Page 14 of Shameful Addictions

Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Loud, hollow.

Not her heartbeat, she realized. Someone was pounding on the door to her apartment, unceasingly.

“I’m coming,” she called, pushing back from her desk. She stood up and staggered out of the room on legs that felt numb.

The pounding continued and even seemed to be getting louder, more fervent.

“I’mcoming!” she cried, and unlocked the door and threw it open. “What?” she snapped.

A man with close-cropped hair stood in front of her door, hands clasped in front of himself. “Are you Charlotte Aria?” he asked. His voice was clipped, professional.

“Yes.”

The man unclasped his hands and held out a letter to her, which she hadn’t noticed before. “This is for you.”

Charlotte took the letter. The envelope was plain and white, with her name and address on the outside. No return address had been given, presumably because it had been sent by courier and not through the mail. “What is this?”

The man gazed at her coolly, expressionless. “That is a summons to court.”

“What?”

He misunderstood her shock for ignorance. “You are being sued, Ms. Aria.”

Charlotte shut the door in his face and went into the bathroom to vomit.

Chapter six

Bite back

Charlottesatonhercouch and read the court summons. The language was very dry and difficult to follow. She took notice of the important details. Firstly, that her court date was in only a week. In a city so large, that should have been impossible. Nothing happened as fast as this because there were hundreds of thousands, millions of other people all doing the same things. There had to be murder trials, divorce settlements, fraud cases ongoing all around this same time. She hadn’t killed or done anything so terrible, so why should she get such special treatment?

But, of course, she had her answer thanks to the rest of the letter.

She was being sued by the owner of Lollipop on charges of defamation. And the person suing her was also the CEO of Champion Media.

Now she knew.

Now she knew why the new owner of CM had wanted her to work on such terrible videos.

Mamba owned CM.

And she had gone and targeted the very operation she was meant to be supporting. She had gone and upset a very, very powerful man who owned amedia company.No wonder she had been wiped from the face of the planet. No wondering how, either. Everything Mamba needed to erase her was right there in the building, on one floor or another.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered.

The answer was obvious, however. She had to fight back. If she just sat around and accepted her fate, that would be the end of her. Mamba would send her to jail, drive her into poverty with fees. She had done what she believed in and letting him do that to her would be like admitting she was wrong, which she absolutely wasn’t.

Charlotte leaned over and grabbed her phone, which she had neglected to look at thus far. She turned it on and checked for notifications. There were practically none, which she shouldn’t have been surprised about, but which hit her like a load of bricks anyway. She still had all her usual apps on her phone, but she no longer existed on any of them. The only notifications left were those of text messages. One from Damian, and several from people she’d been close to at CM.

The message from Damian was quick, snappy. He had fired her and would be sending her last paycheck in the mail. She wasn’t allowed back in the building.

The others were a mixed bag of disapproval and plain astonishment at what she had done.

Rather than answer any of them, she went straight to Google and looked up lawyers in her area. She called the best one she could reasonably expect to afford–by digging into her savings–and waited for thirty minutes while listening to hold music.

The hold music cut out. A woman with a rasping voice answered. “Lila Fredericks speaking. Please state your name and your business. I’m very busy at the moment.”

“Ms. Fredericks,” Charlotte said, aware of how pitiful her polite tone was in comparison to the lawyer’s rasp, “my name is Charlotte Aria. I…”

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