Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Video
By noon, Jasmine’s face was everywhere.
Not clearly. Simone had been careful. The first video blurred Jasmine’s features but captured Nathaniel’s hand on her arm, Min-jae’s question, Arthur Crowe’s offer, and enough of the room to make denial impossible.
The internet named her before sunset anyway.
Someone found photos from her agency website. Someone else found old college pictures. By evening, strangers were calling her brave, drunk, lying, beautiful, dramatic, lucky, reckless, and everything in between.
Jasmine turned off her phone.
Then turned it back on because silence felt worse.
Her mother called twelve times from Charleston.
On the thirteenth, Jasmine answered.
“Mama, I’m okay.”
“You are not okay if national news is asking whether you were drugged in a mafia club.”
Jasmine closed her eyes.
Her mother, Denise Brooks, had the voice of a woman who could calm a hospital ward or terrify a grown man with equal skill.
“It wasn’t a mafia club.”
“Jasmine.”
“It was technically a nightclub owned through a holding company by a man who—”
“Jasmine Elaine Brooks.”
Jasmine stopped.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you safe?”
The question broke something.
For hours, Jasmine had been answering reporters, refusing attorneys, ignoring threats, and pretending fear was an inconvenience.
Her mother’s voice made her twelve again.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Denise exhaled.
“I’m coming.”
“No. Don’t. I don’t want you pulled into this.”
“Baby, I was pulled into this the second someone touched my child.”
After the call ended, Jasmine sat on her kitchen floor and cried.
Not pretty tears.
Angry tears. Exhausted tears. The kind that made her ribs hurt.
A knock came at the door.
She froze.
Then Camille’s voice called, “It’s us.”
Jasmine opened the door to find Camille, Simone, and a tall Korean man she did not know standing in the hallway.
Daniel Kang bowed slightly.
“Ms. Brooks.”
Jasmine stiffened. “No.”
Simone stepped forward. “He didn’t come to spy. He came because someone leaked your address.”
Jasmine’s blood went cold.
Daniel held up his hands, palms open. “Chairman Lee sent security for the building. They will remain outside unless you refuse them.”
“I refuse them.”
Daniel nodded. “Then they will stand farther away.”
“That is not refusal.”
“No,” Daniel admitted. “It is compromise.”
Jasmine almost laughed.
Camille said softly, “Jazz, there were men downstairs. Not reporters. Men.”
Jasmine looked at Daniel.
“Crowe?”
“Possibly,” he said.
“Possibly means yes?”
“Possibly means I do not say yes until I can prove it.”
She hated how much she appreciated that.
Daniel handed her a phone.
“Temporary. Clean number. No tracking apps. No hidden software. You may have any expert inspect it.”
Jasmine did not take it.
“Does he think gifts fix things?”
“No,” Daniel said. “He thinks consequences are coming faster than your current phone can survive.”
Simone took the phone. “I’ll inspect it.”
Jasmine looked past Daniel toward the stairwell.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
That answer hurt unexpectedly.
Daniel noticed.
“He wanted to come.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
“Because you walked away.”
Jasmine looked down.
For the first time since the club, she felt something other than anger.
A dangerous little ache.
She crushed it immediately.
“What does he want?”
Daniel’s face softened almost invisibly.
“For you to live long enough to hate him properly.”
Despite everything, Jasmine smiled.
Just a little.
Then her old phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.
May you like
You should have taken the money.
Attached was a photo of her apartment door.
