Page 39
“Alma, urgent meeting in two minutes!” Kate Monroe yells at me from the doorway of my office, then disappears just as quickly.
In my mind, the Lily alarm goes off.
All the department heads are already seated when I show up in the spacious meeting room with its floor-to-ceiling windows. Vadim and Kate, unlike the mere mortals who work for them, are standing and talking in low voices in English. That’s a bad sign. I barely have time to take in our boss’s concerned look before my supervisor orders me to sit down.
“A clip from Pretty Little Murders has just been posted on YouTube,” Kate announces gravely. “This is extremely serious.”
Shock is etched onto every face in the room.
“I’d like to know who is responsible for this colossal screw-up,” Vadim continues icily.
All heads turn toward Clarence, our head of distribution. The poor guy tries to defend himself as best he can, but he only manages to make things worse.
“You’ve all heard of innocent until proven guilty, right?” he jokes to the room.
Big mistake…
“Do you find this funny, Clarence? Personally, I feel more like firing you than horsing around!” Vadim shoots back in a deadly tone. “I’ve never seen anything like this! A clip several minutes long, leaked two weeks before the film’s release!”
“Are we absolutely sure this leak has come from the French office?” Sophie Adam asks timidly.
“The clip in question is dubbed in French,” Kate retorts.
“Alma, have you got any idea what might have happened?”
Vadim’s eyes bore into me. They are hard. Ice-cold. He’s not playing around.
“Well, it could be an error on the distribution or communications side. Unless it was an act of sabotage…”
“Distribution has nothing to do with this—I’m absolutely certain of that!” Clarence thunders.
“Neither does communications! Everything is airtight on our end,” insists Leroy, defending his team.
“Kate, Alma, find the person responsible! And I need someone to make this video disappear within the hour. I’m extremely serious… all your jobs are on the line.” Vadim’s words are as sharp as his gaze.
“Within the hour? That’s impossible,” Simon, head of the technical department, protests. “Since it was uploaded, the clip must have already been shared across dozens, if not hundreds of different sites. It will take us several days to fix the problem.”
“Make it your priority,” Vadim snaps. “Put your entire team on it. Day and night.”
After one last furious glare, he stalks away without looking back.
A few minutes later, after I’ve left the panicked teams behind and return to my office, my phone screen lights up.
[Vadim
I know you had nothing to do with it,
but I couldn’t be seen giving
anyone special treatment…]
[Alma
I didn’t expect you to.]
[Vadim
Your sense of duty does you credit, Lancaster.]
