Chapter 21 Corin
Corin
I’m still in bed, with Amara curled against my chest, her breathing soft and even.
The phone vibrates again. Then again.
Can’t be good.
I carefully extract myself from the tangle of limbs and sheets, trying not to wake her. She makes a small sound of protest but doesn’t open her eyes.
I grab my phone and slip into the hallway.
The messages are from Liora, General Counsel to the Saelinger Foundation.
A new article dropped. You need to see this now. LINK.
I pad down to the study, already feeling my chest tighten. The villa is quiet except for the distant sound of waves and the faint hum of the security system. Through the windows I can see Sable doing an early perimeter check along the beach path.
I open the link on my tablet.
The headline makes my stomach drop.
SAELINGER FOUNDATION APPROVED LAND DISPLACEMENT DEALS, LEAKED EMAILS REVEAL
Fuck.
I start reading. Someone has selectively edited and leaked my emails, which show my name on documents I never fully approved. It’s a goddamn masterpiece of character assassination.
But here’s the thing that makes my blood run cold: these are internal foundation emails. Board-level correspondence. Xavier shouldn’t have access to any of this anymore. He was removed from the board. His credentials were revoked.
Which means someone at the foundation in Manhattan is still helping him. Someone with high-level access who can pull archived correspondence and leak it without tripping security protocols.
Every email is real. Every word is mine. But the meaning has been twisted into something unrecognizable. The leaker took legitimate correspondence about due diligence and risk assessment and made it look like I was personally orchestrating the displacement of island families for profit.
I read it twice. Then a third time, looking for anything I can use to counter it. There’s nothing. Without releasing confidential board materials and violating about fifteen different NDAs, I can’t prove these emails were taken out of context.
Xavier and the mole know exactly what they’re doing. This isn’t just retaliation. It’s a calculated strike designed to destroy everything I’ve built since that first mistake five years ago.
My phone rings. Liora.
“I saw it,” I say before she can speak.
“We’re already getting calls from donors and limited partners.” She’s using the clipped tone reserved for when the shit has hit the fan. “Two have pulled out. Three more are ‘reviewing their commitments.’ That’s code for gone by end of day.”
“That bad?”
“That bad. I’ve got Noemi coordinating with legal, but Corin, this is going to get worse before it gets better.”
I lean back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. “What’s the play?”
“Standard crisis management. Issue a statement denying the allegations. Threaten defamation suits. Bury them in legal paperwork until the news cycle moves on.”
“No.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “Corin, if you don’t respond aggressively—”
“I’m not hiding behind you and the lawyers this time.” I close my eyes. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. Letting the board handle it. Letting legal teams craft careful non-statements. I’m done with that playbook.”
“Then what do you want to do?” Liora presses.
“I don’t know yet.” My jaw clenches. “Give me a few hours.”
“You don’t have a few hours. The Today Show wants a comment by nine.”
The Today Show?
Fuck.
“Tell them I’ll have a statement by end of day.” I hang up before she can argue.
By 7:30 AM, the largest donor to the clinic has officially retracted their pledge. A quarter million dollars, gone.
Ysela brings coffee I don’t touch. The mug sits on my desk, while I read increasingly panicked emails from foundation staff.
By eight, Liora forwards a new op-ed my way.
THE WOMAN BEHIND SAELINGER’S REDEMPTION TOUR: ENABLER OR ACCOMPLICE?
I don’t need to read past the headline. But I do anyway. Because apparently I’m a masochist.
The piece eviscerates Amara. Calls her a “convenient legal shield” for my “reputation laundering operation.” It questions her ethics, and suggests she’s either willfully ignorant or actively complicit in covering up the foundation’s failures.
It’s brutal. Designed to destroy her credibility the way the previous article destroyed mine.
Xavier didn’t just come for me. He came for everyone I care about.
Keon texts to confirm the jet is being prepped for a flight back to Manhattan.
I should be strategizing. Running scenarios. Figuring out how to salvage what’s left.
Instead I’m thinking about Amara, still asleep upstairs, and how she’s going to react when she finds out what Xavier has done.
How he’s dragged her into this.
I get up to wake her, but find her already on the terrace outside.
She’s sitting in one of the low chairs, staring at her phone.
Of course.
She would’ve found out by now, too, courtesy of her own professional connections.
I open the door to the patio.
Her face is blank, that careful lawyer mask she wears when she’s processing something devastating.
“Amara.”
She doesn’t look up. “They’re saying I’m complicit.”
I sit in the chair across from her. The ocean stretches out indifferently before us.
Ordinarily, the ocean is a beautiful sight at this time in the morning.
Not today.
“Xavier is saying it,” I tell her. “Not the community. Not anyone who matters.”
“The donors matter.” Her voice is flat. “The limited partners matter. The board matters. Every potential client who Googles my name and finds this will matter.”
“I’ll fix this,” I tell her.
She finally looks at me. Her brown eyes are exhausted. “How, Corin? How will you fix this?”
“We expose him. Show the community what he’s been doing. The shell companies. The land grabs. All of it.”
“We already did that.” She sets her phone down. “And he still won. Because he controls the narrative in Manhattan, where it actually matters. Where the money is. Where the donors and board members and journalists are.”
I run a hand through my hair. “You’re right. I have to go back. Manhattan. The board is convening an emergency meeting. Keon’s already prepping the jet. You should get packed.”
She exhales slowly. “I think... I think I should go back to Manhattan on my own flight.”
I stared at her. Stunned. “You’re own flight? Why?”
“Before this gets worse.” She’s not even meeting my eyes now, just looking at the floor.
“Amara, you can’t—”
“Corin, I can’t be the reason your foundation fails.” She stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “My one-week extension is up. Actually, I’ve gone over by three days. I’ve been here for seven weeks and three days total. It’s time to go. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
Seven weeks and three days.
I’ve been counting, too, but for different reasons.
“What happened to everything you said?” I ask. “About not running?”
Seven weeks since New Year’s Eve. Since she showed up on that beach and turned my carefully controlled exile into something messy and real.
Three days since she left that sandal outside my study door. Since she told me she wasn’t running anymore.
She doesn’t answer.
“This is exactly what Xavier wants,” I continue. “He wants to isolate me. Destroy my credibility. Make everyone around me scatter so I’m easier to finish off. Don’t let him win.”
“He already won.” Her voice cracks slightly. “Look at what he did. To you. To me. To the clinic. He burned it all down in one morning with a few leaked emails and a hit piece.”
“So we rebuild,” I insist.
“With what?” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You think donors are going to fund a foundation run by a guy accused of land displacement and advised by a lawyer accused of covering it up? You think families are going to trust us now?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“I need to pack,” she says finally. “I’ll take a commercial flight back tomorrow. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect it to end this way. And if it’s any consolation, yes, it’s my fault. I’m running. Again. Despite everything I said. Despite...”
She leaves the sentence unfinished, and just walks past me, back into the villa, and I’m left standing on the terrace alone.
I hear her moving through the villa, gathering the few things she’d brought over.
Her legal pad and laptop. The spare work clothes.
The toiletries she kept in the bathroom.
She never fully moved in, even after sleeping in my bed.
Most of her belongings, her suitcases, the bulk of her wardrobe, are still at the resort villa she’s been renting.
That’s right, she kept that villa the entire time.
Never canceled the reservation.
Always had an exit strategy ready.
I walk back inside, head to my study and close the door. I can’t bear to watch her go.
The internal memo I sent previously is still pulled up on my screen. The one where I laid myself bare.
I chose institutional loyalty over individual truth. I will not make that mistake again.
That line stares back at me. Mocking.
Because here I am, about to lose everything again. The foundation. The clinic.
Amara.
There’s a knock on the study door. I don’t answer, but it opens anyway.
Ysela stands in the doorway. “Ms. Khan is requesting a car to her villa at the main resort. She says she’ll arrange her own transportation from there.”
Because she doesn’t even want to be in the same vehicle as me anymore.
“Tell Keon to take her wherever she needs to go,” I say distractedly.
Ysela nods and disappears.
I sit alone in the study, listening to the sound of the front door opening and closing. Then Keon’s SUV starts in the distance. I hear tires on gravel.
Then silence.
She’s gone.
I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, and press my palms against my eyes.
This is what you deserve, the voice in my head whispers. You built everything on a foundation of silence and compromise. You thought you could fix it with transparency programs and accountability reports. But you can’t undo five years of rot with a few memos and a six-week pilot program.
Xavier knew that. He’s just been waiting for the perfect moment to prove it.
And Amara? She finally figured out what I’ve known all along.
I’m not redeemable.
I’m just a better liar than I used to be.
I stare at the closed door of my study. It’s only been, what, minutes?
And already I feel her absence keenly.
Fuck.
Suddenly, the words she told me when we were camped out in the storage room during the tropical storm come back to me unbidden.
Why didn’t you fight for us? Five years ago. When I walked away. You just... let me go.
And that’s when I realize it.
She wants me to fight.
That’s it.
That’s the solution.
All right.
If it’s a fight you want, Amara, I’ll give you one.
I get up, knowing if there’s a fight that defines everything I’ve built and burned and become, it’s this one.