Lahat ng Kabanata ng Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

POV: Vivian Ashford The invitation comes through Marcus, which means I almost don't go, which means the fact that I end up going is entirely attributable to the specific quality of a Saturday night in January when you have been recovering from an accident and a Forbes insult and a tell-all piece and three weeks of carefully managed public composure, and someone offers you a masked party in a basement club in the Meatpacking District and your ribs have healed enough that dancing is theoretically possible and sometimes the theoretical becomes the actual. The club is called nothing, officially. It has a symbol on the invitation, a geometric shape, and an address and a time, and the dress code is formal and masked, which is the kind of instruction that sounds pretentious and is actually just liberating. I wear a black dress and a gold mask that covers my eyes and half my face and I take a car there alone, which Marcus protests and which I do anyway, and I walk into the basement space

POV: Vivian AshfordThe IG live runs for twenty-two minutes and generates the kind of coverage that Diana describes, in her ten o'clock call the next morning, as either the most brilliant or most catastrophic unmanaged media moment she has witnessed in her professional career, and she has not yet determined which."The comments are split," she says. "Fifty percent think you're the most honest person in Hollywood. Fifty percent think you're publicly self-destructing.""Both halves are partially right," I say."Vivian," she says, in the tone she uses when she is setting aside professional mode for personal mode. "Are you okay?""I'm functional," I say, which is different and true.She accepts this, which is one of the things I value about Diana.Marcus does not accept this. Marcus calls forty minutes later, after I have had time to see the live's clip circulating and to watch the fifty-percent-honest and fifty-percent-catastrophic split play out in real time, and his voice is in the con

POV: Vivian AshfordThe email from the Hartwell Foundation arrives on a Wednesday, addressed to both me and to Sterling Industries, which I know because Diana forwards it to me with a note that reads: This is either an opportunity or a disaster. Possibly both.The Hartwell Foundation, which hosted the gala where the coatroom happened, which I do not think about, is launching a children's hospital fundraising campaign and wants two faces for it. Specifically they want two faces that the public is currently extremely interested in, which is a polite way of saying they want to capitalize on the fact that #SterlingAshford is still generating engagement three weeks after the underground club video.They want Chase and me to co-chair the campaign.Jointly.For six weeks.I read the email twice.I call Diana."Tell me the numbers," I say."The campaign would generate significant profile for you at a moment when your profile is already high but the valence is complicated," she says. "Charity

POV: Vivian AshfordI find the photograph at seven in the morning with my first coffee, which is earlier than I usually check his name but which has been my habit since my mother told him about it and which I have not broken because breaking it would require admitting it exists in the first place.Elise Vanderwood.She is standing beside Chase at what looks like a Sterling Industries event, some industry thing, and she is beautiful in the way of women who have never had to work at being beautiful, and they are talking with their heads angled toward each other, and the photographer caught them at the angle that makes professional look personal.I look at it for a while.He is not looking at her the way he looks at me.I know how he looks at me. I have nine months of accumulated data on how Chase Sterling looks at me, which is not information I sought and which I have anyway, and whatever is in this photograph between him and Elise Vanderwood, it is not that.But it is seven in the morn

POV: Vivian AshfordI go to him two days later.Not because I planned to. I wake up on a Saturday morning and I lie in bed for an hour thinking about the rain and the blood on his face and the way he said please like it cost him something, and then I get up and I get dressed and I get in the car.His building's security has had my name on a list since the charity collaboration started, which is a Callum decision I have never acknowledged and Chase has never mentioned, and the elevator takes me to the penthouse floor and I knock on his door at ten in the morning.He answers in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a coffee in his hand and the expression of someone who was not expecting me and is not surprised to see me, which is a combination that only Chase Sterling manages."Vivian," he says."We need to talk about the other night," I say.He steps back and lets me in.The penthouse looks lived in now, which is different from the last time I was here, the grimoire on the coffee tabl