CHAPTER 11 — LEGAL HOLD
Security escorted Fiona out.
Not gently.
Not cruelly.
Efficiently.
Ethan closed his office door and turned the lock, as if the room itself needed protection.
Then he reached for my hands.
He checked them like I was the one who’d been hit.
“Your palm,” he murmured. “Did you break skin?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
Ethan exhaled once, hard.
“What did she say to you?” he asked.
I didn’t give him a speech.
I gave him the bullet points.
“Stella,” I said. “And the office. Rumors. Substitute. Foster care.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
He crossed to his desk and hit one button.
His general counsel picked up on the second ring.
“Daniel,” Ethan said, “we’re doing a legal hold.”
The words landed with weight.
Legal hold meant: no deleting emails, no cleaning chat logs, no “accidental” loss of files. It meant the company was now obligated to preserve information because litigation was reasonably anticipated.
Ethan glanced at me.
“I want you to hear this,” he said.
Then into the phone: “Someone’s spreading defamatory rumors about my wife and about me. Internal and public. I want preservation notices drafted today.”
A pause.
Daniel spoke, too low for me to hear clearly.
Ethan nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Also, coordinate with HR. Stella Tang—she’s in People Ops. She is to be removed from any access that touches employee communications.”
He paused, eyes narrowing.
“Quietly,” he added. “But immediately.”
He ended the call and looked at me.
“Ava,” he said, “I’m sorry you had to hear that in my building.”
“It’s not your building,” I corrected. “It’s your company.”
His mouth twitched.
“Then it’s my responsibility,” he said.
I took out my phone.
I didn’t show him the restroom scene.
I didn’t need to.
I showed him the timeline I’d built.
Times. Posts. messages. Stella’s “report.”
Ethan’s gaze sharpened as he read.
“This is coordinated,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
He nodded once, then reached for another phone line.
PR.
Compliance.
Security.
His world moved into motion.
Mine did too.
At his desk, I opened my cloud drive and created a shared folder with Daniel’s email:
LU v. TANG — EVIDENCE
Ethan watched the folder name appear and smiled, grim.
“That’s my wife,” he said softly.
Then his phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
A link.
Ethan clicked.
His face went blank.
Then dark.
He turned the screen toward me.
A video had been posted from an anonymous account.
Edited.
Chopped.
The hotel aisle. Stella’s red dress. Security dragging her away. The audio twisted to make Ethan sound cruel.
A caption in bold letters:
CEO’S WIFE IS A HOMEWRECKER. CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART HOSPITALIZED AFTER HUMILIATION.
The comments were already multiplying.
So were the shares.
The internet moved faster than truth.
Ethan’s hand tightened around his phone until his knuckles whitened.
“We don’t respond yet,” he said.
I looked at him.
He looked back.
We were thinking the same thing.
“Not until we have the raw footage,” I said.
Ethan nodded.
“And not until the platform preserves the data,” he added.
My phone lit again.
A new message.
Stella, finally, from her verified Instagram.
A single line:
Let’s see how long your ‘marriage’ survives the public.
I took a screenshot.
And added it to the folder.
Then I shut my phone off.
Not because I was afraid.
Because the next move wasn’t emotional.
It was procedural.
And procedure would cost her in ways she couldn’t unsend.