the off the record masterlist
By the time a story reaches you,
someone else may already be telling it.
synopsis after a controversy threatens to overshadow the biggest moment of his career, Michael’s team hires you to manage the fallout. there’s only one problem though : your new client refuses to talk. somewhere between bad press, missed meetings and everything said off the record, keeping things professional becomes a crisis of its own.
warnings black!fem!reader, no use of y/n, publicist!reader, reader is NOSY, Michael is mad annoying, enemies-ish to lovers, mentions of paternity allegations, online harassment & media scrutiny.
a/n they both will get on your nerves tbh. But they’re funny i swear. Anyway, hope you’ll like it 🤍
JULY 22ND, 2026 — 9 : 17 AM
SEVENTEEN MINUTES. Seventeen minutes was all it took for Michael to make the worst first impression possible. He was late. Of course he was, who wouldn’t be late for an important meeting that could potentially change their life ?
Not that you were counting, anyway.
Which was particularly irritating considering you had made a point of arriving five minutes early, determined to avoid any delay and remain professional.
Clearly, that was one-sided.
You had known your client for exactly zero minutes, and somehow, he was already getting on your nerves. Still, his absence wasn’t entirely a bad thing. It gave you time to review the case. Again.
As if you hadn’t already done so a hundred times.
The case seemed simple enough : a woman was accusing a footballer of being the father of her child.
Because said footballer was now being accused of abandoning a child he claimed wasn’t his.
From what you had gathered during your late-night deep dive into the case, this wasn’t the first time this woman had tried to claim Michael was the father of her child. The timeline, however, was messy and desperately needed clearing up.
As you were playing with your pen, your eyes eventually wandered from the documents spread across the table to Michael’s manager. Calling her stressed would have been the biggest understatement of all times.
She hadn’t said a word to you yet but had check her phone four times in the last ten minutes.
You knew because, well, unfortunately, you were counting that too.
AT 9:19, the conference room door finally opened. Naturally, every head in the room turned toward the door. There he was.
A pink and brown cap pulled low over his head, like he had every intention of disappearing underneath it. His expression gave nothing away. There wasn’t no panic on his face, no visible frustration. Nothing that suggested his name had been dragged across the internet for the past twenty-four hours.
He looked entirely too calm for someone currently sitting at the centre of a public relations disaster.
A man you assumed to be his lawyer followed closely behind him, already apologizing to the room before the door was even closed.
Michael, however, said nothing.
You eyes dropped to your watch.
His eyes eventually found yours from across the room.
You held his gaze. He held yours.
Neither of you smiled. Because, what was there to smile about ? First meeting and you’re late ?
“Nice of you to join us.”
His manager shifted uncomfortably in her seat. His lawyer glanced in your direction, and for half a second, you could practically hear your boss telling you to behave.
Fortunately for you, your boss wasn’t here.
Michael looked at you for another second before pulling out the chair opposite yours.
You blinked. Was he crazy ? You watched him sit down.
His eyes lifted back to yours.
“The meeting was at nine o’clock.”
You leaned back slightly in your chair, smiling only a bit.
His manager closed her eyes for half a second. What a great start. Michael’s expression barely changed, but something shifted in his eyes. He was looking at you properly now.
“I was caught in traffic. Sorry.”
“In this city ?” You nodded slowly. “At nine in the morning ? Sure.”
He stared at you. You stared back. Again. “Who could have possibly predicted that ?”
His lawyer cleared his throat. Loudly. If he wanted to be funny, you’d be hilarious.
“Perhaps we should start.”
You kept your eyes on Michael for another second before looking down at the file in front of you.
You opened it. And that’s when you were glad your boss wasn’t here.
“We only lost nineteen minutes, after all.”
You could tell this was going to be difficult.
THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES did very little to change your mind.
“The priority is getting ahead of this before it develops any further,” his manager explained. “We’ve already had several calls this morning.”
“How many ?” You asked, letting your pen repeatedly tap onto the table.
You looked up from your notes. “How many ? You can tell me.”
“From who ?” You asked again.
“Two indirect sponsors. The club. His agent. A journalist. And—”
“Three journalists actually,” the lawyer corrected.
That was worse than you had expected.
“Have any of them been given a comment ?”
“Good. That’s good.” There wasn’t any worse felling than to begin to work with badly written comments.
Michael sat across from you, one arm resting against the table, his expression unreadable. You had been in the room with him for nearly half an hour now.
So far, you had heard him say approximately twelve words.
“The club wants this handled quickly. They don’t want the story gaining any more traction, especially with everything coming up.”
Of course they didn’t. Who would want their club to be tied to any of this nonsense ?
You glanced at the documents in front of you. The timing of the allegations was almost impressively inconvenient.
“What about the indirect sponsors ? Don’t you have direct sponsors ?” You turned to Michael, waiting for him to answer.
“I’m not directly tied to a brand.”
“They want reassurance.” His lawyer added, sensing you’d need a bit more.
“Which we can’t give them yet.”
You looked around the table. His manager looked worried. His lawyer looked cautious.
The other members of his team looked like they would rather be anywhere else.
You looked at him once again.
You couldn’t quite tell which.
“We were thinking of releasing a statement today,” his manager said.
“No.” The answer left your mouth immediately.
Everyone except Michael. His gaze was already on you.
“Well, we’ll need to respond eventually,”
“The longer we wait, the more people speculate. I understand that.” You closed the file. “But see, releasing a statement before I know exactly what we’re responding to would be stupid.”
His lawyer shifted in his chair.
“We know what we’re responding to.” He says, repositioning his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“No, you know what she’s accusing him of. Big difference.”
You nodded toward Michael.
“I don’t know what actually happened.”
That finally earned you something. A slight movement of his head. It was barely noticeable. But you noticed.
“Until I have a complete timeline, I’m not putting his name under anything. One inconsistency between what we say today and what comes out tomorrow, and suddenly we’re not managing one story anymore. We’re explaining why we lied.”
You placed your pen down. “Has anyone in this room actually spoken to Michael about what happened?”
His manager looked at his lawyer.
His lawyer looked at Michael.
You had spent almost thirty minutes listening to people discuss Michael’s reputation, his career, his sponsors and his alleged child. And somehow, nobody seemed particularly interested in hearing from Michael.
Everyone in the room seemed perfectly capable of speaking for Michael. The problem was that eventually, Michael would have to speak for Michael.
You leaned back in your chair. You gestured the door to both his lawyer and his manager.
“I need the room. Please.”
His manager frowned. “What ?”
“I need to speak to him alone.”
The lawyer immediately straightened. “I don’t think—”
“I won’t be long. I promise.”
Michael’s eyes remained on you. For the first time since he had arrived, there was something almost amused in them.
At least one of you was enjoying this.
The door clicked shut behind the last person.
SILENCE SETTLED over the conference room. It was not necessary a heavy one. It was the type of silence that only occurred when people were searching where to begin.
For the hundredth time today.
Ten seconds passed. Then fifteen.
Most people would have looked away by now. Reached for their phone. Shifted in their seat. Done something to fill the silence.
Michael did none of those things.
He simply sat there, one arm resting against the chair, his eyes fixed on you with the same unreadable calm he had worn since walking into the room.
You reached for your pen. “Do you know the woman who made the allegations ?”
“We met before I got transferred.”
“Michael.” His eyes lifted fully to yours.
“That generally means I’m waiting for the rest of the sentence.”
He stared back. Not defensively. Not uncomfortably. If anything, he looked entirely too comfortable with silence.
Again, you had dealt with difficult clients before.
Actors who thought every question was a trap. CEOs who suddenly developed selective amnesia the second lawyers entered the room. Influencers who believed deleting a post also deleted the screenshots.
You could handle quiet. But this ? This was new.
“Fine. When did you meet her ?”
“You don’t remember the year ?”
You wrote it down. “Where ?”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
You stopped writing. “Because if twenty people saw you leave together, that’s different from nobody knowing you were ever in the same room.”
For the first time, something shifted in his expression. It was small. A slight easing around his eyes. The faintest tilt of his head as he looked at you.
As though, until now, he hadn’t quite understood what you were doing.
You held his gaze. “What kind of party ?”
His expression changed again.
Instead of insisting, you made a small question mark beside de question. “I’ll come back to that later.”
Something almost amused flickered across his face.
You continued. “Were you in a relationship ? I’m talking about dating.”
“Did you sleep together ?”
Your first real reaction. You waited.
He looked away from you for the first time. His gaze moved somewhere past your shoulder before coming back to you, his expression already composed again.
Your pen touched the paper.
His eyes came back to yours. You could almost see the calculation happening behind them.
Too fast ? You slowly looked up to him.
You had learned a long time ago that people were rarely most revealing when they lied. They were most revealing when they wanted you to stop asking.
Michael didn’t seem to be lying. That didn’t mean he was telling you everything.
You underlined the word once.
“Why does she have messages from you ?”
“We spoke.” His tone supplied the rest.
“For how long ?” He shrugged.
You stared at him for two seconds.
He stared back at you for two more.
Your pen landed on the table.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“I’m going to ask you questions. You’re going to answer them. Preferably using more than three words at a time. I hope I was clear.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
“Good. How long did you stay in contact ?”
Your fingers tightened around your pen.
“You just told me you slept together once.”
“But you met multiple times.”
You studied him. There was a distinction there. And he wanted you to notice it.
“What was the nature of those meetings ?”
For once, he didn’t answer immediately. His gaze dropped on your hand. More specifically to the pen between your fingers. Then back to your face.
“We met a few times after that night. Sometimes alone, sometimes with other people. We talked. Nothing happened again.”
An actual answer, a complete one. You almost wanted to congratulate him.
Instead, you wrote it down.
“Why did you keep seeing her ?”
And just like that, whatever small opening had appeared disappeared.
There he was. You resisted the urge to sigh.
“You weren’t sleeping together.”
“But you continued seeing each other.”
You slowly lowered your pen. Michael watched you do it. “Do you enjoy making simple things unnecessarily complicated?”
The smallest hint of a smile touched the corner of his mouth.
You ignored it. “Have you ever met the child ?”
The trace of amusement disappeared.
“Has she contacted you privately about the child ?”
“I told her it wasn’t mine.”
“Was a paternity test done ?”
“Because I’m not the father.”
Your pen stopped. The certainty in his voice was different this time.
No careful selection of words.
You watched him. He watched you back.
But there was no challenge in his expression now.
His expression closed again.
“You’re not supposed to use any of this.”
You went still. There it was. The test.
So that was what this had been.
You slowly leaned back in your chair.
“No. I’m supposed to use it to make sure that when someone shoves a microphone in your face and asks you a question you weren’t expecting, I already know the answer.”
His eyes stayed on yours.
“And if you lie to me now, I can’t protect you from the truth later.”
Neither of you moved. For the first time, Michael wasn’t looking at you like someone he had been forced into a room with. He was actually looking at you.
Something shifted in his expression. It was barely there.
You picked your pen back up.
His posture changed almost imperceptibly.
“Is there any possibility that child is yours ?”
For the second time since the meeting started, he didn’t answer immediately.
His eyes remained on yours.
Nothing in his expression changed.
But there was something about the way he was looking at you now.
You had spent the entire conversation trying to read him. And suddenly, you had the distinct impression that he was doing the exact same thing to you.
The silence stretched between you again, except this time it felt different. At the beginning of the meeting, Michael’s silence had been a wall. Now it felt deliberate. A conversation neither of you was willing to have out loud.
He watched you right back.
Because you believed that he believed what he was saying.
You just weren’t convinced you had the whole story.
GO BACK TO FILE 000 — FILE 002 PENDING
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