The media outlets had four different pictures. None of them were salacious in nature, thank fuck. But Tiffany and I were pretty damn cozy in them. One was of us arm-in-arm, two were of us laughing in a shop in Old Town, and one was me ushering her into the restaurant with my hand on her lower back. Damn it. How the hell could I have not caught something like that? I had a sixth sense for the paparazzi and people taking pictures of me.

Did Tiffany have me that distracted?

My P.R. department was already trying to swing the story. Trying to paint me as an informal escort around the country for a new employee. They were highlighting Tiffany’s lack of time abroad and using that to paint the idea of security. Wanting to keep my employees safe whenever they were with me on a business trip.

But that picture of my fucking hand on her back.

The media would definitely use that as proof to spin their own fucking stories.

The only positive thing about any of this was the fact that none of the pictures had been of me kissing her on top of the head. Because that happened on a couple of occasions while we were out the day before. But it still wasn’t good. I was the new CEO of a tanking company, and I had a board of investors I answered to. And I’d only met with them twice.

They didn’t even fucking know me well enough to make a judgement call on how this looked for the company.

This wasn’t a good look for the company to start out with, and even my P.R. department knew that. I sat there on the couch at three in the morning, watching the damn television scroll like a social media feed on meth. Part of me wanted to go down to Tiffany’s suite. Or invite her up. Do something to reach out in order to see how she was. But her brutal removal of me from her room made me think twice. Her eyes when she screamed at me? It was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

She wanted me gone, and I had no right to encroach upon that.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Every single news outlet back in the States had this on their fucking evening headlines. ‘New CEO Snags Secretary’ and ‘Kenneth Weber: Web of Secrets?’ Such disgusting and idiotic headlines that took what Tiffany and I had shared together and turned it into a minefield of insults to my character and jabs at her sexuality as a woman.

All in the span of less than twenty four hours.

I turned the television off, unable to stomach anymore of it. I had no idea what I was going to do about the rest of this trip. If the national media outlets back home were reporting on it, other countries would be eventually. And with this shit originating in Switzerland, there was a good chance some of my clients already knew what was happening. They’d use it as leverage. Try to lean on me and get better deals for themselves in an attempt to undercut me during a time of reputational weakness. At the very least, they’d mock the presence of Tiffany and embarrass her further.

And I wasn’t going to let either of those things happen.

Sleep evaded me, so I got up and took a shower. I stood there until the water ran cold, then took my time getting ready. I shaved. I chose my best suit for the next day’s round of meetings. I stepped away from the television and away from the phone in hopes that I could get some semblance of peace. Give myself time to wrap my head around what was going on and figure out a plan of attack. People would assault me from all sides. The board of investors. Employees. Key opinion holders in the general public. Late night television hosts would surely add this to their docket for the night and blogs written by old men in their basements would twist the story even further.

Social media was a godsend in some regards.

And a Hell’s Kitchen in others.

However, the second my P.R. department rang through on my phone, I knew it was bad. Something in the pit of my gut told me that when I picked up that phone, circumstances would change. That was the nature of the media. Reaction was never the best defense, but there was only so much I could control half a world away from the problem.

And I was concerned it wouldn’t be enough.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mr. Weber, have you seen the latest headline?”

“Let me guess. The late night hosts are going at it now,” I said.

“No, Mr. Weber. A local news station out of Miami is running a very interesting headline. I think it’s worth a counter-story.”

“Why? What’s so bad about it?” I asked as I put them on speakerphone.

“I sent it to your email, Mr. Weber, because it drags a friend of yours into the mix.”

I furrowed my brow as I navigated to my email. A friend of mine? What in the world would any of my so-called friends have anything to do with this? I only kept one close friend. A man I’d known for years. I clicked on the message from the head of the department, trying to brace myself for whatever was about to slap me across the face.

And the headline made my stomach drop.

New Secretary Dates Man Responsible For Father’s Death?

“Lynn?”

“Yes, Mr. Weber?”

“I’ll call you back.”

“I’ll be here,” she said.

I hung up the phone and leaned against the bathroom counter. This was a different story. Not a story focused on some torrid sexual affair, but something much worse. My eyes fluttered across the words as I took in the content of the piece being written. And the further I got into it, the more nervous I grew. The article outlined my time at Instatech, flipping the company for my good friend, Roman Edwards. It mentioned and linked out to various articles on our close friendship, found the one damn article I had allowed on my time there, and then went on to mention the name of a man who worked at the company during my time there.

Herald Graves.

The article was horrendous. Multiple sexual harassment lawsuits. Fired without a formal investigation into the filings with Instatech’s H.R. department. The man was a janitor there. Full-time, and had been for years, the article said. But the picture of him was uncanny.

Fuck me.

Those eyes were identical to a pair I’d become intimately familiar with.

My mind flashed back to the conversation I had with Tiffany in the lounge. The dinner after our first day of meetings. All of her questions about Instatech came rushing back to my mind. My friendship with Roman. What I did with my time there. Even the urgency of her voice was obvious the more I thought about it. I figured she was eager to learn. Eager to know more about something I did that not many people were educated on.

What a fucking idiot I had been.

I continued to read the article, scrolling through it until it came to the end. It linked out to Herald Grave’s obituary, and curiosity was going to kill me if I didn’t click it. A window popped up on my phone and it loaded the small Miami news article, outlining the man’s life. Where he grew up. What he did for a living. Who he left behind.

A wife and a daughter.

“Oh fuck,” I said to myself.

The obituary mentioned her father ‘succumbing to his demons’, but when I flipped back to the news article, it mentioned alcohol poisoning. All of the pieces slowly began to drop into place. Tiffany’s hesitancy. The conflict in her eyes whenever we were together. Her blatant fear when I showed her the picture the other night.

I felt anger bubbling in my gut.

Why didn’t she tell me? I could’ve told her I had nothing to do with something like this. Cleared her mind and ended her little witch hunt, or whatever she thought she was doing. I didn’t even know who the fucking man was! No, it didn’t look good on me as a businessman, but I didn’t make it a point to learn every single fucking person’s name in a company I flipped. I only learned the names of the people I was promoting and firing. They deserved at least that modicum of respect. He was a damn janitor for fuck’s sake. How the hell was I supposed to know about any of this?

But a part of me hurt for her.

It was obvious the connections the story was making. The innuendos hidden between the lines. The article was posing that I was responsible for his firing to try and make a company I flipped look better, and that firing led to his drinking. Which led to his death.

They were trying to paint me as my secretary’s ‘Angel of Death’.

I turned my phone off and pushed off the bathroom counter. There was only one way to clear all of this up. This was a juicy story. A serious connection that didn’t sit well with me. If the massive media outlets picked this up, it would be everywhere. Her father’s picture would be plastered on national television stations. They would hound Tiffany until she talked. Gave them some sort of quote.

I had to talk with Tiffany.

And it seemed, at least for the moment, that I needed to send her home.

But before I could even get out of my fucking hotel room, my phone dinged in my hand. The kind of ding that sent my stomach flipping during moments like this. I brought the screen up to my face as my eyes scanned the notification, and I could feel every vein in my body drip with anger.

Breaking News: CEO Kenneth Weber’s New Secretary Has A Dark Family Secret

Fuck.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?