You Were Always Mine

The Scandal #2

The headline stayed frozen on Cassandra's screen for a long moment before Vivian finally looked away from it.

"Ma'am." Cassandra's voice had lost its usual steadiness. "What do you want me to do?"

Vivian set her own phone down on the desk, the call with Louis still hanging disconnected somewhere behind her.

"Get legal to pull every original video file from that period. I need every piece of evidence we have. I want it ready by noon."

Cassandra blinked. "You're not going to deny it publicly?"

"Denying it means responding to it like it deserves a response."

Vivian stood, straightening her blazer calmly.

"Right now, it doesn't."

She walked toward the door.

Cassandra hurried to keep pace, tablet still buzzing violently in her hand, notification after notification lighting the screen.

"There's a crowd gathering downstairs," Cassandra said, glancing at another alert.

"Reporters and some protesters. Word got out you're in the building."

"Then I'll walk past them."

"Ma'am, maybe we should use the back exit…"

"I'm not hiding, Cassandra."

The elevator ride down felt longer than usual. Vivian stood with her hands folded in front of her, eyes fixed somewhere on the steel doors.

Cassandra kept glancing at her sideways, waiting for a c***k that never came.

The doors opened onto the lobby, and the noise hit them first.

Voices, dozens of them, layered over each other outside the glass entrance. Camera flashes stuttered against the windows.

A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk beyond the revolving doors, some holding phones, some holding actual printed signs that had clearly been made in the last hour.

JUSTICE FOR PEARL CORP WORKERS.

VIVIAN PEARL EXPOSED.

Vivian's steps didn't slow.

"Ma'am." Cassandra's hand hovered near her elbow. "Security is right outside. They'll clear a path."

"I don't need a path cleared."

She pushed through the revolving door herself before Cassandra could argue further, and the noise swallowed her whole the second she stepped onto the sidewalk.

Questions came from every direction at once, tangled and impossible to separate from one another.

"Ms. Pearl, is it true you falsified company documents?"

"Did you know your former employees were suffering under your leadership?"

"Any comment on the abuse allegations?"

Vivian kept walking, eyes forward, expression flat as glass.

Security moved in around her, forming a loose barrier between her and the thickest part of the crowd, but the shouting only grew louder the closer she got to the car waiting at the curb.

Then something hit her.

It struck her shoulder first; a heavy smack that made her stumble half a step before she caught herself.

Yellow yolk slid down the sleeve of her blazer, dripping onto the pavement. The shell fragments clung to the fabric, some sliding down toward her wrist.

The crowd erupted.

Camera flashes surged, dozens of phones raised at once, all of them capturing the exact same frame.

Vivian Pearl, egg dripping down her shoulder, standing frozen for half a second on a public sidewalk.

"Ma'am!"

Cassandra's voice cracked with panic as she lunged forward, but security had already moved.

Two of them pushing into the crowd toward wherever the stranger had thrown from.

Vivian didn't move.

She looked down at her sleeve slowly, at the mess sliding down toward her elbow, and something flickered behind her eyes.

"Ma'am, are you hurt?"

Cassandra had reached her now, hand hovering uselessly near her arm, unsure whether touching her would make things worse.

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, someone just…"

"Cassandra."

Vivian's voice remained quiet enough that only her assistant could hear it over the noise still roaring around them.

"I'm fine."

She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and continued walking toward the car as though nothing had happened at all.

The image would be everywhere within minutes. She knew that.

She could already picture the headline forming somewhere in a newsroom, the caption practically writing itself.

Karma finally catches up to Vivian Pearl.

She slid into the driver's seat of the car, and the door shut behind her firmly.

Cassandra climbed in, breathing hard, hands shaking slightly as she reached for a tissue from her bag.

"Here." She held it out. "Let me help you…"

"I've got it."

Vivian took the tissue and wiped at her sleeve slowly.

The car pulled away from the curb, leaving the crowd and the cameras behind, though Cassandra kept glancing back through the rear window like she expected them to follow.

"That's already online," Cassandra said quietly, phone screen glowing again in her lap. "It's spreading fast."

"I assumed it would."

"Ma'am, this isn't normal. You should be…"

Cassandra stopped herself, unsure how to finish the sentence without sounding like she was accusing her boss of something.

"Angry?" Vivian offered, not looking up from her sleeve.

"...Yes."

"I am."

Vivian's voice remained perfectly calm, which somehow made the words land heavier than if she'd shouted them.

"I'm furious, Cassandra. I just don't see the use in showing it to people who are waiting for exactly that."

Cassandra fell silent, watching her boss fold the ruined tissue into a small square.

"Whoever is doing this," Vivian continued, eyes finally lifting to meet Cassandra's.

"...wants a reaction. They want headlines of me breaking down, or screaming, or falling apart in public. I refuse to give them that."

"Do you think there's someone else besides Bibi Faye?"

Vivian didn't answer right away.

Her gaze drifted toward the window instead, watching the city blur past.

“Yes.”

Her phone buzzed once in her lap; it was an unknown number and ut sent her a message.

She unlocked the screen slowly, Cassandra watching from rear view mirror.

UNKNOWN: That egg was just the beginning. Wait until they see what else I have.

Vivian's fingers stilled over the screen.

Below the message sat an attachment, a small thumbnail preview of an image she didn't recognize at first glance.

She tapped it once, and the photo expanded to fill her screen completely.

Her stomach dropped.

“Ms. V?”

Vivian chuckled, the laughter escaping her in bits and pieces before a full blown laughter escaped her lips.

Her grip on the tablet tightened hard enough to make it's edges c***k.

“You're so dead..”