All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

and I’d wanted Val’s salary to reflect both the growth of my channels and of the competitive industry as a whole. Upon signing, Val received full employee benefits—medical and retirement, and an annual performance bonus. It had been the perfect scenario: Val worked exclusively for me and my brand, while her monthly paychecks came directly from Cobalt.

What could I even say to her? Being let go was her worst fear, and I’d . . . I’d allowed it to happen. Urgh! What kind of heartless jerk fired a responsible single mother out of retribution?

If I couldn’t smash something, I needed to move. To walk. To think outside this room furnished with camera and lighting equipment appraised at twice the value of my car.

Forgetting the makeup tutorial waiting for me in my studio, I shoved my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, ripped open the front door, and shot down my porch steps to the sidewalk. I marched at a pace that should have been a sprint if not for my wedged sandals. I needed a solution I could offer Val before I called her. Something positive and concrete. Something that would make this all seem—

The buzzing in my pocket cut my thinking session short.

Val.

Her name sent a hot jolt through my chest. Help me, help her, God. A prayer so immediate and desperate it shocked me.

I answered mid exhale and threw myself into problem-solving mode. “Val? Okay, listen. I just read the email. It’s horrible, yes, but we can figure all this out together. There’s absolutely no reason to panic. I’ve already thought of a few options, we just need to process them out loud.”

But apart from a sniffle, the other end of the line was quiet.

“Val?”

“He already gave me two options.”

“Who?”

“Ethan.”

He’d given her two options? When? “What are they?”

“To take two months’ severance pay and leave the company . . . or take a promotion with twenty percent higher pay with full benefits and monthly bonuses.”

“Wait, I’m sorry.” I stopped walking. “He said he’d give you better pay if you do what exactly?”

“If I transfer away from your brand,” she finished.

For the better part of five seconds, I stood frozen in place in the middle of the sidewalk as my neighbor’s cotton ball of a dog panted at me from the other side of their picket fence, his face as confused and expectant as my own felt.

“Well that’s not happening,” I finally said through a bubble of hysteria. “That’s just . . . that’s absolutely ridiculous. He can’t possibly think you’d take that. We’re a team. There’s no Makeup Matters brand without you.”

Again, Val was so quiet I pulled the phone from my ear to check the connection.

“I took it. I took his offer.”

Though my ears heard the words, my mind refused to process their meaning, as if an Out of Order sign had just been stapled to my forehead. A guttural decompression of escaped air was my only response.

“I have a son, Molly. I have to think of him. The tourist industry is in bad shape here, and I can’t rely on my parents’ business to help us when they can barely pay their store rent and—”

“You . . . you . . . took his offer?” The words stumbled from my mouth like a drunk spotting sunlight for the first time in days. “Without talking to me first?”

“Actually,” she said with an assertiveness I’d never heard from her, “I took his offer after you failed to talk to me.”

“What? No. That’s not true. I told you the photo shoot hadn’t gone as planned and that we’d had an argument—”

“You and Ethan had more than an argument. You had a breakup, Molly. A breakup that put both our careers in jeopardy, and you didn’t bother to tell me.”

“No, I was planning to tell you that we broke up—”

“When? Before I read the email about my replacement, or after?”

“That’s not fair. I had to meet with my . . .” What was Silas to me exactly? “With my legal representation first, because I was afraid I was going to be sued for breach of contract, and then I needed to communicate my new professional boundaries to Ethan. I didn’t want to worry you over nothing if he responded . . . rationally.” The word soured on my tongue.

Ethan wasn’t rational with the people who had wronged him. He was ruthless. I only had to think back to Felicity Fashion Fix for proof of that.

“You didn’t listen to me.” Her soft voice pulled me down a new path.

“What? When?”

“I told you what he was planning. I told you that he wanted a new team for your brand, and you didn’t listen to me. You said it would never happen, that you’d never let it happen.”

I spun around and stomped my foot, sending the dog on the other side of my neighbor’s fence scurrying away. “And I won’t let it happen now. He can’t do this—you’re my assistant, Val, not Ethan’s.”

The silence between us was different this time, charged with an invisible energy that pulsed through my phone and wrung my insides out like a damp towel.

“I’m your . . . assistant?” Tears slicked her question as panic wove through my ribs.

“My assistant and my friend. You know what I mean.” She had to. “We’re partners—me and you—and as long as I have a channel, you’ll have a job with me. I’ll hire you as an employee again, pay your salary. And your benefits, too. Whatever you need, just say it and I’ll make it happen.” For however long I could, even if it meant taking out a loan.

“Partners don’t hide critical information from each other.”

“I was only trying to protect you.”

“I didn’t need you to protect me. I needed . . .” Val’s sigh was synonymous with many I’d heard before. Not a sigh of reconciliation but of rebuff. “I needed you to be honest with me. That’s what friends do; they tell each other the truth no matter what it might cost them to tell it.” She paused. “I have to think about what’s best for me