Chapter 88

Amelia

It started with a knock on the door. Not mine, someone else's. It came from down the hall, maybe from across the building, but it landed in my chest like a warning shot. I froze, fingers hovering over my keyboard, the cursor blinking on a half-finished sentence. My hair was still damp from the shower, a towel haphazardly wrapped around me as I scrambled to finish replying to an email I no longer cared about.

Then came the buzz. My phone lit up on the counter. One alert. Then another. A third. All from news apps. And then Emma’s text: Don’t look at the headlines.

Too late.

The photo loaded before my brain could catch up. It was grainy but unmistakable. My bare legs, his bare back, the unmistakable arch of his body wrapped around mine. My face was turned away, but even with the poor quality, the shape of my mouth, the fall of my hair, it was undeniably me. It wasn’t just an invasion. It was a weapon. An expertly timed detonation meant to rupture everything we'd been carefully hiding, wrapped in the illusion of privacy.

I didn’t even feel myself slide to the floor. Only noticed the cold tile pressing against my thighs and the trembling in my hands. The headline screamed across the screen: Scandal in the Pack House: King Caught in Illicit Affair with Staffer.

Emma’s spare key rattled in the door seconds before she burst in. She didn’t speak right away. Just crouched beside me, grabbing the phone from my hand and silencing it. Her breath came fast, her cheeks flushed like she’d run the whole way up the stairs.

“I told you not to look,” she said, voice tight.

“They used my body,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “They used us. Not just for headlines, not just to make a point, they twisted something private, something that was ours, and turned it into ammunition.” I blinked at Emma, disbelief curling around my throat. “How the hell did they even get it?”

Emma froze, her hand stilling on the edge of the coffee table. Her voice was quiet but firm. “So it’s real.”

I said nothing, but the answer was written all over my face.

Emma’s jaw clenched. “This has David and Elsa written all over it.”

Of course it did. This wasn’t just a smear, it was a warning. A punishment. Every bit of space that had grown between me and Richard, every whisper I’d ignored, every cold glance from Jenny, it all made sense now. This had been in the works for weeks, if not longer. Maybe longer than even that. Maybe since the first day I walked into the Pack House.

Emma helped me onto the couch, flicked on the kettle like she always did when things went sideways. But her movements were sharper, her gaze more alert. She was already calculating next steps, tapping her thumb against her mug like she was ticking off variables in her head.

There was no message from Jenny. No call. But the building’s security logs didn’t lie, her Pack House clearance revoked at 6:03 a.m. She’d moved out before the story was even on its third round of reposts. She’d known. Maybe not the extent, maybe not how it would be used, but enough. Enough to disappear before she had to see it up close.

Emma’s phone rang. She looked at it, then handed it over. “Nathan.”

I pressed the phone to my ear. “Don’t tell me to come in.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Nathan said. “Stay put. The council’s in full panic mode. Richard’s trying to contain it.”

“Is he?” My voice cracked despite myself.

Nathan hesitated. “He called an emergency session. There are protests outside the building. Council members are demanding a full inquiry.”

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the couch. “So I’m the scapegoat again.”

“No one’s said that.”

“They don’t have to.”

Richard

The strategy room was quiet, but it wasn’t calm. Harris stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, while Nathan scrolled through logs and printouts. Emma’s voice crackled through the speaker. Tomlin, tense and quiet, watched me like I was about to fall apart. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

I hadn’t slept. The image wouldn’t leave me, not because it was so false, but because it could have easily been real. It almost was. The angles, the shadows, they hadn’t fabricated something out of nothing. They’d taken a truth and twisted it. They had known exactly what they were doing.

“This was internal,” Nathan said, placing a folder in front of me. “The file metadata confirms it was accessed from within our server. Campaign credentials were used to retrieve surveillance footage, and it looks like assets were manipulated after the fact to create a fabricated image. This wasn’t just a leak, it was a coordinated attempt to build something that looked real enough to destroy us.”

“Adam?” I asked, even though I already knew better. The rot went deeper than him.

Nathan shook his head. “No. He’s gone. This was someone who still had active clearance as of last week. Someone familiar with the system.”

Tomlin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It doesn’t matter how fake it is. The damage is already done. It’s about optics now.”

“Is impeachment on the table?” I asked.

The silence answered for them. Harris looked away.

“We can spin it,” Harris offered. “Claim it’s a smear job, planted by David. Leak it that the tabloid was manipulated.”

Nathan disagreed. “The tabloid’s already issued a vague denial. But this is just the distraction. The fire is coming from somewhere else.”

Three hours since the photo went live, and the council still had no official response. Every second we waited, the narrative cemented further. And the longer Amelia stayed silent, the more they painted her as guilty.

“Where’s Amelia?” I asked.

“Here,” Emma said from the speaker. “She’s staying with me. She’s not coming in.”

“Good.” The last thing I needed was for her to walk into this storm. I wanted her as far from it as possible, even if I knew keeping her away would only make her feel more isolated.

One by one, the others trickled out, murmuring strategies and contingencies. When the room emptied, I sat with my hands folded on the table, staring at the place where the photo had been projected.

Nathan had said the image was fabricated, that it was built from manipulated footage and pieced-together assets, and I had gone along with it. Repeated it like a fact. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure. The details were too precise, the angle too familiar. I didn’t know if I was more furious at whoever had leaked it, or at myself for making it so believable in the first place. I’d been careful. But not careful enough.

Amelia

By late afternoon, the texts started.

Slut.

Whore.

Homewrecker.

Different numbers. Same venom. I blocked each one, but they multiplied. I turned off the ringer, tossed the phone aside, but I could still feel them crawling under my skin. I kept hearing the buzz in my head even after the phone was dark.

Then came the black SUV. It passed once, slow and deliberate. Circled back. Parked across the street for a full fifteen minutes. Then disappeared.

I closed every curtain, locked every latch. Made Emma double check the front door.

Emma handed me tea and sat beside me on the couch, her laptop open. “They’re willing to fake one thing, they’ll fake another. We need to go through every campaign file we have.”

I nodded, opening my own laptop. The glow of the screen felt like it was lighting me up from the inside, exposing every mistake I’d ever made. But I wouldn’t hide. Not anymore. If they were building a case, so were we. I wasn’t going to be their silent casualty.

Richard

Nathan returned with a grim expression and a thick packet of evidence. “It’s worse than we thought,” he said. “The credentials belonged to someone on the comms team. They accessed and downloaded media files beyond just the photo. This was methodical.”

“Can we track the destination?”

“We’re trying, but Richard, this was part of a broader plan. Someone’s laying the groundwork for something bigger.”

I stared down at the packet. “Then we build faster.”