Elena walked out of the elevator and straight into the hotel's underground parking garage. She pulled open the heavy door of a black Lincoln Navigator and climbed into the back seat.
She threw her head back against the cold leather headrest and let out a long, shaky breath. Her lungs finally felt like they were pulling in real oxygen.
Thea, her PR assistant, was sitting in the passenger seat. She immediately twisted around and handed Elena a paper cup of hot black coffee.
"Elena, Twitter is exploding," Thea said, her voice tight with panic. She tapped her tablet screen frantically. "The hashtag about the broken engagement is trending number one globally."
Elena took the cup. The heat burned her palms, but it grounded her. She took a sip of the bitter liquid.
"Draft a statement right now," Elena ordered, her voice completely devoid of emotion. "State that the engagement is terminated. Make sure you heavily imply that Darron's severe financial irregularities are the core reason for the split."
Thea's eyes went wide. She was shocked by how ruthlessly her boss was moving, but her fingers instantly flew across the tablet keyboard, typing out the draft.
Meanwhile, back in the penthouse suite, Johnathan stood by the floor-to-ceiling window. He watched the hotel security physically drag the last of the paparazzi out into the hallway.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his executive assistant, Cameron, on a heavily encrypted line.
"Send the photo to the Wall Street Journal," Johnathan ordered, his voice flat and businesslike. "The specific one we discussed."
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Sir," Cameron hesitated. "Are you sure? That photo clearly implicates you in the scandal as well."
Johnathan let out a low, dark chuckle. "Do it. The only way to see what cards she's really holding is to flip the table."
Ten minutes later, inside the moving Lincoln, Thea sucked in a sharp, horrified breath.
Her hands shook as she shoved the tablet over the center console, pushing it into Elena's line of sight. "Look at this. Breaking news."
Elena stared at the screen.
The headline was massive. But it was the high-definition photo beneath it that made Elena's stomach drop.
It was a picture of her and Johnathan. Johnathan's large hand was resting firmly on the bare skin of her lower back, right where her dress was torn. The angle of the shot was incredibly intimate, completely cutting out the crowd of reporters and focusing only on the heat between the two of them.
Elena's eyes narrowed. She recognized the exact angle. It was taken from the back of the room, right before she turned around to face the cameras.
Only one person had the power and the foresight to arrange a hidden camera at that exact, impossible angle inside his own private suite. Johnathan. He had orchestrated the shot through a concealed lens embedded in the room's smart-mirror and leaked it.
The comments section under the article was a war zone. The public narrative had instantly flipped. People were calling her a hypocrite, accusing her of using Darron's finances as a smokescreen to hide her own affair with a billionaire rival.
The stock ticker widget on the corner of the screen flashed red. Conway Media's stock was taking a massive nosedive in pre-market trading.
Elena gripped the coffee cup so hard the cardboard buckled. Her knuckles turned stark white.
"That opportunistic bastard," she hissed through her teeth, her blood boiling.
"Do we issue a denial? Say it's photoshopped?" Thea asked, her voice trembling.
Elena closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing the red haze of anger to clear. She shook her head.
"No. If he leaked this, he has the raw files to prove it's real. Denying it will only make us look worse."
She leaned forward. "Tell the driver to turn around. Get me to headquarters. Now."
She turned her head to look out the tinted window. The Manhattan skyline blurred past them. Her eyes were as hard and cold as the glass.
She knew this war wasn't just about destroying Darron and Haylee anymore. Johnathan had just forced himself onto the chessboard, and he was playing for blood.
The heavy SUV swerved sharply, the tires squealing against the pavement as it pulled into the VIP underground entrance of the Conway Media headquarters.
