The Assistant

14. Sleep With Me.

Matthew

While she's in the bath, he decides to multi-task between preparing dinner and dealing with Reese. He seasons the salmon filets with one hand and holds his phone to his ear with the other hand.

"Matt, hey," Reese answers in a single breath. "What's up?"

"I was hoping you might tell me. Why are you not allowing Scarlett to speak with her father?" He doesn't waste any time in getting to the point. He has better things to do than tell Reese how to do his job.

"Tending to a 20 year old girl's emotional meltdown isn't exactly at the top of my priority list right now," He says. "That's actually your job, if I remember correctly."

"You want to try that again? Because I know you're not speaking about Scarlett Middleton like that to me." His voice is sharp. "Start over."

Silence. Reese clears his throat then. "Sorry, man. Things are just fu—" he stops himself from cursing. "Insane right now."

"Welcome to the job. It doesn't help when you go threatening victims with cease and desist letters." He mutters. "Anyways. You're going to arrange Maxwell calling his daughter tomorrow. I don't care what time, I will make sure she's available. You have the number."

"Yeah, okay." Reese agrees after a moment. And when Matt is about to hang up, he goes, "Matt, hang on a sec. Will you?"

He doesn't say anything in response. He holds the phone to his ear, waiting while he moves on to seasoning the veggies.

"I could really use your help with this shit." Reese says with great difficulty. He's got a lot of pride and so asking for help feels like an ego hit.

"I've tried to help. You're not prepared to listen."

"That's not helping. What you're suggesting is giving up. And I don't think we should give up here yet."

Matt sighs because it feels like a waste of breath having to convince this man, as well as Maxwell, of what the right thing to do is. "It's not giving up, Reese. It's being realistic and quite frankly, planning ahead. This is going to come out, no matter how hard you try to stop it—"

"What if we did settlements?"

"Settlements for these women to keep quiet. That's not going to look good when it inevitably comes out. Which again, it will." He rolls his eyes.

Maxwell is his employer, yes. He's spent the last 15 years of his life dedicated to keeping this family in good light and building their empire. Regardless of that fact, or any amount of money in the world, they're not going to compromise his morals. He's not going to help Charles get something like this buried. He's not going to do anything to further contribute to the trauma these victims already have. So his advice has been purely around the clean up plan. Have Charles come forward with an apology, offer these victims compensation to allow them to heal and seek therapy if they'd like, have Charles go to sex addiction rehab and announce this to the public, have him disappear from public eye for a bit, the family should obviously do an astronomical donation to RAINN and other charities like it. He even suggested Maxwell should produce a documentary around the me too movement or the sexual harassment that plagues the film industry to raise awareness.

All of these ideas were shot down by Reese, Charles, and Maxwell. They want to use Scarlett. Maybe even Sabrina with a pregnancy. The things these men are suggesting behind closed doors... it's no wonder they don't want to have the conversation over the phone.

So now, he's trying to focus on Scarlett. Her career. Her next move. He has a feeling after all the dust settles, she will be angry— which for her means she'll be her most motivated. Scarlett thrives when you make the mistake of doubting her. She's constantly underestimated and that fuels her to prove the naysayers— especially her family— wrong.