Alibi

24 | Children Should Be Seen Not Heard

Logan hadn't the slightest idea who the latest Jane Doe was until he had Ratfucker Sam recruit a whole team to start digging. When he was then presented with the information that Matilda was the alleged victim, he couldn't have been more elated. She was so tied up and tangled in the Roy's web, he couldn't possibly lose. She was a powerful chess piece that he'd been eyeing off for a while, and finally, he had significant leverage to control her.

"Matilda! There's a spare seat with us. Romulus can share with the rest of the clown ," Logan called out as she and Roman arrived at Teterboro airport. Her stomach dropped. Being asked to share a helicopter with Logan, Gerri, Hugo and Karolina in the midst of a media scandal wasn't a good sign. Not at all.

Tilly was a smart girl and Logan truly believed that. The people that she worked with were often surprised at her intellect and weren't afraid of telling her either. Logan included. Whether it was her age or her gender that was looked down upon, her colleagues often assumed she was insignificant until she opened her mouth. She could talk her way in and out of situations with ease. Whether it was talking optics in a group of senior male stakeholders or a liaising on a media brief with dim witted millennials, she was always flexible. Malleable. A business chameleon if you would go so far.

He knew Matilda was a valuable commodity, but he was also aware she was a dangerous piece in the game if he wasn't the one to have her in his artillery. "I like you Matilda. I do. You'd have a good head on you if you stopped trying to be such a Bolshevik," he told her in the helicopter, laughing to himself whilst the others remained silent.

For the record, Tilly was not a communist.
Nor was she a socialist, a Marxist or a nationalist.

She wasn't a chauvinist. She wasn't a bigot. And she wasn't a xenophobe, a racist or a fascist. She wasn't homophobic or transphobic. She wasn't an anti-Semitic Zionist either, like so many of those she spent her days surrounded by. Though it didn't matter if she was at work, in a bar or buying her fucking groceries, she was surrounded by horrible people every single day. Sometimes she wondered if there was even such a thing as common courtesy anymore since it felt like meeting other decent humans had become more and more rare.

"Vanity Fair is publishing a follow up story linking you as the latest victim," Logan stated bluntly. No empathy. No apology. No remorse. Tilly had passed the point of extreme anxiety — that was evident from the phone throwing incident, so she simply shut down. Ready to restart and reboot. Sinking into a dissociative state, her concept of time became warped and although she was hearing the words they were saying, she felt like her brain was in auto-pilot mode. Protection mode. Idle, like a Sim waiting for an action.

Gerri was adamant in assuring Matilda that the Waystar team would be doing everything in their power to help. If any other corporate zombie lawyer had told her that, Tilly would have continued to keep her guard up and called bullshit. But Gerri was one of the only people she trusted at Waystar. She had kept Tilly's secret for years, even prior to meeting and getting to know her. She could easily have exposed the one Jane Doe who 'swindled' her way into millions, but she didn't.

Why?

Karolina cleared her throat politely as she noticed Matilda's eyes glaze over, "We anticipate that the DOJ will at some stage call for you to speak as a witness-"

"And a victim speaking first-hand about their experience with Mo will be pivotal to their investigation," Logan interrupted. He was staring out the window, his signature look of disapproval shaded by black sunglasses — his scowl was still very much on display.