11. Marcus
Marcus
The footage hits my phone before the first board member finishes asking whether the relationship narrative is still stable. For half a second, no one in the conference room notices.
Graham is at the head of the table, expression controlled, one hand resting near the folder legal prepared before the meeting started.
Declan leans back beside him, watching the room with that careful stillness he uses when he already dislikes where a conversation is heading.
Adrian stands near the windows, arms folded, gaze on the skyline instead of the board members pretending they’re asking questions instead of applying pressure.
Sloane sits two seats to my right, the extra distance subtle enough that nobody else in the room would question it. The distance is deliberate, and because she is Sloane, she has made it look like a seating strategy rather than avoidance.
I notice anyway, even though I try not to.
“The public response is still favorable,” one of the board members says, tapping the printed report in front of him. “But favorable isn’t the same thing as sustainable.”
Sloane’s pen stills against her notes for less than a second, but she never looks at me. That should help. The distance between us has been deliberate since the reception hallway last night. Instead, the absence of her attention only makes me more aware of it.
Because all I can think about is the hallway last night, the way she leaned in first, and the fact that stopping myself felt less like control and more like tearing something out by the root before it could grow teeth.
The kiss at the press conference had been different. Dangerous, yes, but public. Forced by circumstance. Built on noise and cameras and the pressure of everyone watching. I could label that moment. A strategy that went too far. Performance that became careless for one second.
Last night had no excuse. No audience or public pressure was demanding that we be closer. Just Sloane looking at me like she knew exactly what I wanted and had decided, for one reckless second, not to step away from it. That’s harder to categorize, which makes it harder to control.
My phone vibrates again against the table. This time, Sloane sees it. So does Graham.
I turn the screen just enough to read the alert.
LEAKED CLIP RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT VALE-PARKER RELATIONSHIP TIMELINE.
A second alert follows beneath it.
SOURCE CLAIMS CROSSRIDGE “ROMANCE” WAS MANUFACTURED AFTER PHOTO SCANDAL.
The room goes tense before anyone says a word. Sloane reaches for her tablet immediately, fast enough that I know she was already bracing for whatever comes next.
I open the clip.
The audio is poor, but the image is clear enough. A quiet corridor inside Crossridge. Sloane and me standing too far apart to look like what we were selling. Her saying something I can’t hear. Me stepping back. The timestamp in the corner places it just after the press conference.
It’s not the worst thing they could have, and not enough to damage us on its own, but it’s enough to create doubt. Enough to suggest the relationship is staged and make the entire situation feel deliberate instead of random.
“Put it on the screen,” Graham says.
Sloane does.
Within seconds, the clip plays across the main display, enlarged enough for every person in the room to watch the gap between public performance and private reality become visible.
The footage is short. Seventeen seconds. No sound that matters. No kiss. No argument. No smoking gun. Just distance. Enough to make the relationship we sold look less convincing the second the cameras were supposed to be gone.
Sloane watches the footage once without blinking, then again before finally reaching for the remote on the third loop and stopping the playback before anyone else can speak.
“You knew this was coming.”
She says it without looking at me, gaze still fixed on the frozen image of us standing in that hallway with a visible line of space between us. I don’t correct her immediately, not because she’s right, but because explaining it won’t change what she’s already decided.
“Sloane,” I say.
That gets her to turn. Her expression is calm, but nothing about it is soft.
“When?” she asks.
Graham looks between us. “When what?”
“When did you know there was footage?” she asks, still looking at me.
“I didn’t.”
Her mouth tightens just enough to tell me she doesn’t believe that. Or worse, she wants to.
“This is why you kept pushing for clearer lines,” she says. “This is why you became so formal yesterday. You knew something like this could surface, and instead of telling me, you adjusted around it.”
“That isn’t what happened.”
“No?” She sets the remote down carefully. “Then this is just convenient timing?”
Declan swears under his breath, and Adrian turns to look at me.
I keep my voice even. “The footage is new.”
“The footage is new to me.”
The distinction is sharp enough to cut through the entire room.
I understand the accusation beneath it. Not just that I kept information from her, but that I made decisions for her again. That I saw risk and moved without giving her the choice to stand inside it on her own terms.
It is the wrong accusation, and it stings because it resembles too many things I have done.
Graham rises slowly. “We need facts before this becomes a second wave.”
“Already pulling the source,” Sloane says.
Dana’s name flashes on her tablet, followed by three messages in rapid succession. Sloane scans them, her face going more controlled with each one. “Dana says the first upload came through a shell account created six weeks ago. Same amplification pattern as the original photo leak.”
My attention drops briefly to the revised media packet waiting beside my notebook.
Evan had it on my desk before I arrived this morning, complete with overnight coverage summaries, investor sentiment tracking, and a breakdown of every outlet still pushing the original narrative.
The atmosphere in the room shifts almost immediately.
One leak can be dismissed as opportunistic. Multiple leaks arriving in carefully timed waves start looking deliberate. But more importantly, how did they get videos from our own internal feeds?
The oldest board member at the far end of the table folds his hands. “If the relationship is now being questioned, we need a stronger position.”
Sloane’s gaze snaps to him. “We need the source verified.”
“We need confidence restored,” he replies. “Verification can happen in parallel.”
“That is how companies make mistakes publicly.”
“And hesitation is how companies lose control privately.”
The room tightens, and I’m already on my feet before Sloane can answer, partly because the board member is wrong and partly because he’s aiming the accusation directly at her.
But mostly because I’m tired of watching people treat her like the weakness in a structure she’s been holding together almost single-handedly.
“The issue is not Sloane’s management of the response,” I say. “The issue is a coordinated leak designed to undermine confidence in the response. Direct your questions there.”
The board member looks at me. “No one is questioning Ms. Parker’s competence.”
“You were about to.”
Sloane’s head turns slightly, subtle enough that I feel her annoyance more than I actually see it.
Graham says my name quietly—a warning I recognize immediately and ignore anyway.
Not because I want conflict with the board.
Because sometimes allowing someone to finish a line of questioning gives it legitimacy it does not deserve.
“We’re not creating a second internal problem because someone outside this company fed edited footage into the media cycle,” I continue. “Sloane remains in control of communications.”
Silence follows, heavy enough that the soft click of Sloane closing her tablet still seems to carry across the room.
“Stop making decisions for me.”
Her voice is quiet enough that the board members at the far end have to lean in slightly.
I turn toward her. “That wasn’t—”
“It was.” She stands, and there is nothing uncertain in the movement. “You can defend the strategy without speaking over me.”
“I was stopping them from redirecting blame.”
“And you did it by making me look like someone you need to authorize.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what they heard.”
For a second, every argument we’ve had since this started folds back into the room. Control versus credibility. Protection versus autonomy. Me trying to shield her from the pressure and somehow reinforcing the exact thing she hates most.
Graham exhales once. “Enough.”
Sloane holds my gaze without flinching, and I hold hers right back, even though neither of us should still be pushing this conversation.
The board member clears his throat, suddenly more careful. “The question remains. How do we stabilize this?”
Sloane turns first.
“We address the clip directly,” she says. “Not defensively. We frame it as exactly what it is: two people leaving a public appearance separately to avoid creating additional spectacle. We do not over-explain. We do not release personal details. We do not chase every interpretation.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” someone asks.
“It will slow the second wave,” she says. “That buys us time to trace the source and prepare a legal response.”
“It doesn’t eliminate doubt,” another board member says.
“No,” Sloane replies. “Because nothing eliminates doubt once people decide speculation is more entertaining than fact. You contain it.”
The answer is clean, correct, and still nowhere near enough. I know it before I say anything. So does Graham. The board wants stability, investors want certainty, and the public wants a story simple enough to repeat.
The footage has turned our private distance into public suspicion. A statement can slow that down, but it won’t stop the larger problem.
“We need a stronger commitment,” I say.