Public Relations

Chapter 12: Mia

My dad's nostrils flare.

He gestures for me to take a seat in one of the navy velvet chairs positioned opposite his desk. I oblige, sinking deep into the cushions like a woman who isn't speaking with her very unhappy boss. Because at the end of the day, I'm not afraid of my father.

He's a dictator here, way overpowered being both the owner and the CEO. He'd started this company with a friend thirty years ago and clawed and cheated their way to the top. And then, sometime in the later 2000s, he cut his friend out like the two-timing snake he is.

It would be easier for me to lie undercover if we didn't share a last name. People figured out who I was the moment I started, the suspicious 22-year-old with a baby face and a highly sought after job. Too easy, they'd say. He just gave her the job.

But he did. They're right. I got this job through nepotism, which is despicable. That's why I've fought so hard to prove myself. Working so tirelessly to build myself a brutal, gritty reputation as someone who could be trusted, who can manage her business, who deserves to be here just as much as the others.

And now my father sits before me, flicking a pen lazily between his fat, calloused fingers. He's fuming, brooding, in the way that men in power who have been minorly inconvenienced do. I'm ready to challenge him. 

"Tell me why," he starts, his voice hanging in the air like a black widow's web. "Tell me why your client needs legal to get involved with something you said you had handled."

"Because, Jeff," I counter, my eyes and jaw set. "I handled it days ago, and then new situations progressed."

"Handling it would have been nipping it in the bud." He leans forward, resting his elbows on the oak of his desk. "I want to know why legal is involved."

"A different influencer - represented by a different management agency, different PR firm - has been accusing Brett of some pretty serious things. It's bigger than these influencer dramas. It's actual slander, claiming he's committed real crimes."

"Has he?"

I tense, uncomfortable at how viscerally I want to defend Brett when just a handful of days ago I'd asked the same questions. When it's my father, though, he is coming from a place of malice, trying to catch me in some fib, like I'm too stupid to know my own clients. 

"Aside from punching a college kid who is completely removed from this drama, no. No crimes were committed. Evidence is flimsy, circumstantial at best. It will be hearsay and it won't hold up in court."

My dad tucks the pen behind his ear and clasps his hands together, sighing softly. It's a sigh laced with disappointment; it's his passive aggressive way of letting me know it's not enough. "I'm not upset with you for getting legal involved. That's the right call." I remain expressionless. "But the fact that we got here in the first place is what I'm frustrated with."

I purse my lips, the corners of my mouth turning down in a disinterested frown. "There are hundreds of clients under our supervision, some case-by-case, some long-term. You would never be having this conversation with any of the other publicists."

"Because I don't expect any of the other publicists to fill my shoes one day."

I roll my eyes. "I'm not here to fill your shoes. I'm here to be good at my job, managing people, not being a money-hungry tyrant."

He sets his jaw, leaning back in his office chair with a slight creak underfoot. I can see something shift in his expression, like he's preparing to bring out the finisher, the real damage. 

My dad opens a folder tucked beside his computer monitor, a flimsy paper thing containing nothing but one sheet of paper, a photo blown up and printed across the whole sheet. He takes it out, examines it with a slight frown, then slides it across to me.