Chapter 50 I Can Make It Stop
The sun was barely up when the first camera flash went off outside the front window, and Sarah sat at her kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee, staring at the television as a local news reporter stood in front of her office building, talking about the "scandalous relationship" between a mature businesswoman and the young Harrington heir.
The words felt like they were bruising her skin because they made her love for Alex sound like something dirty and calculated, and she could hear the constant buzz of her phone on the wood table as clients called to cancel their contracts, one after another, because they were afraid that being near her would ruin their own reputations in the city.
Stacy called her ten minutes later, and her voice was shaking so much that Sarah could hardly understand her, she said there were twenty reporters blocking the entrance to the office and that the landlord was complaining about the crowd, and she asked Sarah what she should say to the people who were calling and demanding refunds.
Sarah didn't have an answer, she just sat there feeling the world she had built for twenty years crumble down around her ears while Alex paced the kitchen like a caged animal, his face looking darker and more dangerous than she had ever seen it.
"I’m going to find out who took that photo, and I’m going to make sure they never hold a camera again," Alex growled, his voice sounding like a low roar as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, but Sarah jumped up and grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his muscle to hold him back.
"No, Alex, you can’t go out there, don't you see that’s exactly what they want, they want a photo of you being aggressive and angry so they can say you're a loose cannon and that I'm the one who messed you up," she told him, her voice sounding desperate, and she pulled him away from the door and made him look at her, her eyes filling with tears that she refused to let fall.
"They are destroying you, Sarah, they are taking everything you worked for just because of me, and I can't just sit here and watch it happen while some coward hides behind a lens," Alex said, and he put his hands on her waist, pulling her close so he could feel her heart beating, but his touch felt heavy with the guilt they both carried now, and Sarah just shook her head and leaned her forehead against his chest.
"If we fight them, it just stays in the news longer, we have to stay quiet and let it blow over, but right now I have to check on Mark, he probably hasn't seen it yet and I need to tell him before someone else does," she said, and she reached for her phone to call her son, her hands shaking so much she almost dropped it, but the line just went straight to voicemail, and she tried again and again, feeling the panic start to rise in her throat.
She didn't know that at that very moment, Mark was stepping out of his new office building to get a sandwich, and he was suddenly surrounded by four men with microphones who were shouting questions at him about his mother’s sex life and whether he knew that his best friend was sleeping with her, and Mark just stood there looking stunned and sick, his face turning pale as he tried to push past them, but they kept following him, shoving cameras in his face until he finally broke into a run, ducking into a subway station just to get away from the noise and the shame.
Back at the house, Sarah saw a clip of the chase on the news, and she let out a small, strangled cry and dropped her phone, covering her mouth with her hands as she watched her son flee like a criminal, and Alex saw it too, and the anger in his eyes suddenly turned into a cold, hard realization as he watched the way the cameras were positioned and how quickly the story had spread to every major outlet in the city.
"This wasn't some random person with a phone, Sarah, look at the quality of that kitchen photo, it was taken from a long distance with high-end equipment," Alex said, his voice sounding hollow and dead as he sat down at the table and stared at the screen, and he realized then that his father had been telling the truth at dinner when he said he could make things happen, because this was a professional hit, a calculated move to strip away every bit of support Sarah had until she had nowhere left to turn.
"What are you saying?" Sarah asked, her voice a whisper as she looked at him, and she saw the Harrington look in his eyes again, that sharp, calculating expression that made him look so much like Richard.
"My father did this, he leaked the photo to create a crisis that only he can solve, he’s squeezing us into a corner where we have to ask him for help, he’s making sure your business dies so that the only way for you to survive is if I go back to him and ask for his PR team to clean this up," Alex explained, and he felt a deep, sick feeling in his gut because he had walked right into his father’s trap by bringing Sarah to that dinner.
The house fell into a terrible silence as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and they could hear the shouting of the reporters outside getting louder as more people arrived, and Sarah felt like she was trapped in a nightmare where every door was lplocked and the floor was falling away, and she just sat there holding Alex’s hand, wondering if there was anything left of her life that hadn't been touched by the Harrington shadow.
Suddenly, Alex’s phone started to ring on the counter, and the caller ID didn't show a name, just a string of numbers that Alex knew by heart, and he looked at Sarah for a long time before he finally picked it up and put it on speaker, his face looking like it was carved out of ice.
"I see the morning news has been a bit lively, Alex," Richard’s voice came through the speaker, sounding calm and relaxed, as if he were just talking about the weather and not the fact that he had just set his son’s life on fire.
"You did this, you hired someone to watch us and you put my friend’s son in the middle of a circus just to get what you want," Alex said, his voice trembling with a rage that he was trying to keep under control, but Richard just let out a soft, patient sigh that made Sarah’s skin crawl.
"I told you at dinner that the world is a cruel place for people without protection, and right now, Sarah is very much unprotected, but I can change that, I have the best crisis managers in the country standing by in my office right now," Richard said, and he paused for a second.
"So here is the deal, Alex, you join the firm officially today, you take your seat as the heir and you show the city that you are a Harrington, and in exchange, I will make this story disappear within the hour, I will buy every photo and silence every reporter, and I promise you that by tomorrow, no one will ever speak of this again."