“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.” I settled into the sleek leather chair across from his desk and crossed an ankle over my knee.
“Not a problem.” Stewart shuffled the papers on his desk and set them aside. He glanced up at me and steepled his thick fingers, leaning over the desk with his brow furrowed. “Dallas said you had a nine-one-one situation on your hands. What’s going on?”
If only I knew.
“I’m not sure. There might be…pictures. Of me. Compromising pictures. Or a video maybe.” My stomach lurched, like speaking the words somehow made it more real.
He nodded. “Do they contain any non-consensual acts? Because if they do, you’ll need a different kind of lawyer. I can refer you out to a criminal attorney.”
I flinched. Was he seriously asking me that? At my physical response, his expression softened, turning from businesslike to sympathetic.
“I have to ask,” Stewart placated. “Covering the bases. It’s nothing against you, son. I would ask Dallas the same thing.”
“Nothing like that,” I said. “But I didn’t consent to the recording, if that counts.”
My phone chimed in my hand. It was a text from Bailey. Guilt flooded me. I dismissed the message and flipped the ringer to silent.
“Were you aware of it at the time?”
“Kind of. I caught the girl with her phone’s camera on and got mad. She said she deleted it. I thought she did. But I was pretty, uh, intoxicated.”
Stewart made notes on a pad of paper in front of him, then looked back up. “It’s a criminal offense to record someone engaging in sexual acts without their permission.”
This confirmed what I had gathered based on my internet research, but it was of little comfort right now. I didn’t want to press charges after my life exploded; I wanted to defuse the bomb.
“What if they pass it around?” I swallowed, mouth suddenly desert dry.
“The state doesn’t have specific laws that govern revenge porn. But blackmailing you about releasing would be an offense. Those are criminal matters. For those, you’d have to go to the police and file a statement to press charges.”
Cops. Great. If there was a group of people that didn’t like me, it was them.
And like a big-ass hockey player filing charges against a chick half his size would go over well. Great optics there in terms of my career.
“Okay.”
“I have to caution you, though, that it would be messy and public. If a civil suit arises, or you want to initiate one, that’s where I come in. Also messy and public.” He scanned my face. “But I assume you don’t want to poke the hornet’s nest right now.”
“Correct.”
“Generally speaking, that is what I would advise,” Stewart said. “Wait until we have a better handle on what the situation is.”
“I’m trying to figure it out, but I think she’s lying to me. She says the video doesn’t exist, but there are rumors circulating that have me worried. Seems like a smoke-fire kind of thing.”
“We work with excellent private investigators. It might be worth seeing what they can dig up.”
How was this my life? Hiring a fucking PI?
“As long as they don’t draw more attention to it.”
“They won’t.” Stewart shook his head. “They won’t approach anyone without your okay, but they’ll do a lot of legwork—discreetly—and background research.” He paused, giving me a meaningful look. “And maybe some electronic device investigation, for the right price.”
“Electronic device investigation?” What the hell did that mean?
He lowered his voice. “Hacking. But that would be illegal, so I never said that, nor do I condone it. This is all alleged, hypothetical, you get the drift.”
There’s an idea. Hack into Kristen’s phone. Maybe her email too.
“Problem is, I think she sent it to someone else.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say there is something out there. What would it contain? I know it’s an uncomfortable subject, but give me the gist so I can gauge the extent of the damage. How compromising are we talking?” He picked up his mug and sipped, watching me over the top.
“I don’t know when Kristen took out her phone.” I sighed. “I was having sex with this girl, Nikki. She was on top of me. Then I stopped her, and she was blowing me while we smoked a joint.”
“So the consent should be pretty easy to establish.”
“I should hope so.” Consent hadn’t even occurred to me as a potential issue.
“That’s positive, as it’s one of your biggest potential problems. A sex scandal isn’t nearly as bad as sexual assault allegations.”
Bile climbed up the back of my throat. He was right; the video was better than a fake rape charge. If we were comparing the lesser of the evils, anyway.
“What about the joint?”
“That’s the least of your problems right now,” he said. “It could be a homemade cigarette. Really neither here nor there in the scheme of things. But there was a third party who took the photos?”
“Right. Kristen. We were fooling around too, but as far as I know, it isn’t on camera.” But fuck if I knew at this point. Kristen may have had her phone out for a while before I realized it. I was obliterated.
“Unlike that situation, recording audio with one-party consent is legal. If you speak to anyone about this, record the conversation and get them to talk as much as possible. Then we can gauge whether there is any evidence you can use for criminal or civil proceedings.”
Great. But what I really wanted was to avoid proceedings altogether.
“Will do,” I said. “What about my contract with the league? Do you think…？” I trailed off, unable to force out the rest of the words. Would they drop me? There were morality clauses in my contract.
“This is entirely different from when that NHL player taped women without their consent. I don’t think they’ll be inclined to punish you, the victim, in this scenario. Especially not with me in the picture.” His voice took on an edge.
I hoped not. If this tanked my career, my life was over. There was no plan B.
“What if it does leak?”
“One step at a time,” he said. “But if it does, the parties responsible will wish it hadn’t. I assure you.”
Not as much as I will.
He looked at me sympathetically. “Take some time. I never want my clients to act when they’re under acute distress. Sleep on it. Spend some time with your girlfriend. Talk it over with someone you can trust.”
That wouldn’t work. No one else knew. I wanted to keep it that way.
I swallowed. “What would you tell Dallas to do?”
“Bury it.” Stewart gestured emphatically with his pudgy hands. “Find it, bury it, and throw a fucking funeral.”
“How?”
“We find out whether there’s a copy, and if there is, get some NDAs in place immediately. Then we properly destroy the files.”
I sighed. “Okay. That makes sense.”
“Look,” he said, “ninety-five percent of the time, clients throw money at this type of thing to sweeten the NDAs, and the issues disappear completely. We both know you can afford to do that.”