five

"What the Fuck?!" I shout the minute the door shuts behind us.

We're in a conference room with several people, but I ignore all of them, including the man at the head of the table that I know is the Lee Soo Man of SM. I whirl on Kai, not caring that he looks just as mad as me.

"I said that I wouldn't take pictures that had your face and tattoo in it, and that was so no one would know it was you just in case someone else saw them. I figured that you would do the same!" I take off the mask so I can make sure he hears exactly what I have to say. "But not only did you put your face for everyone to see, you put mine up there. My body, my face is all over the internet. Have you even read the comments?!"

He yells back at me in his native language, but I can't understand any of it. I see the anger in his face and the anger in his voice all directed at me, but without understanding what he's saying I don't know why he's yelling at me. If he blames me for any of this, I'll kill him, celebrity or not.

"FUCK!" I yell, making him shut up.

I turn to the conference table and the people filling up the room. I take my glasses off and the hat that was given to me, and I throw them down. I use the elastic I had on my wrist to tie my hair up as I walk to a seat at the other end of the table. "What is he saying?" I ask the room as I sit down.

"You don't even speak Korean?" asks the Lee Soo Man, "yet, you had sex and took pictures."

I stand up immediately, forgetting my manners in the situation.

I bow at a 90-degree angle and stay there for a few seconds before standing straight up. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lee. My name is Baby Theroux."

He nods at me and gestures for me to sit down. "So I'm guessing you know the situation—"

"No, sir, I do not," I say, looking him dead on. "One minute Kai leaves to get breakfast and the next thing I know is that I'm all over the internet, naked, in the middle of sex with him."

I look over and I glare at Kai. "What did you do? How did these get out?"

Kai says something, but I don't understand. Goddamnit, I'm learning Korean.

"He says that this wasn't on purpose. A fan had taken his phone at the cafe and sent the pictures to herself and then posted them," Lee Soo Man translates.

I stare at Lee Soo Man, and then Kai. He stares back at me, no longer looking angry but looking regretful.

My chest tightens and my stomach feels sour. My eyes burn as I try to hold back my tears. "Shit," I curse as they fall.

"Jagiya."

"No," I whisper to Kai, and then louder, "you don't get to call me that right now. If… if you would have just taken pictures of my face, and not yours, then you could have denied that those pictures were yours, but why put your own face in them. You have fans all over the world, and they'll all see this. They'll come after me… Oh god."

Kai kneels beside my chair and he tries to reach out to me, but I yank my arm away from him, not stopping the pain in my heart or the tears that won't stop falling.

"We found the fan that did this, and we deleted the pictures from both her and Kai's phone." Te CEO says.

"Once something is on the internet, it can never be erased. How many people screenshot'd it and spread it around by now? How many people did that fan send it to? How many people have saved it?" I ask.

Lee Soo Man nods his head. "We have a plan."

Just then my phone rings, and I would have ignored it, but this one call I couldn't. "It's my dad," I say.

I pick up the phone and answer.

"Dad."

"Where are you right now?"

"Korea, but Dad—"

"I know you're in Korea, I'm on my way there, but I'm asking where you are right now."

"I'm at SM, talking to the CEO."

"Oh good! Just the man I want to talk to. When I get my hands on that artist of his, I'm going to wring his neck."

"Daddy…"

He pauses on the phone. It's rare that I call him that, so when I do, he listens carefully. He wasn't my actual father. Sarah's dad had adopted me when I was 5, and though sometimes I felt like an outsider, they were the only family I had.

"Could you.." I can't hide the sound of my sobs as I talk to the man who raised me. "Could you just come here and help me?"

"I'm on my way, Renee," He says, calling me by my middle name. "It'll take us a day, but we'll be there."

"We? Is mom coming?"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't keep her back."

I look up to Kai and then to Ceo Man. Once my mom got here, she was going to kill them both. Sarah's mother died when she was born, and her father remarried when we were both seven. She was a black woman who was extremely protective of us. I couldn't stop the tears from her being disappointed in me.

"It's okay, honey, it's okay. We'll take care of this. We're boarding our flight now. Don't sign off on anything yet, okay?"

"Okay."

He hangs up the phone, and I put mine back down on the table. I take a deep breath and wipe the tears from my face, forcing theirs to dry up.

"Your parents are coming?" Lee Soo Man asks, "You're not a minor, are you?"

"I'm 20. 21 by Korean standards, but my parents are very… protective. They love me a lot, but more importantly, things like this can hurt the company," I say.

"The company?"

"My adoptive father is the CEO and Founder of Theroux Security. One of the biggest security companies in the United States," I say proudly. I can't say I'm the proudest in myself at the moment, but I am proud of how hard my father worked to get to where he was. "Just like how this… with Kai affects your stocks, it will affect my fathers too."

"So you're a chaebol?" Lee Soo Man asks skeptically.

"No. I'm a writer whose father owns an enormous company. Sarah is the heiress who inherits everything. I made it that way so my work isn't influenced by who my family is. No one should know but the stockholders. And I am sure that they are not happy right now."

"Your work?"

"My work… holy shit, my work!"

I don't explain, but just pick up my phone and start dialing. When the call is picked up, I put it on speaker; I don't need her yelling and busting my eardrums.

"Oh, now you pick up my phone call!" She shouts.

"Well, if it isn't my wonderful agent. The best agent that anyone could ever have, that has gotten my books on so many shelves already."

"No, don't butter me up now. Do you know how much I've gotten yelled out because of these pictures online? Are you crazy?"

"How bad is it? Are they going to drop my contract?"

"Are you kidding me? Breaking a three-book deal wouldn't make them lose any sleep, but already people are figuring out who you are, and your book sales have gone through the roof."

"That doesn't exactly make me feel better."

"Me either, kid. Regardless, this looks bad on the company and there will be a backlash, but they're blinded by the money rolling in."

"What can I do to fix this?" I ask.

"How's the other party asked anything of you?"

Lee Soo Man clears his throat and I look up at him. He doesn't seem too happy, and I assume it's because I have been ignoring him, and as head of a major record label, he's not used to that. "We're going to tell the media that you two are dating," he says.

"What?!"