Chapter 20 Rose
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROSE
The studio was smaller than I expected.
I’d imagined something clinical, bright lights, a news desk, the sterile polish of broadcast television.
Instead, Melanie had booked a space that looked like a living room.
Two chairs, warm lighting, a camera crew of three people who moved quietly and didn’t make eye contact.
The setup was designed to feel intimate.
Conversational. The kind of environment where you’d forget the cameras were there and say things you couldn’t take back.
Which was, of course, exactly the point.
Melanie met me in the hallway. She was in her late fifties, silver-streaked hair pulled back, wearing a blazer over a plain black shirt. No jewelry. She looked like what she was, a woman who’d spent three decades asking questions that made powerful people uncomfortable.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Terrified.”
“Good. Terrified people tell the truth.” She gestured toward the studio door.
“We’ll start soft, your background, the ranch, how you started it.
Then we’ll move into the financial situation, your employees, and the insurance.
Then Graham.” She met my eyes. “The Graham section is where this interview lives or dies, Rose. People come for the scandal. They’ll stay for the love story. But only if it’s real.”
“It’s real.”
“Then we won’t have a problem.” She opened the door. “Ready?”
I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready. I walked through the door anyway.
The interview lasted two hours and fourteen minutes.
Melanie started where she said she would, the ranch. How I’d built it. Why I’d built it. The inheritance from parents I’d never known, the decision to create something with my own hands instead of living off money that felt like a consolation prize for being left with no parents.
I told her about the horses. About Cassiopeia, the mare Patrick bought me when I was fifteen because he’d read somewhere that horses helped with anxiety, and how she’d been the first living thing I’d ever trusted completely.
About Ricky, who flinched at everything and taught me that patience wasn’t a virtue, it was a practice.
About Brutus, who wouldn’t give you an inch unless you earned it, and how I’d loved him for that.
Melanie listened. Nodded. Let me talk.
Then she shifted.
“Tell me about Denise Harlow.”
I took a breath. This was where it got dangerous.
I had no proof. Everything I suspected about Denise was exactly that: suspicion.
A feeling in my gut that had taken root the moment Graham first asked do you believe her?
and had been growing ever since, fed by every inconsistency I’d told myself not to look at.
But suspicion wasn’t fact. And saying what I believed on a livestream, to the world, about a woman who could sue me for defamation, was the kind of thing that could take whatever was left of my life and burn it to ash.
“Denise was my business partner and my best friend for six years,” I said, starting with what I could prove. “She managed the administrative side of the ranch, bookings, vendor payments, insurance, financial records. I trusted her completely.”
“And that trust was misplaced.”
“Yes.” The word came out steady. I’d practiced it in the mirror at Maggie’s apartment, standing in the bathroom saying yes over and over until it stopped tasting like glass.
“An embezzlement scheme stole seventy-two thousand dollars from my business through shell companies and inflated vendor payments. Her boyfriend, Taylor Marsh, was the front man. His name was on the accounts, his credentials were on every transaction. When I discovered the theft, Denise blamed him. I believed her.”
“Why?”
“Because she was my friend.” I held Melanie’s gaze. “And because if I had to admit that she might have been involved, it meant I couldn’t tell the difference between people who loved me and people who were using me. And I couldn’t face that.”
Melanie tilted her head slightly. She had this way of listening that made you feel like she was hearing the words you hadn’t said yet. “You said Taylor was the front man. That’s an interesting word choice.”
I felt my pulse spike. I hadn’t planned to say front man. It had come out on its own, the way the truth does when you’re too tired to keep editing it.
“What I mean is—”
“You mean you don’t think Taylor acted alone.”
The studio was very quiet. Three cameras. A livestream. Thousands of people watching in real time. And Melanie Parker, sitting two feet away, looking straight at me.
“I can’t prove that,” I said. “I want to be clear about that. I don’t have documentation, I don’t have bank records, I don’t have anything that would hold up in court.”
“I’m not asking for court-admissible evidence. I’m asking what you believe.”
“What I believe could get me sued.”
Melanie didn’t flinch. “This interview is about the truth. You came here to tell it. So tell it.”
I looked at the camera. At the small red light that meant everything I said was going out to the world, raw, unedited, permanent. I thought about my father sitting in a courtroom. About my mother saying you’re teaching them that cowards win.
“I believe Denise orchestrated the entire scheme,” I said.
“I believe she created the shell company, set up the financial pipeline, and brought Taylor in as the name on everything so that when the theft was discovered, he’d take the fall and she’d keep her position.
Her access. Her relationship with me.” I paused.
“I believe I was targeted by my best friend.”
The words sat in the air between us. Melanie didn’t rush to fill the silence. She let them breathe.
“What makes you believe that?” she asked.
“The timeline. TKM Digital Solutions was incorporated three months before Taylor Marsh ever started working at my ranch. Someone registered that company knowing it would be used to funnel stolen money. Taylor didn’t know the ranch existed three months before he was hired. Denise did.”
“Is it possible Taylor acted independently? Created the company on his own, then targeted the ranch through Denise?”
“It’s possible. I’ve considered that version.
But it doesn’t explain why the insurance lapsed without anyone flagging it.
It doesn’t explain why Denise always seemed to have an answer ready before I’d finished asking the question.
” I stopped. My hands were shaking. I folded them in my lap where the camera couldn’t see.
I looked at Melanie. “I can’t prove it was Denise.
But I know a man was sitting in Scotland taking the blame himself. ”
“You’re referring to Fraser Kincaid’s ‘Taking a Break’ video.”
“I’m referring to Graham who went on camera and told millions of people that he was the reason I lost my ranch.
That he was the match that lit the fire.
That his content, his fame, his presence was the distraction that blinded me to the real threat.
” My voice shook. I let it. “He was wrong. He wasn’t the distraction.
He was the only person who saw clearly enough to warn me, and I was too scared to listen.
Denise was the threat. Graham was the person who tried to save me from her, and when I wouldn’t let him, he left because I asked him to, and then he went home and told the world it was his fault. ”
Melanie was quiet for a moment.
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
“Because I called him a distraction. I said those words to his face, the day I told him to leave. And he believed me. He took the worst thing I ever said to him and turned it into a public confession, because he thought it was true, and because telling the world he was the villain was easier than exposing my private life to defend himself.”
“And is it true? Was he a distraction?”
“No.” The word came out hard and certain and I didn’t flinch from it. “He was the best thing that ever walked through my door. And I was too afraid to keep him.”
The studio was very quiet.
“Is there anything else you want to say?” Melanie asked.
I thought about my father. About a truth that cost him everything.
“My father was Michael Gracen,” I said. “He was an investigative journalist who exposed the Ochoa cartel, even when they threatened his family. He believed the truth was worth telling, no matter what it cost. I spent my whole life being proud of him without understanding him. Without understanding what it actually felt like to tell the truth when the truth is the hardest thing you’ve ever said. ”
I looked at Melanie. “I understand him now.”
She held my eyes for a long moment. Then she turned to the camera operator and said, “That’s a wrap.”
I walked out of the studio and into the LA sunshine and my legs almost gave out.
The car Drake had ordered for me was waiting at the curb.
I got in, closed the door, and sat there with my hands in my lap while the driver asked if I wanted to go to the airport or to a hotel.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My entire body was vibrating, not shaking, vibrating, like every cell was processing what I’d just done and couldn’t agree on whether to celebrate or shut down.
My phone was already going off. Maggie. Fury. Kaya. Three unknown numbers. A text from Drake: Proud of you. A text from Fury: Watched the livestream. You absolute lunatic. I love you, sis.
Livestream. Melanie had livestreamed it. Of course she had. The interview was already out there, not an edited piece that would air next week, but a raw, uncut, two-hour conversation that anyone with an internet connection could watch right now.
Including Denise.