Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] I stood in front of my closet at Liam's villa for twenty minutes, paralyzed by the simple question of what the fuck to wear. Too professional looked like I was trying too hard. Too casual looked like I didn't care. Everything felt like a statement I didn't know how to make. In the end, I chose a black blazer and pants. Armor. The kind of outfit that said I'm here to work, not fuck my way through the executive suite, even though that ship had already sailed and everyone knew it. The drive to Cadence Records felt like heading to my own execution.

The security guard at the entrance looked up when I walked in. His eyes did that thing. That flicker of recognition followed by judgment. He knew. Of course he knew. Everyone knew. I kept walking. The receptionist went silent mid-sentence when she saw me. Just stopped talking to whoever was on the phone and stared. I felt her eyes on my back all the way to the elevator. The hallway to my desk was worse. Whispers followed me like a wake. "That's her." "Can't believe she had the audacity to show up." "I heard all three of them. At the same time." My face burned, but I kept my head up.

Kept walking. If I stopped, if I acknowledged it, I'd shatter right there on the industrial carpet. "Where the fuck have you been?" Nora appeared out of nowhere, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the break room with the kind of force that said we were having this conversation whether I wanted to or not. "Why didn't you answer my calls?" She pushed me into a chair and shoved a coffee cup at me. "I've been worried sick, and you've been radio silent for days." The concern in her voice cracked something open in my chest. "I'm sorry. I just...

I didn't know what to say." "How about 'I'm alive' for starters?" She sat across from me, arms crossed. "Talk. Now. What the hell happened?" So I told her. Not everything. But enough. The brothers. The choice. Leo walking away. Nora listened without interrupting, her expression shifting from angry to calculating. When I finished, she leaned back and hit me with brutal honesty. "Half the office thinks you're a slut. The other half is jealous as hell." She stirred her coffee, matter-of-fact. "You want to survive this? Prove your worth.

Make yourself so valuable they can't afford to lose you, regardless of who you're fucking." The words should have hurt. Instead, they felt like a lifeline. A strategy. Something concrete I could actually do. "Can you do that?" she asked. "Yes." My voice came out stronger than I felt. "Good. Because it's about to get worse." She was right. At ten, the brothers called an emergency staff meeting. The entire company crammed into the main conference room, and I felt every eye on me as I found a seat in the back. The weight of their stares was suffocating.

Judgment pressed into my skin from every direction. Liam stood at the front, commanding and protective. "I want to address the rumors circulating about Jasmine Harlow. She's an exemplary employee who's earned her position through exceptional work. Her personal life is none of your business, and I expect everyone to treat her with the professionalism this company demands." The silence that followed was deafening. Then I saw the faces. Really saw them. The woman from accounting rolling her eyes. Two guys from production exchanging knowing looks.

A senior assistant whose expression said she'd just had all her suspicions confirmed. "Adeline was right," someone whispered behind me. Not quiet enough. "She tried to warn us about this." My stomach dropped. Adeline. The woman who'd leaked the photos in the first place. And now people thought she'd been the victim trying to expose corruption instead of the vindictive bitch who'd tried to destroy me. "Special treatment much?" Another whisper, louder this time. "Guess we know who to fuck if we want promotions." The words hit like physical blows.

I wanted to stand up and scream that I'd earned everything. That I'd been good at my job long before I'd ended up in their beds. But my voice was trapped somewhere between rage and humiliation. Nora appeared beside me, sliding into the empty chair with deliberate casualness. She leaned close, voice low. "Don't react. That's what they want. Let them talk." "They think-" "I know what they think. Let them." Her hand found mine under the table, squeezed once. "You'll prove them wrong. Just not today." Asher and Finn stood beside Liam, unified front, but I could see it in everyone's faces.

They weren't buying it. If anything, the brothers' defense had made everything worse. Confirmed their suspicions. Painted me as the woman who slept her way to protection. The meeting ended, and I went back to my desk feeling like I'd been flayed alive. But then something shifted. At two, I got pulled into a contract review meeting. Legal, A&R, and half the executive team crammed into a conference room to finalize the Davison deal. A major artist. Seven figures. The kind of contract that made or broke quarterly earnings.

I sat in the back, taking notes because that's what junior staff did in these meetings. Invisible. Useful. Replaceable. They went through it page by page. Standard terms. Royalty splits. Distribution rights. Everyone was nodding along, ready to sign. Then I saw it. A clause buried in section seven, subsection C. Written in that legal jargon designed to make your eyes glaze over. A loophole that shifted backend percentage points in a way that looked standard but wasn't. My heart started hammering. I ran the numbers in my head twice. Three times. Confirming what I was seeing.

"Wait." My voice cut through the room. Everyone turned. The senior legal counsel looked annoyed that I'd interrupted. "Section seven, subsection C." I stood, moving to the contract projection on the wall. "This clause. The way it's written, it compounds the percentage calculation against our backend instead of the artist's. If the album performs the way we're projecting, we'd lose approximately two hundred thousand in royalty payments." Silence. The legal counsel's face went white. He grabbed the contract, scanning the section I'd indicated. "Fuck.

She's right." Asher leaned forward, studying the clause with that intensity that meant his brain was already calculating damage. "How did we miss this?" "I don't know." Legal looked sick. "But if we'd signed this as-is..." "We'd have been locked into a deal that would've bled money." Asher's eyes found mine across the table. Not warm. Not personal. Pure business assessment. "Good catch, Harlow." Virgin Dot Com