first row, the people watching her intently. All in their twenties and thirties.
Oddly enough, a snippet of what she’d said to Samson as they stood in his home, surrounded by his memories, came to mind. You made your industry better for the young men who came after you, and the older men who came before you.
Helena cleared her throat and Rhi snapped out of it. Live television. No time to fuck around.
It was my decision to tell someone about this.
Never again.
She clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “I saw the story. I believe those who came forward.”
“Across the board, no hesitation?”
“No hesitation. In general, I believe survivors. And when I say that, I don’t mean to say I blindly believe them or that I blindly believe the alleged perpetrator guilty. But the societal impulse is to disbelieve survivors, and we don’t really do that when it comes to any other misconduct. When someone claims they’ve been mugged, we don’t treat them with skepticism. We believe them. We investigate, but we believe them.”
Helena nodded. “And in this particular situation?”
“In this particular situation . . .” Rhi licked her lips and reached for her most coldly dispassionate tone. She might be speaking from the heart here, but she needed to sound like she was doing nothing more than reciting facts and figures. “I believe the survivors because I have personal experience. I was involved in a relationship with Peter. It wasn’t a secret. I ended things. Peter decided Swype wasn’t big enough for the both of us and harassed me out. He spread rumors. He made my life there so miserable, I begged to leave.” Her hands curled into fists. “I hated begging most of all. He knew that.”
Helena took a sip of water, and Rhiannon could practically see her brain racing. They hadn’t gone into this much detail in the green room, but Helena was a good journalist. The cameras were rolling, and a juicy follow-up to a sensational story had landed in her lap. “This isn’t common knowledge.”
“One of the survivors in the newspaper article, she mentioned having been employed when Peter harassed an executive. That was probably me. Most likely me. I didn’t think anyone noticed, at the time. The rumors he spread about me are still prevalent. I still meet people in the industry today, who, despite my accomplishments, believe that I’m dumb and lazy and a gold digger.” She thought about William. An executive of a well-respected company who had viewed her with contempt. “My reputation was solid gold before I dated that man. And then after I left . . . I was radioactive.”
“Did you take money to leave the company?”
“I need to talk to my lawyer about what I can and can’t say about my separation agreement.” She smiled faintly. “I would have been far better off financially staying at Swype than I was leaving it, if that’s what you’re asking. I received no financial benefit from quitting.”
Helena crossed and uncrossed her legs. “Why didn’t you sue him when he started harassing you? You also held a position of some power.”
Rhi’s defensiveness kicked in, but then she caught the encouraging, empathetic look on Helena’s face. The woman was giving her the chance to get the jump on those who would rip her story, and her, apart limb from limb.
The magnitude of what she was doing, unplanned, unrehearsed, with no warning to anyone, not even the people of her own company, made her want to throw up.
Too late. You couldn’t stuff a cat back into a bag. Well, you could, but there would be blood.
Anyway, she wasn’t a company or a brand at the end of the day. She was a person.
The last thing she wanted to do was bring up the pictures Peter had held over her head to get her to quit. There had been other reasons to quietly leave. “When you’re a minority, in any industry, you feel so visible, and like the only way to get ahead is to be tougher than everyone else. You don’t cry. You don’t show weakness. You can’t be a victim.” Even now, she flinched away from the word. Victim. It was wild how, at the end of the day, even language was an elaborate ruse to keep hurt people compliant. “Victim” implied weakness; if she claimed to be hurt, she was a victim; ergo, if she was a victim, she was weak.
Bullshit.
She hadn’t done anything wrong, she’d merely taken a chance on