Champagne & Crisis Calls

I enlarged it until the pixels broke apart. The woman’s face was clear enough. The man’s was not, but his height, coat, and hand at the small of her back were all the internet would need. The hotel’s brass doors gleamed behind them like witnesses with excellent lawyers.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“She’s not dead.”

“Cam - ”

“Nobody’s pregnant.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“It’s always one of the points.”

“She was supposed to be at the dinner.”

“She left the dinner.”

“With him.”

“I noticed.”

“He’s married.”

I looked again. The man’s wedding ring caught the flash.

“Is he somebody’s husband,” I asked, “or is he somebody important?”

The man on the phone made a strangled sound. “Both.”

“Then we have a morning.”

“Camille, this is not a joke.”

“No, it’s a photograph. Jokes are usually better lit.”

I moved to the kitchen island and pulled my laptop toward me. The screen was still open to a chain of emails about a fragrance launch, a senator’s charity gala, and a client who had used the phrase “authentic vulnerability” six times in one paragraph. I opened a new message.

“Who has the originals?” I asked.

“The photographer.”

“Name?”

“Unknown.”

“Where were they sent?”

“To me.”

“Forward them.”

“I did.”

“Not the screenshots. The files.”

He exhaled. “I’ll call the photographer.”

“You’ll call whoever paid the photographer.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“That is exactly how this works. Pictures don’t leak by themselves. People leak pictures. Find the person.”

The silence changed. It became less frightened and more offended, which was useful. Fear made people careless. Offense made them talk.

I saved the images to an encrypted folder, then sent them to myself through a private account. I checked the metadata. Nothing. Stripped clean.

“Cam,” he said.

“What?”

“What do we say if someone calls?”

“We don’t say anything.”

“That’s not a statement.”

“It’s the beginning of one.”

He started to argue. I ended the call.

The apartment settled around me. The refrigerator clicked again. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

I looked toward the ceiling. “You’re asleep very loudly.”

No answer.

I turned back to the photographs. This was the part people imagined was glamorous: the midnight calls, the hotel doors, the beautiful women in expensive coats and the men who believed marriage was a scheduling issue.

The real work was narrower. It was deciding what the picture proved and what it merely suggested.

The picture proved she had left the hotel.

It proved she had been with a married man.

It did not prove an affair, a negotiation, a betrayal, or the existence of a second outfit in the man’s closet. It did not prove what happened inside the hotel, and it certainly did not prove what would happen once the photograph reached the morning feeds.

Pattern recognition was not intuition. Intuition was a woman in a silk dress saying, “I have a feeling.” Pattern recognition was noticing that the photographer had chosen the frame with the ring visible, the hand intimate, and the woman’s expression unreadable.

Someone wanted a story.

Someone had already written the first line.

I opened the refrigerator and found the bottle of champagne behind a carton of oat milk. I had bought it on Tuesday and promised myself I wouldn’t open it until Friday. School nights had rules. My son had made them, written them on a sheet of construction paper, and taped them to the refrigerator beneath a drawing of a dinosaur wearing sunglasses.

THURSDAY IS NOT FRIDAY.

The bottle sat cold and smug in my hand.

Upstairs, my son called, “Mom!”

I froze.

“What?”

“Did you just open champagne?”

I looked at the ceiling. “Go to sleep.”

“It’s Thursday!”

“I know what day it is.”

“You said no champagne on school nights.”

“I said no champagne for you.”

“That’s not what you said.”

I set the bottle on the counter. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“I’m pretending.”

“At least you’re honest about one thing.”

“I can hear you thinking.”

“Then think quieter.”

His footsteps crossed the floor above me, followed by the unmistakable sound of a door opening.

“Mom!”

“What?”

“If you’re drinking champagne, I want sparkling water.”

“Your sparkling water is in the refrigerator.”

“The good one?”

“There is no good sparkling water.”

“There is. The one with the bubbles.”

“All sparkling water has bubbles.”

“Not emotionally.”

I pressed my fingers to my eyes. “Bed.”

“Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Is it bad?”

I looked at the three photographs glowing on my laptop.

“Not yet.”

That answer satisfied him enough to retreat. The door closed. A minute later, the apartment returned to its expensive quiet.

I picked up the bottle again.

The first rule of being a powerful woman in New York was simple: never let anyone see you panic.

The second was more complicated.

Never panic before champagne.

I had learned both rules before I learned how to properly pronounce the names of half the people who eventually became my clients. At thirty-eight, I could walk into a room full of billionaires, celebrities, editors, lawyers, politicians, socialites, and women who had married all five and know within thirty seconds who was sleeping with whom.

My friends called it being nosy.

I called it pattern recognition.

The bottle called it Thursday.

I twisted the wire cage loose.

My phone rang again.

UNKNOWN.

I answered without looking away from the champagne. “If this is about the hotel, I already have the pictures.”

“It’s me.”

The same man.

“Then you already know I’m busy.”

“She wasn’t alone for long.”

I stopped turning the cork.

“Explain.”

“She went upstairs with him.”

“Did you see that?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you what people are saying.”

“People are saying a lot of things. Most of them are trying to get paid.”

“What if this hits tonight?”

“Then it hits tonight.”

“You don’t sound worried.”

“I’m not paid to sound worried.”

“You’re paid to fix this.”

“I’m paid to know whether it needs fixing.”

He breathed into the phone. “What do you need?”

“The original files. The photographer’s name. The hotel security footage, if you can get it legally.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then get me the concierge’s name and a reason he’ll answer.”

“You’re impossible.”

“No. I’m expensive.”

He hung up.

I stood there with the cork half-loosened, the bottle cold against my palm. My phone buzzed with an incoming file. I opened it.

The originals were sharper than the attachments. The woman’s face was calm. Too calm. Her lipstick was intact. Her coat was buttoned. She was not stumbling, crying, or looking over her shoulder.

The man beside her was doing all the looking.

Not at her.

Behind them.

At the street.

At the photographer.

The image shifted under my attention. The scandal was no longer a woman leaving a hotel with a married man. It was a man who knew he was being photographed and had chosen not to stop.

That meant the photograph might not be a leak.

It might be bait.

I placed the bottle on the counter and called the hotel. The front desk answered on the fourth ring with a voice polished flat by midnight.

“Good evening.”

“I need to speak with the manager on duty.”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Camille Rivera.”

A pause. “Which Camille Rivera?”

“The one calling at midnight.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rivera, but - ”

“Tell the manager there are photographs of a guest leaving the property with a married man, and the photographer may have had access to the private entrance.”

The pause became a decision.

“Please hold.”

I waited, listening to the hotel’s piano music loop beneath the static. My kitchen lights reflected in the window, making the room look like a second apartment occupied by a woman who had better judgment.

A man came on the line. “Ms. Rivera, this is security.”

“Good. I need to know whether the woman in these photographs entered through the main lobby.”

“I can’t discuss guests.”

“I’m not asking you to discuss a guest. I’m asking whether your private entrance is secure.”

“We take security seriously.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Another pause.

“Send me the photographs,” he said.

“I already sent them.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“No, I have a man trying to make me believe I have an answer.”

He hung up.

I stared at the phone. Then I laughed once, quietly.

The crisis had acquired a location, a witness, and a locked door. Places were always more dangerous than people. People could be bribed, charmed, threatened, or embarrassed. Buildings kept records.

I picked up the champagne and pulled the cork free.

The pop cracked through the kitchen.

Upstairs, my son shouted, “Mom!”

“I know!”

“You broke the rule!”

“I’m revising the rule!”

“You can’t revise rules after breaking them!”

“Go to sleep!”

I poured champagne into a water glass because the real glasses were in the dishwasher. The bubbles climbed over the rim and ran across my knuckles, cold and bright. I wiped them on a dish towel and took one sip.

It was dry, sharp, and exactly what I needed.

My phone rang.

This time the screen read SLOANE SAINT-JAMES.

I answered. “Tell me you’re calling to compliment my restraint.”

Sloane’s breathing was uneven. Behind her, music thudded through a wall.

“I may have a problem.”

I looked at the hotel photographs, then at the champagne in my hand.

“Define may.”

“I’m not sure.”

“That is not a definition.”

“Camille.”

Her voice had lost its usual lacquer. Sloane Saint-James could make a threat sound like a toast and a toast sound like a threat. Tonight she sounded like someone standing in a room that had begun to tilt.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I need you to come here.”

“Where?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Sloane, I’m looking at three photographs that could ruin somebody’s morning.”

“Then bring the bottle tonight.”

I glanced toward the ceiling. My son had gone quiet again, which meant he was listening.

“Why do you need champagne?”

“Because I may have a problem.”

“You said that.”

“I may have a very expensive problem.”

That was different.

“Send me the address.”

“I will.”

“Sloane.”

“What?”

“Are you safe?”

The music stopped on her end.

For one second, there was only a low electrical hum.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think my career is.”

The call ended.

I stood in the kitchen with the glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, the city glittering beyond the windows as if Manhattan had never heard a secret it couldn’t sell.

The first crisis would lead to morning.

Sloane’s had already started tonight.

End of chapter one. 20 more chapters in the full book.