Chapter 8 NICK
NICK
Avery watches me, waiting for my answer, but I don't have words for what's coiling inside me.
The rage is too large, too dark, pressing against my ribs like something trying to claw its way out.
I move to the window instead of answering, putting distance between us, and stare at the city without seeing it.
Behind us, the penthouse’s private elevator chimes.
Beck strolls out with Gabe right behind him.
"Garage is secured," Gabe reports, positioning himself near the doorway with the unconscious tactical awareness of a combat soldier who spent years clearing hostile rooms. "Paparazzi have been pushed to street level. Building management's cooperating."
I nod. “Good. What have you got for me, Beck?”
His gaze lands on Avery for a moment, sympathetic, then cuts to me with a look of concern. Fifteen years of friendship pass in that glance. He knows I'm barely leashed.
"Rennick Media Group," he says. "I have everything."
“Let’s have a look.” I lead everyone to my home office down the hall.
Avery settles onto the leather sofa, and instead of taking the chair behind my desk, I lower myself beside her.
I’m immediately aware of the press of her thigh against mine, the warmth of her bleeding through denim.
My hand finds her knee, and her pulse speeds at her throat.
Even after the horror of this day, my body responds to that small flutter.
I have to fight the urge to pull her onto my lap, bury my face in her neck, block out everything except her heartbeat against my chest.
Her phone buzzes and the whole room tenses. Avery glances down at the screen and exhales.
"It’s Rachel. She wants to know if we need her."
Avery’s publicist. I nod. "Get her on video. She should hear this too."
Avery sets up the call, propping her tablet on the coffee table. Onscreen, Rachel appears, looking polished and composed, the careful mask of a publicist who's seen her share of PR crises.
Her eyes go straight to Avery with genuine concern. “How are you holding up?”
“Okay,” she replies. “Thanks for calling, Rach.”
I make quick introductions for Rachel, then Beck leads things off.
"The publication is Manhattan Social Monitor," he says, his portfolio open on the table. "It’s essentially a tabloid rag, digital-first, owned by Rennick Media Group. Their advertising arm is healthy enough, thanks in no small part to Baine International’s accounts.
But the rest of their business has been hemorrhaging money for eighteen months.
Revenue down forty percent, carrying significant debt.
" He pauses, and I recognize the slight tension in his jaw.
He's about to tell me something I won't like.
"The reporter is a new hire, only a couple months on the job.
Jessica Mallory, twenty-two. A year out of J-school, hungry for a break.
She pitched it as a 'women overcoming incarceration' piece. "
Twenty-two. A fucking kid. Yet ambitious enough to weaponize a woman's trauma for a byline.
The scar tissue across my right hand pulls tight as I make a fist beneath the table. "What are our legal options?"
"Cease and desist, potential defamation suit—though the facts aren't technically false. Just... selectively framed." Beck meets my eyes. "We have grounds for invasion of privacy on some details."
I scowl. "That's a slow play. What else?"
"We could sue for defamation and invasion of privacy anyway. Costly, hard to prove, but it drains their resources and keeps them in court for months."
Rachel leans toward the camera. "I'd recommend starting with a retraction request. Sometimes these outlets fold rather than face legal exposure."
"I agree," Avery says, and there's steel beneath the softness. "Let’s give them a chance to do the right thing before we go nuclear."
I almost admire how much she still believes in second chances. In forgiveness. Hell, if she hadn’t, she and I wouldn’t be together now. Still, every instinct inside me rejects the thought of showing these bastards a speck of mercy.
"No." The word lands harder than I intended, and I feel Avery stiffen beside me. "We're not asking them for anything. They made their choice when they hit publish."
"There's a middle path." Gabe shifts forward. "We build a file on Rennick. Ethics violations, sloppy sourcing, prior complaints. I’m sure there’s plenty of ammunition if we look for it.
Then Beck and I sit down with their brass and make it clear.
Pull the article and discipline everyone involved, or Baine International takes its business elsewhere. Permanently."
I turn it over in my mind. Gabe's approach is elegant. Surgical pressure applied to financial weak points, the kind of leverage that usually appeals to me. It protects Avery without creating headlines. It punishes without destroying.
But my mind keeps circling back to those photographs. Brenda's mugshot beside Avery in silk and diamonds. The implication dripping from every carefully chosen word.
All the solutions I’ve heard so far are too clean. Too slow. We’d be letting them walk away with their business intact, free to do this to someone else.
"It's not enough," I say. "Not for this. I need to be certain Avery’s safe."
“We can assign a protection detail. One for her mother too,” Gabe suggests.
I feel Avery stiffen next to me. "No security detail.
" Her voice is calm but certain, and she turns to face me directly, those green eyes holding mine without flinching.
Then she glances at Gabe. "I appreciate it, Gabe, but I won't live like a prisoner.
And I won't put my mother through that either, not after everything she's already survived. "
I move my hand to her knee. "Avery—"
"I can handle this." Her chin lifts. "Maybe the best response is no response. Let the story die on its own instead of feeding it oxygen."
I would never call her na?ve, but she doesn't understand how these people operate, how blood in the water only brings more sharks. I’m shark enough myself to know that.
The tabloids will keep circling. They’ll dig deeper, looking for other wounds to scrape until they bleed.
Wounds like the ones I’ve kept hidden for most of my life.
Avery's past has been ripped open for public consumption, and she's not crumbling. She's not hiding. She's looking for a path forward that doesn't require burning everything down.
If it were my past splashed across those headlines instead of hers—the abuse I endured, the betrayal of a boy by the grandfather who was supposed to love him, and the night, many years later, when I sat with a gun in my hand and a stranger's self-portrait the only thing standing between me and oblivion—I know I wouldn't survive the exposure.
Not intact. Not the way Avery's sitting here, spine straight, voice steady, trying to find a way through.
She's handling this with more grace than I ever could.
The realization doesn't comfort me. It makes the fear sharper, because if she can face this and I can't, what does that say about the man she's marrying? I don’t intend to find out.
"We're not letting this die." I push to my feet. "We're going to bury them."
I stalk to the window, rigid with determination. Behind me, I feel Avery's attention like a hand on the back of my neck.
I turn a hard look on my attorney. "Beck. Give me other options. All of them."
He nods. "We can acquire their debt. Force a sale, shut them down." He pauses, watching me. "Sixty to ninety days."
“Too slow. What else?"
"Pull all Baine International advertising from Rennick properties immediately. Without our accounts, they collapse inside two months."
Better. But still not immediate enough. I nod for him to continue.
"Or we pursue all three tracks simultaneously. Legal action, debt acquisition, advertising withdrawal." Another pause. "That's significant escalation, Nick."
"I want them dismantled. Every asset, every employee, every fucking brick of their operation—gone. Let the entire industry see what happens when someone comes after my family."
"Nick." Avery's on her feet now, crossing toward me. The flush climbing her throat, the way her eyes flash, part challenge, part dread, that pulls at me even now. "That will keep us in headlines for months. Every filing, every court date… we become the story."
"Good."
"It's not good," she says gently. "The article is already out there. The damage is done. If we ignore this story, it may die in a week. Your plan keeps it alive indefinitely."
"And yours lets them continue to profit from hurting you without any cost at all."
A small furrow knits her forehead. "They didn't lie, Nick. They took the truth and twisted it. That's not the same thing."
"What about the implication that you used me to get ahead? That everything between us is transaction?" My jaw aches from clenching. "That's a fucking insult to both of us. To the career you've built."
"Then let me defend my career."
She holds my gaze, standing her ground in my space the way few others would dare. I love that about her, the fierceness within her. The strength. Right now, it’s only making me dig my heels in harder.
"Rachel and I can draft a statement,” she says. “I'll talk about my Mom's strength, her redemption—"
"No statements."
She exhales, her mouth flattening. "An interview, then. With a real news outlet. I can let the public see me as the artist I am, independent of you—"
"No interviews."
"Nick." Her hand closes around my wrist, and the contact jolts through me, her fingers warm against my pulse point, her thumb pressing into the tender skin where scar tissue meets unmarked flesh.
For a moment, one dangerous moment, I almost yield.
Her touch has always undone me. The way she looks at me now, pleading and fierce and so goddamn brave.
My throat tightens. I can feel myself wavering, feel the rigid certainty starting to crack.