“That’s out of your hands now, Sienna. Just confess, pack up and go home. Cara has already suffered enough for what you did. It’s your last chance: do the right thing and —”
“FUCK YOU!” She growls again, and cocks her arm back. In the blink of an eye, I see the open palm of her hand traveling fast toward my face. Unfortunately to Sienna, I’m already used to deal with crazy bitches like she is. I just take one step back and raise my own hand, grabbing her by the wrist before she has the chance to slap me.
“You can’t prove it, Abby,” she hisses, my fingers still wrapped around her wrist. “It’s just hearsay...and a few emails won’t change that. You don’t have any proof, and I’ll bury you in court. You’re slandering me, Abby, and you’ll pay dearly for that.”
“Do you think I came here just to chat with you, Sienna?” I tell her, lowering my voice into a menacing whisper. Her eyes widen at that, and her wrist goes limp. I finally let go of her and smile again. “I have all the proof I need.”
With that, I turn on my heels, walk toward the projector and turn it on.
Chapter 28
Derek
The projector lights up, its white light against the wall, and the whole crowd chatters nervously as they wait for what’s going to happen next. They know Abby’s going for the killshot, and they can’t wait to see it happen right in front of them. Everyone slows down when there’s an accident on the highway, right? Basic human nature. Not something nice to say, but that’s the way things go.
“Alright, let’s fucking do this,” I whisper to myself as I walk toward Abby, and she just nods at me. Doing as instructed, I move onto the backstage, just behind the curtains on the back of the stage, and grab her laptop from a backpack. I place it on top of Sienna’s gigantic pile of books and, doing it fast, I open the lid and connect it to the projector.
The moment I do it, Grady’s face takes over the whole wall. His hair is sweaty and plastered against his forehead, and his weasel eyes seem shaken by something. It’s kinda funny, really; you’d never think that this guy was once upon a time Abby’s boyfriend. She’s married to Aidan now, a complete legend when it comes to romance models, and Grady is a complete opposite. He looks like the kind of guy you’d expect to try and sell you some kind of bullshit life insurance. Man, he really fucked up the moment he let her go. I guess some guys just can’t see what’s right under their nose.
Now she’s the most successful publisher in the industry, and he’s ruined.
“Hit it, Derek,” Abby tells me, and I just press play. As I do it, the video of Grady on the wall starts running.
“Please, state your name,” an off-camera voice says, gruff and commanding. Grady’s sitting in front of a simple metal desk, and the room he’s in seems to be completely empty. Even someone who has no idea of what’s happening would quickly deduce that he’s being held in an interrogation room. “The name’s Grady, I already told you all that shit,” he sighs, looking away from the camera and locking his eyes with whoever’s interrogating him. Despite his words, his tone isn’t an aggressive one; instead, it’s the tone of someone who has been defeated.
“Very well,” his interrogator continues, “can you please state for the camera the reason you left the United States?”
“Ah, fuck,” he sighs again, running one hand through his sweaty hair and disheveling it some more. He makes a pause, almost as if he’s trying to muster up some courage, and only then does he continue. “After what happened with Naughty Angel Publishing, I left the states and set up shop in the Cayman Islands.”
“What exactly did you set up in the Cayman Islands?” The interrogator asks him, not giving him any room to breathe. Whoever’s taking on that interrogation, he sure as hell doesn’t want to waste a single second.
“Pure Smut for You,” Grady says, doing it so forcefully that you’d say he’s chewing nails right now. “I wanted Pure Smut for You to rival Naughty Angel. I wanted to get back at Abby for everything she did to me.”
“And how did you plan on doing that?”
“I worked with Sienna Sinner. She was already jealous of Naughty Angel, so it only took some convincing for her to join me in the first place. But Sienna never really mattered, I never cared about her. This was about Abby, and I was using Sienna to get back at her.”
“So, do you admit it?”
“Yes, Sienna and I are the ones behind the Naughty Angel leak.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Derek,” Abby tells me, and I just close the laptop and Grady’s video disappears from the wall. There’s a stunned silence blanketing the whole conference floor, and the only thing I can hear right now is Sienna’s ragged breathing, one of pure desperation.
“No, no, no…” she whispers, her knees buckling under her feet. She goes down then, her knees hitting the floor hard, and she starts pulling her hair so hard that I wouldn’t be surprised if she scalped herself.
Man, she really hates that haircut.
“How?” she howls, looking straight at Abby.
“Quite simple, actually,” Abby smiles, going down on one knee in front of Sienna. “With the evidence these four gathered,” she points at me, Cara, Derek, and Mason, “it was only a matter of time till we had the federal agents on our side. In fact, they shut down the Pure Smut for You website even before you stepped onto this stage, Sienna. You didn’t know it, but it was already over for you.”
“But Grady, he —”
“Grady’s a slimy piece of shit. Trust me on that one. Thing is, you should’ve known that. He’ll throw anyone under the bus if it benefits him. With the evidence the FBI had against him, he rolled over on you pretty fast.”
“I don’t understand, it doesn’t make sense,” Sienna wails.
“He did it in exchange for a shorter jail term,” Abby tells her. “He’s finished, and he’s just trying to shave a few years off his sentence.”