Chapter 74

Amelia

I got in early, too early, judging by the half-lit lobby and the absence of coffee in the breakroom. My badge gave a sluggish beep as I tapped into the secured hallway, and the blast of cold air that hit my wrists made me shiver. The whole floor smelled like toner and nerves, the kind of sterile anticipation that only ever hit before a major press event.

I didn’t mind mornings like this. No chatter, no running lists of other people’s fires to put out. Just a checklist, a blank room, and the satisfaction of getting it done before anyone else arrived. The press room needed a full overhaul before the eleven a.m. address, new backdrop placement, a rotation in camera-facing seats, adjusted sightlines for the council's senior reps.

I was down on the floor fiddling with the base of the podium when a pair of flats clicked into the room and a familiar voice followed.

"You’re not supposed to be alone in here," Tasha said, amused.

I looked up to see the communications assistant standing in the doorway, hugging a half-drunk iced coffee like it might shield her from responsibility.

“I’m not technically alone,” I said, gesturing to the AV cart. “Me and the ghost of press debacles past.”

Tasha snorted. “They dropped new press guidelines this morning. Figured you’d want to know before everything’s live. Council’s tightening restrictions.”

I stood, brushing my hands off on my skirt. “Define tightening.”

Her nose scrunched. “No spontaneous questions allowed, no unapproved outlets granted follow-ups, and apparently only two people on staff are cleared to comment on behalf of the campaign.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess, neither of them are in this building yet.”

She sipped her drink and gave me a pointed look. “They might be. But no one knows for sure, because the memo went through seven revisions overnight and nobody agrees on the final version.”

I sighed, turning toward the banners someone had mounted behind the podium—council colors. Bold. Aggressive. And definitely not what Richard had signed off on last week.

“Great. Just what we need,” I muttered.

“Want me to pull the approval trail?” Tasha asked.

“No. I’ll handle it.”

She nodded, a little more solemn now, and slipped back into the hallway. I stood there a moment longer, watching the council seal glint in the overhead lights, and felt something heavy settle in my chest.

Since Elsa had been dismissed, the campaign had started to splinter in small but growing ways. Decisions were delayed. Protocols bent. People like Tasha, reliable, competent, low-ranking, were suddenly carrying the brunt of communication, while the ones who should’ve been steering stayed quiet or vanished behind closed doors. Richard was feeling it. He didn’t say it aloud, not to the room. But I saw it in every clipped comment, in every strategy meeting where his fingers tapped impatiently against the table edge. The mask was slipping. And nobody else seemed to notice.

Later that afternoon, after a meeting that left everyone more confused than they’d arrived, Richard paused on his way out of the strategy room.

“Amelia. Stay for a minute.”

I waited while the others filtered out. He didn’t speak until the door shut behind the last one. Then he crossed to where I sat and handed me a thin folder, folded lengthwise and creased down the middle.

“They’ve run these drafts through too many hands,” he said. “I need them reworked. Start from scratch if you have to, but keep the original message intact. And if you see anything that doesn’t sit right change it immediately.”

I opened the folder and scanned the top sheet. The phrasing was off. Soft in all the wrong places, sharp where it shouldn’t be. “You want this back tonight?”

He shook his head. “No. I want it done properly. Take whatever time you need.”

I looked up. “You’re trusting me with this?”

His gaze held mine. “You’re the only one who still seems to care whether the message matches the mission.”

That night, I pulled the draft apart line by line at my desk. It started with inconsistencies, subtle contradictions buried in formal language. Then it got worse. A single line jumped out at me like it had teeth:

Should the council disagree, the Alpha King must be prepared to issue individual accountability measures.

I blinked. That hadn’t been in any earlier drafts. I pulled up archived versions for comparison. A week ago, the line had read as a cooperative statement. This version sounded like a warning. Like a veiled threat.

I dug deeper, cross-referencing with notes from prior weeks. Phrases had been twisted. Footnotes misattributed. The changes were too intentional to be clumsy but not quite blatant enough to draw suspicion at first glance. Someone knew exactly how to slip poison into a briefing.

I highlighted every line. Annotated margin notes. Then I marched straight to Richard’s suite with the file in hand.

He opened the door shirt-sleeved and sharp-eyed, a barely-touched coffee on the table behind him. I held the folder out.

“You need to see this.”

He flipped through the first two pages without speaking. Then his jaw locked.

“These weren’t in the version I signed off on.”

“I know. I checked system logs, someone with high-level clearance went in after final approval and made subtle adjustments. They left barely any metadata behind. They wanted it buried.”

He turned on his heel, crossing to his laptop with a speed that made the air shift. He pulled up the logs himself and started combing through them, muttering under his breath.

“Three edits made between midnight and 3 a.m. Two of them match the phrasing in the draft you brought. That’s deliberate. They’re timing it so no one notices until it’s out in the wild.”

He didn’t ask me to stay. I did anyway. I sat across from him, laptop open, reviewing other documents while he pulled access logs and cross-checked timestamps. We stayed there well past midnight. He flagged three suspicious login patterns. I found two more statements with language just subtle enough to be dangerous.

By morning, new protocol memos went out. Access permissions were locked down. Staffers showed up confused. Doors started staying closed longer. Whispers got louder.

In the days that followed, Richard and I didn’t touch. Didn’t sneak off. Not even a shared glance when our hands brushed. But the silence between us was louder than anything else. It hummed like a wire pulled too tight.

Then, on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, I was standing with Emma on the terrace, sorting through survey results. I leaned across the table to grab a binder, and my collar shifted.

Her gaze dropped to the side of my neck.

She stared.

Then looked up at me.

Nothing was said. No questions. No raised eyebrows.

But I saw the flicker of recognition. The slow blink. The way her attention lingered a beat too long on the doorway Richard had walked through just moments earlier.

I forced a tight smile. She nodded, picked up her tablet, and walked away.

And I stood there, binder forgotten, heart hammering against my ribs. My skin burned under her silent question.

We’d been careful.

But apparently not careful enough.