. Later, she realized it was the same face he must have made when he found out the truth about her miscarriage.
That look that said he feared for his sister’s safety. And her honor.
“I’m sorry, Nigel.” Her strength left her. She sank onto her bed, arms drooping between her legs and head hanging in the sudden influx of shame consuming her. Until that moment, until she saw Nigel rush into her room, she hadn’t felt a true ounce of shame.
Now it was all she could feel.
“What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Going out. Doing whatever.”
“Those trips to New York… I thought you were seeing a sugar daddy or something.”
“No. I was going to that sex club.” She didn’t have to specify which one.
“Why?”
“Because…” Why? Why did she do it? Why did she dress up as someone else and go seduce the first man who would have her? Oftentimes it didn’t matter if they were hot or not. It didn’t matter if they were actually rich or there by some stroke of luck. Didn’t even matter if they lied to her about anything. “Because I’m fucked up.”
He sat down next to her, but did not touch her.
“Did you watch the video?”
“No! Bad enough knowing that it exists… seeing stills on the internet… fuck.”
“I was gangbanged by four businessmen. Guess not a lot of women can say that.”
‘Why are you telling me that?”
“Because I can’t help myself now.”
“Does Lucas know about that shit?”
“It’s how we met, Nigel.” Sarah almost couldn’t believe it, really. “We met at that club.”
“Where you…”
“Yup. We had no idea who the other person was. Quite the shock when he showed up at work the following Monday.”
“Jesus.”
If Sarah closed her eyes, she could hear Lucas out in the living room barking orders to his publicist. Both of them, the American one and the Danish one. I so rarely get to hear him speak Danish. She couldn’t enjoy it now. He sounded so angry, so on the warpath that she couldn’t bear to listen to whatever he snarled into his phone.
On her behalf. Yes, this was clearly a target against him, but he was doing this for her.
Nigel took her hand on top of the bed. “You gonna be the one to call Mum back first, or do I have those honors?”
“What do you mean call her back?”
That’s when Sarah checked her phone again. Sure enough, five missed calls within the last hour from Elizabeth Brown-Clayborn. Sarah didn’t bother to listen to the voicemails. Like she could sense her brother’s thoughts and feelings, she could clearly hear her mother’s exasperated ire from hundreds of miles away.
Chapter 21
The Monroes did not consult Sarah when they informed her she was going on leave with pay. “It’s been a long while since you had a good vacation, anyway.” Alice’s petty attempt to make this sound like a good thing was not appreciated. The fact Sarah’s employers had come to her home to tell her this was another level.
Nigel stayed out of it. What convenient timing for his former bosses to show up when he had to pop down to the supermarket.
Lucas, on the other hand, did not stay out of it.
“You’re humiliating her even more,” he said directly to Mr. Monroe. “The last thing she needs is…”
“I can speak for myself, thank you.” Sarah knew her boyfriend meant well, but now was not the time for him to come swinging in her defense. This was about her job and what it could possibly mean for her future. “I understand, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. If I were in your position, I would suspend me too. I’m a liability to your company’s image. I believe you did business with one of the men in the video.”
Alice couldn’t hide her disbelief as well as her husband could. Don’t give me your shocked pity, lady. Sarah needed to approach this objectively. Yes, that was her in the video. Yes, that was something a vast majority of Americans would call “shameful,” especially if it was leaked and now everyone who cared enough knew who she was. But she wouldn’t succumb to the bile constantly tickling the back of her throat. She wouldn’t look into this blond woman’s eyes and feel shame. She had to approach this from the point of a view of someone trying to salvage her employers’ image. They were being generous with offering her pay for at least a little while.
“We did,” Damon Monroe said with candor. “Not for a while, though.” He cleared his throat and averted his gaze from Sarah’s.
Even if Sarah hadn’t walked in on them watching the leaked video, she would still know they had. Their embarrassment every time they looked at her suggested as much.
What was that like? Finding out that your mild-mannered employee who was as no-nonsense as a programmable robot was getting her sexy jollies every weekend? To that extent?
The awkward silence became too unbearable for Lucas. “Please don’t punish her, Damon. You know as well as I do that this was leaked to get back at me somehow.”
“Until this morning I would have never guessed that, no,” Damon snapped. “Ms. Clayborn hasn’t been put on leave simply because of this video coming out. This relationship has played a part as well.” He scoffed. So he really never expected anything? Mr. Monroe only acted like this when caught completely off guard. While it wasn’t difficult for Sarah to keep her private life in the closet, Lucas was exactly the type of boyfriend who wanted to broadcast his new romance to everyone who would listen. Especially to his best friend! “Things must settle down. You know that, Lucas.”
He grunted, but said nothing.
“Your job is not in jeopardy,” Alice reassured her employee. “Please do
n’t think that.”
“Of course not.” Sarah stood. “I’m going to get more tea.”
She needed to get away from those fools, including Lucas. She needed some space to breathe. Getting more tea was as good of an excuse as any.
Too bad Mrs. Monroe followed her into the kitchen.
“Sarah, if there’s anything Damon and I can do…”
Sarah poured lukewarm water from the kettle into her empty cup. If my mother saw me doing this, she would riot. “If there’s anything to do, I’m sure Lucas is on it. He’s the one with the PR power.”
“Yes, but…”
“Everything else is my private life.”
Alice stepped back, eyes wide and hand clutching her stomach. Yes, Mrs. Monroe, your little baby girl might one day grow up to be a mess like me. Sarah wouldn’t put that out there with her voice, however. Those thoughts were kept in her caustic mind.
“Please, spare me any pity you feel. I’m more worried about Lucas, anyway. It’s more than a little suspicious that both the video and our relationship was leaked only hours apart. Someone’s out to get him, and that video served me up on a platter.” Ouch. That was a line straight from the film.
“Even so, Sarah, you’ve been dragged into this… like that.”
“I’d much prefer it if you wouldn’t keep bringing it up, thank you.”
Alice bit her lip. When she next spoke, it was to change the subject back to her. “May I please use your bathroom?”
Sarah pointed down the hall. “First door on the left.”
“Thank you.”
Sarah continued to pour lukewarm tea while her boyfriend and his best friend hashed it out in husky whispers out in the living room.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” Mr. Monroe informed his friend.
“I’m in love, Damon. I wanted to tell you sooner, but we were waiting for the right moment. I was actually going to tell you this morning.”
“In love? With her?”
“You make it sound so farfetched.”
“Do you even know half of her history?”