Page 71 of It Happened on a Sunday

Sly

“Who?” I demand, meeting him halfway. “Give me a name.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you a fucking picture.” He whips out his phone and pulls up a screenshot from a video. One that very clearly shows my agent’s closed fist poised over Sloane’s drink. A drink that I’m holding in my hand.

I’m giving a hello half hug to Bradley’s wife, Brandi, and in the photo I can’t see the drink because I’m turned toward her.

“What the fuck?” I demand, rage and guilt rocketing through me in equal parts. “ Vivian did this?”

He swipes left, and a video clip starts playing.

It starts with Brandi, Bradley, and Colt coming over to talk to me.

Brandi moves in for a too-close hug the way she always does.

In the video, I deflect it the way I always do, by turning my body a little so I can make it a half hug instead of full-body contact.

As I do, Vivian takes the opportunity to drop a fistful of something into Sloane’s drink.

I keep watching as she chats away to us like she hasn’t just dumped enough oxycodone into my girlfriend’s margarita to murder her. Then, when Sloane comes back, Vivian proposes a toast—which I realize now was to ensure she took a sip.

I watch in horror as my girl drains her drink. The video cuts off right after it, but the scene keeps playing in my head.

Sloane dropping her empty glass on a nearby table.

Sloane grabbing onto my arm to steady herself as we walked toward the stage to watch Pauline.

Sloane leaning against me, eyes closed.

Sloane stumbling as she tried to walk up the steps to the stage.

The whole time, the signs were there that something was wrong, but it certainly never occurred to me that she’d been drugged at my fucking team mixer.

Even when I asked her if she was okay, I figured she was just a little tipsy.

I was even happy for her letting her guard down a bit, nauseous as the thought makes me now.

I didn’t for a second think she could be dying right before my eyes.

My phone buzzes in my hand—more messages on that damn crisis thread Vivian started. Seeing her name there, next to a text that reads Sly, be reasonable , snaps me out of my shocked stupor and has me going straight to full-on rage.

“What happens next?” I ask, ignoring her text.

“We called her office to see where she’s staying. Police are on their way to her hotel now,” he answers. “We’re trying to track down where she got the pills—”

“They’re hers,” I say dully as now—too late—I realize why Marco’s mention of pink pills struck me so hard earlier. Because I’ve seen Vivian take them for years. I figured they were for her headaches but never asked what they were, as that seemed intrusive.

What a joke. Intrusive is trying to murder my girlfriend and then acting like you’re the hero doing your best to save my career from her drug overdose. Or maybe that’s just insanity.

It has to be, right? Because no normal person does this. Nobody who is okay casually dumps a bunch of oxycodone in the alcoholic drink of one of the most famous pop stars in the world and goes on about their evening. Do they?

“Why?” I ask, even though I know Marco doesn’t have an answer. I don’t even have an answer, and I’m the only one who could. Considering the way Vivian is still blowing up my phone, I can only assume the police haven’t gotten to her yet.

“I don’t know. But we’re going to try to find out,” Marco assures me. “I’m heading over to the police station now—I want to be there when they bring her in. Once we have some answers, Sloane’s publicity team will feed them to the press.”

It’s a heads-up that things are about to get ugly, but I don’t give a shit. Vivian made this mess herself. Now she can deal with the fallout. “Okay.”

“Is there any reason you can think of for why she would do this? Any comment she’s made that didn’t seem strange at the time but—”

“Dolls,” I tell him as all the weird pieces of the last few months start coalescing in my head.

Marco’s eyes go sharp. “What about them?”

“Vivian collects dolls. We don’t talk about it, but I know her husband, my former agent, used to buy them for her several times a year. Apparently, she’s got an extensive collection.”

“And you think she might have sent those dolls to Sloane?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “The thought never occurred to me before, but now…” Now the answer seems pretty fucking clear.

“We’ll look into it,” Marco promises grimly.

“Keep me posted,” I say. Not because I plan on doing anything to help Vivian out of this mess, but because I want to know why. I stuck with Vivian when Joe died, kept her on as my agent because she promised to do her best by me.

If this is her best, I’m not strong enough to imagine her worst. Nor do I want to think about what else she’s done in the years she’s been working for me. Because someone who can do this has no boundaries. God only knows who else she’s hurt.

And I never had a fucking clue. I handed her my trust, and she wielded it like a weapon.

As I watch Marco walk away, guilt hits me so hard my legs threaten to buckle beneath me. But apparently Lucia and abuela Ximena have been beside me the whole time. They grab my arms and get me into a chair before I hit the ground.

What the fuck? What the actual fuck? How could I have been so naive? Again? I trusted Grant with Lucia, and I trusted Vivian with Sloane.

And both times, people I love paid the price.

I promised Sloane I would protect her, promised myself I’d keep her safe no matter what. And instead I invited her stalker—her would-be murderer —right into her fucking inner circle.

“It’s going to be okay, Sly,” my abuela tells me over and over again as she pats my knee, her favorite rosary dangling between her fingers. “It’s all going to work out.”

“How?” I demand, and my voice sounds like all the screaming I’ve been doing on the inside has rubbed my throat raw. “How is it going to be okay?”

Her hand pauses in midair. “I don’t know yet,” she whispers. “But I’ve noticed in life that things always work out how they’re supposed to, even if we can’t see it at the time.”

“And if Sloane dies?” I manage to grind out. “How does that fit with the whole ‘things always work out’ theory?”

“I don’t know, mijito.” She shakes her head, raising a hand to stroke my hair the way she always did when I was scared as a child. “We can only keep the faith, keep believing that Sloane is going to be okay.”

I stand up, because if I sit still for one more second, I’m going to explode.

“This is all my fault,” I tell my family. “I did this to her.”

“No, you didn’t,” my abuela tells me. “ Vivian did this to her.”

But that’s minutia. I’m the one who fell for Sloane. I’m the one who pursued her. The one who brought Vivian into her life. And I’m the one who was holding her damn drink while my agent poisoned her.

Sloane asked me to hold it to keep it safe, and instead I delivered it to Vivian on a fucking silver platter. And then I gave it back to Sloane.

“She tried to kill her,” I whisper as the guilt and anger fuse into something else deep inside me, something hot and molten and wrong, like lava bubbling through my ribs and burying my insides in ash and shame.

“I let her in, and she—”

“She took advantage of you, and she took advantage of the trust you placed in her,” my abuela tells me firmly. “That makes her the bad guy, Mateo, not you. This isn’t your fault.”

It feels like my fault, and I can’t stand here any longer and listen to abuela Ximena tell me otherwise. I just can’t. Not when I’m currently reliving my greatest failure anew.

I start to head back into the ICU area, to Sloane’s room, but before I get to the door, the damn elevator dings again.

I turn just in time to watch Sloane’s team—her family—pile into the waiting room.