Chapter 22
Leo
I sit in a glass box, a thousand feet in the sky.
That’s what it feels like, anyway. Suspended above everything real, sealed off behind money and architecture and soundproofing, watching a city move without me.
My apartment is spectacular in the way magazines like to call clean.
Sharp lines. Polished stone. Furniture chosen by someone who understands aesthetics but not comfort.
It is cold.
It is empty.
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around me, giving me a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of a city I don’t live in. I can see traffic inching along like blood through veins. I can see office lights blinking on and off. I can see people living lives that intersect, collide, and matter.
None of them are here.
I’m still in my running clothes from last night. The shirt clings faintly to my skin, stiff with dried sweat. My shoes are kicked off somewhere near the door, one of them tipped on its side like it fell there, drunk. I didn’t shower. I didn’t change. I didn’t sleep.
I can’t sleep.
I sit on a ten-thousand-dollar sofa that somehow manages to be uncomfortable, the cushions too firm, too perfectly engineered, as if they were designed to look good rather than to hold a human body. I lean forward, elbows on my knees, my phone heavy in my hands.
It won’t stop buzzing.
Emails stack up faster than I can process them. Three hundred, then three hundred and twelve. Ninety voicemails. PR. Legal. Assistants who don’t know what tone to use anymore. Investors just checking in. People who smell blood.
I am trending.
I am a pariah.
And I deserve it.
I keep seeing her face. Not in flashes. Not like a dream. It’s relentless, crystal clear, like my brain refuses to let me blur it out. Her eyes. The exact moment it happened. When she realized. When the trust didn’t just break.
It curdled.
It rotted.
Right in front of me.
There’s a very specific look people get when they understand that something they believed in was never what they thought it was. I’ve seen it before. During hostile takeovers. During betrayals. I justified it then with numbers and projections.
I’ve never been on the receiving end of it.
You’re a vulture.
The word echoes, sharp and deserved.
I am.
You don’t get it.
I didn’t.
Not then.
I do now.
That’s the cruelest part. Understanding always comes too late for people like me, after the damage is done, after the choice is locked in, after the thing we wanted most has already walked out the door.
I finally understand what I actually did. Not the sanitized version I told myself at the bar. Not the version Rex pitched with charts and inevitability baked in.
I stole her agency.
I took her choices.
I took something that wasn’t mine to touch, wrapped my ego as a gift, tied it with a pretty ribbon, and tried to hand it to her like she should be grateful.
Like she should smile and say thank you for the mirror I was holding up, one that reflected my own arrogant, lonely, empty face staring back at me.
I wasn’t helping.
I was conquering.
The realization settles heavy in my chest, a cold, sinking weight that doesn’t let up. This is what conquest looks like when you strip away the language that makes it palatable. This is what power does when it mistakes itself for benevolence.
My phone buzzes again.
Longer this time. Insistent. Angry.
REX CHEN.
I’ve ignored fourteen calls.
I stare at his name until it blurs slightly at the edges. My thumb hovers. For a moment, I consider throwing the phone across the room, letting it shatter against the glass.
Instead, I answer.
I put it on speaker and let the phone drop onto the coffee table between us, like a live grenade.
My voice comes out rough. Barely mine.
“What?”
“What?” Rex’s voice explodes from the phone, sharp enough to make me flinch. “WHAT? Leo, where the hell are you? I have investors lined up, Good Morning America wants an exclusive with you and the girl, and I’m hearing she’s CLOSED? That she locked the door? You were supposed to HANDLE HER!”
The words scrape against my nerves.
“She’s not the girl,” I say quietly. My throat tightens around her name. “Her name is Tess.”
“I DON’T CARE if her name is Bambi!” he shouts. “You need to get down there and FIX THIS. The leak was perfect. The narrative was set. Billionaire genius scales local hero’s dream. It’s poetry. And you’re letting her RUIN IT.”
I don’t interrupt him.
For the first time, I don’t argue. I don’t reframe. I don’t jump in with logic, mitigation, or strategy.
I listen.
I really listen.
The shark is fully out of the water now. The charm is gone. The friendly mentorship, the lighthouse metaphors, the bullshit about impact and legacy. All of it has fallen away.
This is just hunger.
Cold. Sharp. Entitled.
“You leaked it,” I say.
It isn’t a question.
There’s a pause, fractional, but telling.
“OF COURSE I leaked it!” Rex snaps. “That’s how we WIN! We create a narrative she can’t escape. She’s forced to the table. It’s genius. She has to sign now. Publicly. Or she looks like a fool. We boxed her in.”
You don’t get to make my choices.
The words aren’t mine, but they might as well be carved into my bones now.
I look down at my hands.
They’re empty.
No tablet. No pen. No illusion of control left to cling to.
I didn’t just use her. I caged her. I built a trap and called it help. I wrapped coercion in inevitability and pretended it was generosity.
Something inside me goes very still.
“It’s over, Rex,” I say.
My voice doesn’t shake this time. The panic drains out of me, replaced by something colder, cleaner, more dangerous.
Rage.
Silence stretches on the line.
“What did you just say?” Rex asks quietly.
“I said it’s over. The ‘Sunrise & Soul’ deal is dead. The LOI is terminated.”
He laughs. Short. Ugly. Disbelieving.
“You can’t, Leo. You signed. It’s contingent, sure, but you walk away now?
After the leak? After I lined up partners?
” His voice sharpens. “Your reputation is toast. Ashford Ventures backs out of a deal with a small business? You’ll be a joke.
And Tess?” He sneers. “She’ll be RUINED.
They’ll say she killed it. She’ll never recover.
You think they’re at her door now? You walk, and you bury her. ”
I close my eyes.
I see her face again.
Not angry. Not yelling.
Just done.
Get out.
I did this.
I put her in that cage.
“I don’t care about my reputation,” I say quietly. The words feel strange and right on my tongue. “And I am not going to bury her. Send me the bill. I’ll pay whatever penalties there are.”
“Leo, don’t be an idiot, you can’t…”
I hang up.
The line goes dead.
Silence rushes back in, heavy and absolute. The city hums faintly beyond the glass, but inside the apartment, it’s just me and the wreckage.
I made a public mess. Which means I have to clean it up publicly.
I can’t call Tess. She won’t answer. I can’t go to the bakery. She’d have me arrested, and she’d be right to.
I stare at my phone for a long second before tapping Julian’s name.
I don’t know how to ask for help without sounding like I'm making it a business problem. I don’t know how to say I ruined something real, and I don’t trust myself not to make it worse. So, I don’t dress it up.
“Julian?” My voice comes out softer than I expect. Raw. “I need your help.”
I brace for it, the joke, the deflection, the wow, look who finally needs something. It doesn’t come.
“Anything you need,” he says immediately.
It knocks the air out of me.
“Could you… Come to my place?” I glance around the empty apartment, as if it might judge me. “Ten minutes. And can you grab Zane on the way? I’ll text him.”
“Yeah,” Julian says. No hesitation. “Sounds good.”
The line clicks dead.
No jokes.
No commentary.
Just yes.
I stand there for a moment, phone still in my hand, chest tight. Julian is the kind of man who makes jokes when things are uncomfortable. The fact that he didn’t means he understands how bad this is.
Zane texts back two minutes later.
ZANE: On my way. Don’t do anything stupid without us.
Too late, buddy. I think to myself.
They show up exactly twelve minutes later.
Julian lets himself in like he always does, tossing his keys onto the marble counter, eyes already scanning me. Zane follows, quieter, carrying a camera bag slung over one shoulder out of pure muscle memory. He takes one look at my face and stops short.
“Oh,” Zane says softly. “It’s that bad.”
Julian doesn’t say anything at first. He steps closer, studying me like he’s trying to decide whether I’m going to break or explode.
“You look like hell,” he says finally. Not unkind. Just factual.
“Feel worse,” I say.
Zane sets the bag down carefully. “Ok. What’s the plan?”
That’s the thing. I don’t have one. Not a clean one.
“I fucked up,” I say. The words come out blunt, stripped of polish. “I hurt someone. Publicly. And privately. And I need to own it before someone else controls the story.”
Julian exhales through his nose. “Tess.”
I nod.
Zane winces. “Damn.”
“I’m ending the deal,” I say. “Publicly. Burning the LOI. No spin. No PR. No framing. I want to go live on the Mavericks channel.”
Julian’s jaw tightens. “Rex is going to lose his mind.”
“Already did.”
“And this fixes it?” Zane asks, not challenging, just checking.
“No,” I say. “But it stops me from making it worse.”
Silence settles between us. Then Julian nods once.
“Ok,” he says. “Then we do it right.”
Zane is already pulling equipment out of the bag. “Lighting’s trash in here. Sit. Don’t move.”
“I’m not…”
“Leo,” Zane says, meeting my eyes. “Trust me.”
I sit.
Julian adjusts a lamp, angling it softer, lower. “No filters,” he mutters. “You don’t get to look better than you feel.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say.
Zane checks sound levels. “Mics clean. The camera’s steady. Chat’s going to be brutal.”
“I know.”
Julian crouches in front of me. “One thing,” he says quietly. “This doesn’t mean she forgives you.”
“I know,” I say. My throat tightens. “I’m not asking for that.”
“Good,” he says. “Then go.”
He steps back. Zane gives me a small nod from behind the camera.
Julian opens the livestream app.
The one that started this whole disaster.
The dare.
The joke.
The stupid, careless beginning of something that became real when I wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t clean up.
I don’t shower.
I don’t change.
I want them to see me exactly as I am.
I go live.
My face fills the screen, pale, grey, wrecked. My eyes look hollowed out, red-rimmed, and exhausted. Julian’s reflection flickers faintly in the glass behind the camera, arms crossed. Zane watches the chat on his tablet, jaw tight.
The viewers flood in.
1k.
5k.
20k.
The chat is chaos.
OMG HE’S LIVE
WHERE’S TESS
WHAT DID YOU DO
I take a breath. It sticks halfway in my chest.
“Hi,” I say.
My voice cracks immediately.
“A month ago, I started a dare on this channel. To work a month of ‘real work.’ It was a joke. A stupid joke. But it became real.” I swallow.
“I met someone. Tess Bennett. She’s the head baker at Sunrise & Salt. And she’s the real thing. She runs her bakery with… soul. A word I’ve been hearing a lot. A word I misused.” The chat slows.
Zane glances up at me and nods once. They’re listening.
“You’ve been seeing the clips. ‘Billionaire Baker.’ It was fun. I was having fun. But I blew it. I did what guys like me always do. I tried to fix something that wasn’t broken.”
My hands curl into fists out of frame.
“She showed me her dream. A real one. An apprentice program. A way to help kids. And I tried to buy it. I thought I knew better. I tried to scale it. I went behind her back. I signed a deal to franchise her bakery, to turn her life into a brand.”
Julian shifts behind the camera, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“She told me no,” I continue. “She showed me her plan. She told me what she wanted. And I didn’t listen.”
My voice breaks.
“She said, ‘You don’t get to make my choices.’ And she was right. I took her choice. I took her agency. I set a trap. I became everything she hates.”
I reach off-screen. Zane hands me the folder without a word.
“The deal, ‘Sunrise & Soul,’ is dead. It’s over.”
I hold up the LOI.
“This is the shortcut,” I say. “And Tess Bennett doesn’t do shortcuts.”
Julian’s jaw tightens. I pull out the lighter. The chat explodes. I flick it.
The paper catches, curling black at the edges, flames climbing fast. I don’t look away. I watch it burn until my hand feels warm and the edges crumble.
“This isn’t for her,” I whisper. “This is for me. This is accountability. I broke her trust. And I don’t know if I’ll ever earn it back.”
I drop the ashes into the glass bowl Zane sets in front of me. They scatter, fragile and final.
“I failed,” I say. “I failed the dare. I failed the bakery. I failed her.”
My breath shudders.
“But I have another idea,” I say. “The one I should have started with.”
I look into the camera.
I am not charming.
I am not polished.
I am begging.
“Tess… if you’re watching. I know I have no right. I know you hate me. I’m asking for ten minutes. No leverage. No money. No surprises. Just ten minutes to listen.”
Tears spill over. I don’t wipe them away.
“I am so, so sorry.”
I end the stream. The screen goes dark. For a moment, no one speaks.
Then Julian exhales slowly. “Well,” he says. “That was nuclear.”
Zane lowers the camera. “Chat’s… shocked,” he says, “Which is better than hostile.”
I stare at the blank phone screen.
“I didn’t fix it,” I say quietly.
Julian steps forward and puts a hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Steady.
“No,” he agrees. “But you stopped running.”
And for the first time since I walked out of the bakery, that feels like something I might be able to live with.