Ava didn't sleep. She spent the night dissecting Cameron Blake's words, every implication, every comma. The article had gone live before dawn, and by mid-morning, it was already echoing through the media landscape. Not a takedown. Not yet. But a warning.
The kind that traveled faster than truth.
At her office, Lena was waiting with a stack of damage control strategies and tired eyes. "It's soft now," she said, tapping the printed article. "But if we don't hit back before the next round, you'll be fighting this from your knees."
Ava nodded. She knew the dance. Her father's downfall had taught her that silence was its own kind of confession.
"What does Damien say?" Lena asked, her tone edged with something sharper than concern.
"He says we fight." Ava hesitated. "But part of me wonders if he expected this. If Edward was just waiting for something like this to rattle us."
Lena frowned. "Edward always plays the long game. But Damien's not the type to get blindsided. Unless he lets it happen."
There was something in her friend's voice that made Ava pause. She wanted to believe Damien was on her side. That their deal, fragile as it was, had shifted into something more. But this world didn't reward faith. It rewarded leverage.
She turned her attention back to the article. The subtext was clear: Ava Hart was her father's daughter. Whatever she built, whatever she claimed to be—was it built on truth, or a lie polished for PR?
Her hands tightened around the page.
A knock on the door. Her assistant peeked in. "Miss Hart, Cameron Blake is in the lobby. He says he's not leaving without five minutes."
Lena looked up sharply. "Don't. He'll twist whatever you give him."
But Ava was already standing. "No. Let him in. If he wants a war, he can see my face when it starts."
Ava spotted him the moment she walked into the gallery.
Cameron Blake stood near a wall of minimalist sculptures, dressed in a charcoal blazer and that trademark smirk that made reporters dangerous. He wasn't here for the art.
Ava's heels clicked with more purpose than grace as she crossed the floor. Her posture was impeccable, PR polish gleaming like armor. But inside, her chest simmered with a quiet fury. He hadn't just poked at the cracks—he was trying to shatter the glass.
"Enjoying the exhibit, or are you just here to stalk me?" she said coolly, stopping beside him.
Cameron didn't flinch. "Bit of both, actually. Though I'm partial to artists who hide things in plain sight. Reminds me of your specialty."
Ava smiled, sharp and slow. "And here I thought you were a serious journalist, not a man chasing fairy tales."
"Fairy tales usually start with a lie," he replied. "And yours? A whirlwind engagement, a phoenix-like comeback, and a billionaire who trusts no one falling headfirst into romance? It's poetic. Suspiciously so."
"Then write poetry," she snapped. "Leave the real world to the grown-ups."
He turned to face her fully, gaze narrowing. "Tell me, Ava. What's Damien hiding? Or are you the one with the secret worth burying?"
Her breath caught—not visibly, but enough for her pulse to spike. He was circling too close. Too fast.
"I clean up messes, Cameron. I don't make them," she said, voice low. 'You don't scare me."
"You should be scared," he said softly. "Not of me. But of what happens when the truth hits the morning headlines."
She stepped closer. "Print anything without proof, and you'll find out just how fast your press badge turns into a lawsuit."
He grinned. "Spoken like someone with something to lose."
The air between them crackled—less flirtation, more war drums.
"I'm not your story," Ava said.
"No," Cameron said, stepping back with a half bow. "But you're definitely someone's cover-up."
He walked away, leaving Ava staring at a sculpture shaped like a cracked mirror. The reflection caught only half of her face—perfect, poised, and quietly breaking.
She didn't move for a long moment.
The murmurs of gallery patrons floated around her, but Ava stood frozen in place, her reflection fractured in the gleaming sculpture. Her fists had clenched without her realizing, nails pressing crescent moons into her palms.
Cameron's words echoed—cover-up. Something to lose.
It wasn't just about Damien. It was about her father, about the Senate hearing and the headline that had followed her for years like a curse.
She made her way to the restroom, locking herself inside the last stall. She sat on the closed lid, back pressed against the cool wall, and allowed herself one indulgence—one moment to drop the mask.
Her phone buzzed in her clutch. Damien.
She didn't answer.
Instead, Ava pulled up the digital archive she'd tried to forget. Typed in her father's name. The image loaded instantly: Senator Robert Hart, mid-scandal. His hands raised, palms out, like he could push away the truth.
The fallout had left them all gutted—her father disgraced, her mother exiled to a vineyard in Italy, Ava scrambling to rebuild from the ashes of a name that now meant betrayal.
And now Cameron Blake wanted to drag it all back to the surface.
Her jaw tightened.
She'd worked too hard, come too far, to be undone by one smug reporter with a taste for blood. He didn't understand her. He didn't know what it meant to survive scandal, to walk back into the fire and pretend you didn't still smell like smoke.
When Ava finally emerged from the stall, her expression had shifted again—cool, composed, untouchable.
She called Damien back.
"I need to see you. Tonight," she said.
A pause. "Is everything okay?"
"Depends," she replied, voice like glass. "Do you have anything else I forgot to spin for you?"
There was silence on the line. Then: "I'll send the car."
As she ended the call, Ava didn't know if she was heading into a war or already standing in the wreckage of one.
The car arrived in ten minutes flat—sleek, black, anonymous. Ava slid into the back seat, her reflection catching briefly in the tinted window. A woman composed. A woman in control. A woman who, just an hour ago, had been caught off guard.
Not again.
She tapped her fingers against her phone, then opened the group text with Lena. Something came up. Tell the board I'm handling it.
Three dots appeared, then: Be careful. Blake's been sniffing around for days.
Ava didn't reply. She stared out the window as the city blurred past—neon signs, shuttered storefronts, memories clinging to alleyways she didn't want to revisit. Her father's scandal had taught her that the world didn't care about the truth—it only cared about the optics. And right now, the optics were on the verge of collapse.
The car pulled up to Damien's penthouse. The doors opened with a mechanical sigh, and she stepped out into marble and glass, into the space that always felt both like a fortress and a lie.
He was waiting for her inside.
No blazer this time. Just sleeves rolled, collar open. His piano stood silent behind him like a confession.
"You're upset," he said.
She didn't bother to answer. "What does Cameron Blake have on you?"
Damien's jaw flexed. "He's fishing."
"He's fishing in water you've already poisoned," she snapped. "You didn't tell me your mother's foundation was tied to the merger. Or that you and Edward Marks are still bleeding each other dry in secret litigation."
His silence was confirmation.
"Do you understand what that makes me look like, Damien? Like I'm not just your fiancee, but your d*mn press puppet."
"You're not," he said, stepping forward. "You're the only reason any of this is still standing."
Ava exhaled sharply, the air thick between them.
"I made a career out of controlling narratives," she said. "But Cameron—he's not just digging. He's baiting. And he's not afraid to burn me to reach you."
"You won't get burned," Damien said quietly.
She looked at him then—really looked. The same man who once told her that love was a liability. That trust was a fairytale.
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
He didn't respond. Just reached for her hand, hesitated, and let it fall.
She didn't stay the night.
She left the penthouse with her spine straight and her heart pounding. The elevator ride down felt like freefall. Each floor blinked past like a reminder: of what she'd risked, of how close the fire was now.
Outside, the night air hit her like truth—cool, unrelenting.
Ava walked.
Not toward the car, not toward any fixed destination. Just into the city she'd once thought she could shape with enough effort, with enough control. But Cameron had cracked that illusion wide open. And Damien... Damien had let it happen.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, it was Lena.
LENA: You need to see this.
She stopped under a streetlamp and opened the link Lena had sent. A photo. Grainy. Clearly zoomed in. But recognizable: her and Damien, standing close outside the Thorne Foundation gala weeks ago. His hand was on her waist. Her head tipped back, laughing.
The caption: "Too Close for Comfort? PR Star Ava Hart's Rapid Rise Might Be More Than Just Talent"
Her stomach flipped. She scrolled down. Blake had published it—on a shadow blog he'd linked before in exposes. Anonymous, but unmistakably his voice. Laced with charm and venom. Accusations carefully phrased, just vague enough to spark a wildfire.
Conflict of interest. Past affiliations. Her father.
They were trying to drown her in it again.
Suddenly, a voice behind her.
"You knew it was coming," Cameron Blake said smoothly, emerging from the shadows.
Ava spun, adrenaline flaring. "Stalking me now, Blake?"
"Investigating," he corrected, hands casually in his coat pockets. "And you make it easy when the pieces fall so beautifully into place."
"You don't care about the truth. You care about the headline."
"Oh, I care deeply," he said, eyes sharp. "But your story? That's gold. Disgraced senator's daughter reinvents herself, gets engaged to a billionaire with a closet full of ghosts. The public eats that up."
She took a step forward. "You think I'm going to let you use me like that?"
Cameron's smile tilted. "Let me? Ava, you walked into this spotlight. I'm just giving the crowd a better view."
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Ava's voice came low and cold. 'You think you're the narrator of my story. But you're not. You're just a footnote I haven't crossed out yet."
He laughed softly. "We'll see."
Ava didn't flinch. Not this time.
Her voice steadied, drawn from a place she hadn't touched since the trial that destroyed her father. "You know what your problem is, Cameron? You think control is the same thing as truth. But you're too arrogant to realize you've already lost it."
His expression flickered—just a beat, but she caught it.
"I'm not afraid of your story," she continued. "Because I've lived through worse than your keyboard. I've watched the people I love be destroyed by lies dressed as journalism. And I'm not letting it happen again."
"You really think you can outmaneuver me?"
"No," she said. "I know I can."
She turned and walked away before he could respond—because Cameron Blake wasn't worth another second of oxygen tonight. He'd get his answers soon enough.
By the time she reached Lena's apartment, the night had curdled into a storm. The wind cut hard, the rain following with messy defiance. Lena opened the door with a mug in hand and a face full of worry.
"You saw it?" she asked.
"I lived it," Ava said, pushing inside.
They sat on the floor in front of Lena's cluttered whiteboard—plans, campaigns, outlines they'd dreamt up back when they believed reputation could be engineered like a PR strategy. Ava stared at it now, silent for a long moment.
Then she got up and grabbed the marker.
"We need to control the counternarrative," she said. "Not deny, not grovel—control."
Lena raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, we lean into it. We give them our story. Not his. On our terms."
Lena blinked. "You're going to go public?"
"Not yet. But we start lining up our allies. Quietly. We find the holes in Cameron's past reporting. Anyone he's burned. And we find out who gave him that photo."
She turned back to the board, eyes blazing now.
"Because I'm done playing defense."
Lena smiled slowly. "Now that's the Ava I remember."
Outside, thunder cracked. But inside, the fire was hers again.