CHAPTER 4: JENNA

The Baroness's office felt like a courtroom that day.

Jenna stood in the center of the room, her back straight, her hands clasped behind her. She didn't fidget. She wasn’t going to give Helena Creed the satisfaction of seeing her sweat.

"You have failed, and it’s been barely two weeks," Helena said coldly.

"The situation can be fixed…" Jenna responded confidently even though her heart raced.

"Well I would have you know the situation is a blackmail scandal involving a blogger, Ms. Smith. A blogger who now has explicit photos of my grandson and is threatening to release them to the press unless we pay three million dollars."

Jenna said nothing. Three million dollars was a lot of money but peanuts to the Creeds.

However, Jenna would have to think about how many of these cases the lawyers may have had to handle, given Jason's constant thirst for pleasure . The money does add up along the line, and Helena's sour expression confirmed that. Jenna couldnt say which it really was, her disappointment in Jason, or the cheque about to be signed.

The money sure adds up to a lot.

"Three million dollars," Helena repeated, "because you couldn't keep him away from one girl."

"He slipped past me."

"He slips past everyone Ms. Smith, that's the pattern, there is no stopping him when he gets out there. That's why I hired you." Helena stood, walked to the front of her desk, and stopped inches from Jenna's face. "...And now I'm starting to think I made a mistake."

Jenna's heart dropped with fear. She couldn't lose this job, she just couldn't. Her father's next treatment was due in two weeks. The academy application deadline was three months away. If she was fired…

Everything could go wrong.

"Give me 48 hours," Jenna blurted out before actually thinking.

Helena's raised an eyebrow, "For what?"

"To fix this, and make sure this never happens again."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

Jenna didn't have a plan…not yet. But she would brainstorm and save this job  with an idea. Even though it came down to being a dangerous, insane idea.

"I can guarantee my words right now. Jason will make a vow to you," she said, looking boldly into Helena’s eyes. "And with the little I have come to know these past years from the media who are absolutely in love with this family – when Jason makes a vow to you, he never breaks it.” She paused, and then very intently, spoke, “Trust me he is gonna put a halt to the women…. For Good.”

Helena laughed out loud. "Ms. Smith, I've been trying to get that boy to settle down for fifteen years. What makes you think you can succeed where I've failed?"

"Because I'm not asking him."

"Then what are you doing?"

Jenna met her eyes once more, bold and unwavering. "I'm just gonna do what I have to do."

She didn't need to explain further than that. She was Jenna fucking smith, and just like she’d always say, whatever shit she finds herself in, she’s getting herself cleaned up from it. And just like always in the last four years, Jenna was ready to save herself.

Helena studied her for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.

"48 hours you say…hmmm," she pondered on it for a second, taking her glasses off. "If Jason hasn't made that vow by then, you're finished. Not just fired…finished. You'll never work in this city again."

Jenna nodded. "Understood."

She walked out of the office with her shoulders high but panicked in the elevator, her anxiety rising like never before.

 Helena was not trying to pull her leg or bluff when she gave that threat,and everyone knew, messing up Helena’s trust in you meant messing up your entire life as a human being, because an enemy to the Baroness was an enemy to all, and Jenna may not be any different.

And her confidence in getting Jason to do what his grandmother could not bring him to do was the greatest form of delusion she’d ever had, but she would not give up.

---

That night, Jenna sat in her apartment, staring blankly at the mess she had just made trying to make pizza from a recipe she followed online. 

She would have done take out in the first place but spontaneous cooking calmed her in chaotic times. It was either that or she boxed her punching bag, but the anger she would unleash on that could send her father into a hypertensive shock given his blood pressure reading that evening.

Her phone rang, as she swiped between pizza options, finally accepting her fate. 

It was Biggie.

"You okay?"

"No, definitely not.”

"Want to talk?"

"Not yet, catch you up later."

She put down the phone quickly so she wouldn't catch herself asking him for a favour – to keep her name in the list of invited combat fighters, as she struggled with her confidence in scaling through the next 48 hours.

 “Fuck this,” She cursed, dumping the mess of a bland dough she’d made right into the trash, walked into her room tiredly and opened her closet.

Behind the leather jackets and boots and gym bags, hidden in a box she hadn't touched in four years, was a dress.It was a silky red custom made Victoria Wang dress, cut so low and revealing that it was almost illegal to wear out.

Jenna ran her fingers over the fabric.

She remembered the woman who used to wear this sort of dress. 

A woman who smiled elegantly, laughed softly, and made men worship her. A woman who was once rained with diamonds and cash every hour of the day, four years back.

That woman was dead.

Jenna had killed her the night she ran from him.

But now, staring at the dress, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, that version of her could be re-awakened.

"If I can give him something he's never had before," Jenna whispered, "I could get him where I wanted him."

It was a gamble, a stupid, and reckless one. Jason was a playboy, a casanova who had probably slept with a lot of women. What could she possibly show him that he hadn't already seen?

Well, everything.

Because Jenna wasn't just any woman.

She knew her game, knew how to get any man she wanted, to do whatever she desired. That was what her past had thought her – men were predictable, and Jason, though rigid, couldn’t be any different.

Or so she thought.

She was reaching for the dress when a knock came at her door.

Jenna instantly became alert.

Nobody visited her apartment, she’d made it that way. And nobody knew where she lived except Biggie and her father, and Biggie was at work.

She tiptoed to the kitchen, grabbed a knife from her kitchen counter and approached the door slowly.

"Who is it?"

No answer.

She looked through the peephole. She could see no one.

Jenna opened the door anyway. And right there, a single red rose lay on the floor, right next to her door. 

Attached to it was an envelope. There was no name, no return address, not even a view of anyone who had just dropped it, when she took one more urgent glance around the environment. Just a three word letter written in a handwriting she'd hoped never to see again.

"My little rose..."

Jenna staggered, feeling drowsy all of a sudden.