“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.