I sat in the chair across from Vivienne’s unnecessarily expensive glass desk while she stared at like I’d just announced plans to burn down her mother’s flagship store.
Her fingers were doing that thing where they drumd against the tablet in perfect rhythm. One two three four. Repeat. The trono of soone whose brain was working overti to decide whether to fire or lecture first.
She was going with lecture.
"This," she said, turning her tablet toward , "is a problem."
I looked at the screen. Sa photo. and Cassidy. Bubble tea. The internet had already decided we were secretly dating based on the scientifically rigorous evidence of "standing near each other."
Modern journalism truly was an art form.
"What is?" I asked, because playing dumb bought approximately three more seconds to think.
"You. Taking my sister on dates. Getting photographed doing it." Vivienne set the tablet down with the kind of control that suggested she really wanted to slam it. "Cassidy hasn’t had a scandal in months. I’d like to keep it that way."
"It wasn’t a date."
"The internet disagrees."
"The internet thinks birds are governnt drones. I’m not taking their opinion seriously."
Her eye twitched. Just once. I’d hit a nerve.
Good. I was aiming for it.
"She was bumd about her progress report," I continued. "So I took her to get boba. That’s it. That’s the entire story. No conspiracy. No secret romance. Just bubble tea and a conversation about quadratic formulas."
"You took her to a public place."
"I took her to a shop three blocks from school."
"Where photographers camp out looking for exactly this kind of content." Vivienne leaned forward. Her blazer was still buttoned. Her ponytail was still perfect. She probably slept in formation. "Do you have any idea what you’ve done?"
"Bought overpriced tea?"
Wrong answer. Her jaw tightened in a way that made her look disturbingly like her mother.
"You’ve given tabloids ammunition. You’ve created questions about our family. You’ve put yourself and Cassidy in a position where people are asking who you are, where you ca from, why you’re spending ti with her." She picked up a pen just to have sothing to grip. "This is the exact scenario we hired you to avoid."
I sat back in the chair. Let the silence hang for a second. Then I said the thing I’d been thinking since seeing that van.
"You hired to tutor Cassidy. To help her with school. To be available when you need schedule managent." I t her eyes. "You didn’t ntion the part where taking your sister for bubble tea would end up on gossip blogs."
"It should have been obvious."
"Nothing about working for your family has been obvious."
That landed differently than I ant it to. Vivienne’s expression shifted from corporate irritation to sothing sharper. More personal.
"What’s that supposed to an?"
"It ans sotis it’s hard to rember that you’re famous. That every coffee run is a potential headline. That normal things like grabbing food after a bad day turn into scandal material."
I gestured at her tablet.
"When I take you places, it’s private. Secluded. Business etings in VIP rooms. Studios where everyone already signed NDAs. We don’t get seen in public because you plan for that."
"Exactly. I plan."
"Cassidy’s not you."
Vivienne’s knuckles went white around her pen.
"I’m aware my sister lacks my organizational skills."
"That’s not what I ant. I ant she’s seventeen and she wanted bubble tea after finding out she failed a quiz. She didn’t think about photographers. Neither did I. We just went."
"You ’just went’ to one of the most photographed neighborhoods in Manhattan."
"I ’just went’ to help soone who was upset."
"Your job is tutoring, not emotional support."
"My job is whatever you pay for. And apparently that includes damage control when your sister has a ltdown about derivatives."
We stared at each other across the desk. Her eyes had gone that shade of purple that reminded of storm clouds. The kind that ant lightning was coming.
"You cannot take my sisters to public places without clearance," she said. Each word ca out individually wrapped in frost. "That’s the rule going forward. If they want to go sowhere, you ask first. I’ll determine whether it’s safe."
"So basically you want to ask permission to do my job."
"I want you to use common sense."
"Common sense says when soone’s upset, you help them. You don’t fill out a request form and wait for approval."
"Common sense," Vivienne said slowly, "says that when you work for a family worth billions, you consider the optics of your actions before taking them."
I almost laughed. The sound ca out as sothing between a scoff and a sigh.
"Yeah, it would really suck to be seen in public with a commoner. Or the help. God forbid anyone think a Valentine was slumming it with scholarship trash."
Her face went pale. Then red. Then pale again in rapid succession.
"You know that’s not what I ant."
"Then what?"
"I ant that people will twist anything into a story. They’ll say you’re using her. That you’re after her money. That you’re so kind of opportunist who word his way into our family." She stood up now, pacing behind her desk like she couldn’t sit still anymore. "They’ll tear you apart, Isaiah. These people are vultures. They’ll find out where you live, where your sister goes to school, how much money you make. They’ll dig into everything until there’s nothing left."
Oh.
That was the problem.
Not protecting the Valentine reputation. Protecting from what ca with it.
I sat forward.
"I can handle gossip."
"No, you can’t. Because you don’t understand what our gossip looks like." She stopped pacing and faced directly. "Last year soone posted a rumor that Cassidy was dating a tennis player from another school. Within six hours, he had reporters camped outside his house. Soone leaked his private Instagram DMs. He transferred schools two months later."
"That’s insane."
"That’s reality." She crossed her arms. "You think I’m being paranoid? I’m being realistic. I’m trying to prevent you from becoming collateral damage because you wanted to be nice."
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