Chapter 16
ADRIANA
Adriana was in her kitchen, dressed but not yet caffeinated, standing at the counter with her phone in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other.
The kitchen was as exactly precise as Adriana herself—a single coffee mug on the drying rack, a stovetop without a mark on it, knife handles so clean they caught the light.
The morning light came through the east-facing windows in clean horizontal bars that striped the counter and the floor and made the room look like a photograph of itself.
The email was from a partner at Hartwell I’ve identified three industry journalists who have already been approached with false information about Parallax Films. Second, planted stories; two trade publications have draft articles in their editorial queues that frame Sienna’s investigation as a personal vendetta rather than journalism.
And the distribution pressure is already active.
Two of the three platforms Parallax has been in talks with have gone quiet in the last several weeks. ”
Adriana’s stomach tightened. “Several weeks. This has been running that long.”
“Since the gala, approximately. Burty authorized it within forty-eight hours of your first confrontation with Sienna.” Andrew set his coffee down.
“The timeline suggests he knew the investigation was real the moment she approached you, and his response was not legal defense but reputation destruction.”
Adriana opened the folder and read. Page by page.
The detail was staggering. Andrew had not just compiled the Hartwell strategy but had cross-referenced it with public records, journalistic contacts, and distribution industry sources to build a complete picture of the campaign’s current status and projected trajectory.
Three journalists had been fed false information about Sienna’s sourcing. Two had bitten. One was expected to publish within the week.
Two distribution platforms had received communications from Burty’s business affairs team, not from Lovett & Associates, notably, which meant Burty had deliberately kept the legal pressure separate from the PR campaign to maintain deniability.
A production company had been retained to create the counter-documentary, with a budget of one-point-two million dollars, roughly four times Parallax Films’ entire operating capital.
The company had already hired a director with a reputation for corporate-friendly “investigative” pieces that looked like journalism and functioned as public relations.
And woven through all of it, invisible unless you knew where to look, was the fingerprint of a man who believed that his money and his influence made him untouchable, and who was willing to destroy an innocent woman’s career to prove it.
Adriana thought about Sienna. About the woman who worked in a converted garage with her best friend and made documentaries that changed the world.
About the woman who had looked at Adriana across a conference table and said you’re not the villain and meant it completely.
About the woman Adriana had held in the dark and then walked away from in the morning, calling it professional distance when it was cowardice.
Burty Howarth was trying to destroy that woman. And Adriana was the only person who could stop him.
The decision crystallized. Not as a strategy, not as an equation, but as an imperative so clear and so urgent that it felt less like a choice and more like the removal of every remaining excuse for not making it.