“Jesus, is that why you came in here, trying to be nice to me? Did you really think I wouldn’t believe my own employees? Over a guy who has that much gel in his hair and fucking elbow patches on his designer jacket? I mean, I get you don’t think I’m that bright but, man, that stings.” Jo looked up, looked to Rinn. “What did you see?”

“I heard voices in the break room. I heard Daniella saying no a lot, and then I heard some murmurs, a muffled shout, and then I fell into the room as Daniella opened the door and saw Harvey hopping on one foot and Daniella nearly in tears. I tried to help. I mean, I made it worse, but I tried to help.”

Jo nodded. “Is that where you got the handprint on your face from?”

Daniella nodded. “Pretty much.”

“See?” said Harvey, flailing wildly now. His gestures were large and buffoonish. He was a caricature of a man enraged. A comic. An old-timey print. “She’s a crazy girl. A nutcase. She’s violent, and she took her violence out on me. I could sue, you know. All I’m asking is that you fire her for my own safety and the safety of others around her. I mean, hell, they smell like a smoke shop. It’s like Coachella in here, it reeks of weed, and it didn’t before those girls came storming in here.”

Rinn continued, calm as can be. She ignored the weed comment. Didn’t even address it. “No, she was upset. She was still in a fight-or-flight response, and she still had so much adrenaline running through her. And I didn’t sound like a friend, so she treated me—quite naturally—like a threat. I mean, it was wrong. But her actions are totally rational, given what she’d been through.”

“Oh. Thank you. I mean. I’m still sorry I hit you.” And then Daniella looked straight at Harvey for the first time since she’d come into the room. “I’m not at all sorry that I hit you, though. You deserved it.”

Rinn looked over at Harvey, too. “I believed in you. In your work. In the things you said about love and growing up and family. And it turns out, you’re just full of shit, aren’t you? You’re peddling whatever will sell to hide the fact that there’s a horrible monster inside of you.”

Harvey’s eyes went wild, and for a moment, Rinn wasn’t sure if he would pounce on one of them again. She could nearly envision his hand going flying, could see the spittle spewing out of his mouth. He looked primal and ferocious and everything that he had managed to keep down, just below the surface, was now visible to all of them.