Chapter 10 - The Interview
Jasmine agreed to one interview.
Not because she wanted sympathy.
Because silence was becoming a weapon in other people’s hands.
Simone chose the journalist carefully: Elise Warren, known for letting powerful men hang themselves with follow-up questions.
The interview was filmed in a plain room with soft gray walls. No dramatic lighting. No tears on cue. No sad music.
Jasmine wore a navy suit and her mother’s pearl earrings.
Min-jae watched from a different room.
He had not asked to attend.
Jasmine had allowed it.
That distinction mattered.
Elise began gently.
“Eight months ago, you saved Min-jae Lee’s life. Did you know who he was?”
“No.”
“Would you have helped him if you had known?”
Jasmine paused.
The honest answer was complicated.
The right answer was expected.
She chose honest.
“I don’t know what fear might have done if I’d known his name. But I know what happened when I saw blood. A person was dying. I helped.”
“Some people say that connects you to his world.”
“I think helping a stranger connects me to my parents’ values. Not his crimes.”
In the viewing room, Min-jae closed his eyes.
Elise continued.
“Did Mr. Lee stalk you?”
Jasmine inhaled.
There it was.
The question that had lived between them.
“He crossed lines,” Jasmine said. “He found me without my consent. He watched from a distance and called it protection. I don’t excuse that.”
Min-jae opened his eyes.
Daniel glanced at him.
Min-jae did not move.
Elise leaned in. “Are you afraid of him?”
Jasmine thought of the alley. The club. The safe house. His hand releasing her wrist because she had said let go. His voice admitting love like a sin.
“Yes,” she said.
Min-jae’s face went still.
Then Jasmine added, “But not in the way people think.”
Elise waited.
“I am afraid of how easy it is to let dangerous men become simple stories. Villain. Savior. Monster. Protector. Min-jae Lee is not safe. But Nathaniel Crowe was treated as safe because he wore the right last name. That is the danger women live with every day.”
Elise nodded slowly.
“Why speak now?”
Jasmine looked into the camera.
“Because I took one sip. One. If my friends hadn’t been there, if Min-jae hadn’t seen, if the cameras had failed, the story would have become whatever Nathaniel Crowe paid for. That has happened to other women. I’m speaking because I was lucky, and luck is not justice.”
The interview aired that night.
By morning, three more women contacted Simone.
By noon, twelve.
By evening, Arthur Crowe resigned from two boards.
Nathaniel’s attorneys released a statement calling Jasmine’s claims “politically motivated fiction.”
That sentence lasted online for eleven minutes before Marisol’s audio leaked.
Victor Hale’s voice filled the internet:
Mr. Crowe likes them quiet. You knew that when you took the money.
The world shifted.
Not enough.
But visibly.
At the safe house, Jasmine found Min-jae on the rooftop after midnight.
He stood far from the edge, looking toward Manhattan.
“You heard the interview,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You’re angry.”
“No.”
“You look angry.”
“I am ashamed.”
That disarmed her.
He turned.
“You were fair to me when I did not deserve fairness.”
“I wasn’t being fair. I was being accurate.”
“That is more than most people offer.”
Jasmine walked to the railing.
The city glittered like it had no secrets.
“Tell me about Jun-ho,” she said.
May you like
Min-jae looked at her for a long moment.
Then he told her everything.
