Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The press release landed in my hands three minutes before I was supposed to walk into the grand ballroom with Sebastian.
A junior staffer from the Tribune — Marcus Chen’s assistant, of all people — intercepted me near the coat check, her expression somewhere between apologetic and morbidly curious. “Ms. Rivera, I thought you should see this before you go in.”
The Laurent Enterprises letterhead gleamed under the chandelier light. My eyes caught key phrases like shattered glass: strategic partnership announcement… exclusive investigative access… Rivera’s findings integral to corporate transparency initiative…
My findings. My work. Published under their banner without my name anywhere on the byline.
The joint op-ed we’d planned together — the one I’d spent three sleepless nights drafting, the one that was supposed to be ours — had been released twenty minutes ago. Solo. Under Sebastian’s name. With my research treated as supporting evidence rather than the foundation it actually was.
My phone buzzed. Jenna.
Girl, the op-ed just dropped. Did you know about the timing?
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. My thumb hovered over the screen while my brain tried to reconcile the document in my hands with the man who’d held me two nights ago and promised we were partners. Who’d said beside you like he’d finally understood what the word required.
The ballroom doors loomed ahead, warm light spilling through the gap where servers moved in and out carrying champagne flutes.
Somewhere behind those doors, Sebastian was probably working the room, shaking hands, playing the reformed billionaire while my credibility got fed into the wood chipper of corporate PR.
I smoothed my dress — a deep navy column I’d bought for myself three years ago for a press freedom awards ceremony, the one I reached for when I needed to remember who I was — and walked in anyway.
The gala was everything these events always were: obscene wealth performing concern for something other than itself.
Crystal chandeliers cast diamond patterns across marble floors.
Women in designer gowns circulated like exotic birds, their laughter pitched to carry.
Men in bespoke suits clustered near the bar, talking deals disguised as small talk.
I spotted Sebastian immediately because my body had developed an inconvenient radar for him. Tall, devastating in midnight wool, his beard trimmed sharp. He stood near a cluster of board members, his posture relaxed in that way that meant he was anything but.
His eyes found mine across the room.
Something flickered there — relief, maybe, or recognition — before I watched it freeze into wariness as he read my face.
He knew. Good.
I didn’t walk toward him. Instead I moved through the crowd with purpose, letting people see me, letting them wonder. The whispers had already started, because of course they had. In this world, scandal traveled faster than light.
“—heard she was sleeping with him the entire time—”
“—can’t trust anything she published now—”
“—Laurent’s little pet journalist—”
Each phrase landed like a slap I refused to feel. I’d been called worse by better people. What burned was the source of the fire — not the gossip itself, but who had handed them the matches.
Victoria Ashford materialized at my elbow, her smile sharp enough to draw blood. “Emilia. What a surprise to see you here. I would have thought tonight might be… uncomfortable.”
“Only for people who care about gossip, Victoria.” I plucked a champagne flute from a passing tray. Needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t strangling anyone. “I’m a journalist. I deal in facts.”
Her eyes glittered with malicious delight. “Facts like how you got your exclusive access? Some people might call that something other than journalism.”
The implication hit its mark, but I was done playing defense. “Some people don’t have the credentials to know the difference. Excuse me.”
I left her sputtering and made my way toward the grand staircase where Sebastian now stood with Charles Preston and two other board members.
Heads turned as I climbed. Conversations stuttered. Someone actually gasped, which would have been funny if I weren’t about to do something that might cost me everything.
“Gentlemen,” I said, my voice carrying in the sudden quiet. “Mind if I borrow Mr. Laurent for a moment?”
Charles Preston looked at Sebastian with an expression that screamed see, this is what we warned you about. Sebastian’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“Of course.” Sebastian’s voice was level, controlled. “Excuse me.”
We moved to a quieter corner near a massive floral arrangement. The scent of hothouse roses hung thick and cloying around us.
“Em—”
“You used my work.” I kept my voice low, but the words came out sharp as broken glass. “You published our op-ed without my byline. You turned my investigation into your corporate narrative.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“I have the press release, Sebastian.” I held it up between us. “Laurent Enterprises announces strategic partnership with investigative findings. My findings. Positioned as supporting documentation for your transparency initiative.”
His expression shifted, storm-gray eyes narrowing. “I didn’t authorize that release. Daniel sent me a draft this morning, and I told him to hold it until we could—”
“Until you could what? Ask my permission? Because that clearly wasn’t the priority.”
“Someone on the communications team jumped the gun. I’m handling it.”
“You’re handling it.” I laughed, and the sound came out bitter enough to etch glass. “Like you handle everything else? Behind closed doors, making decisions for both of us, letting me think we were actually equal partners in this?”
Around us, people pretended not to watch while absolutely watching. Phones appeared in hands. Someone was definitely recording this.
Sebastian stepped closer, his voice dropping. “Can we discuss this somewhere private?”
“Why? So you can control that narrative too?”
“Because what I have to say isn’t for public consumption, and neither is what you’re feeling right now.”
The intimacy of that statement — the presumption that he knew what I was feeling, and the infuriating accuracy of it — made me want to scream. Or kiss him. Or both, which was the entire goddamn problem.
“You don’t get to manage this.” I held my ground, refusing the step back my body wanted to take.
“You don’t get to spin what’s happening into some story about miscommunication and corporate bureaucracy.
You knew what that op-ed meant to me. You knew it was supposed to be ours — both our names, both our perspectives.
And the first chance your company had to absorb it into your brand rehabilitation, they did. And you let them.”
“I didn’t let them do anything. I found out twenty minutes ago, the same time the story started trending.”
“Then say that publicly.” I gestured toward the stage where some charity executive droned about donation goals. “Get up at that podium and tell everyone your company published my work without authorization. Clear my name the way you promised.”
His hands flexed at his sides. The signet ring caught the light as he turned it unconsciously. “It’s not that simple.”
“It never is with you.”
The band shifted into something slow and elegant, providing soundtrack to our destruction. Couples drifted toward the dance floor while we stood frozen in our private catastrophe.
“The board is already calling for my resignation,” Sebastian said, his voice tight.
“Half my investors are threatening to pull out. If I publicly contradict the press release my own company issued, I undermine whatever credibility I have left with the people I need to bring the Corsetti case to its conclusion.”
“And what about my credibility?” My voice cracked despite my best efforts — not with weakness, but with the specific force of something that had been held too tightly for too long.
“What about every source who trusted me? Every editor who gave me space? Every reader who believed my reporting was independent?” I held the press release up between us.
“You just handed ammunition to everyone who wants to say I traded integrity for access. For intimacy. For you.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is being erased from my own story.”
We stood there, breathing each other’s air, close enough that I could smell cedar and leather beneath his expensive cologne. Close enough that my body remembered every way his hands had touched me, every promise whispered in the dark.
It made the betrayal cut deeper.
“Em.” He reached for my arm.
I stepped back before he could touch me. “Don’t.”
“This isn’t what you think.”
“What I think is that you made a choice.” My throat ached with words I didn’t want to say in public, didn’t want to say at all.
“You could have called me the second that release hit. You could have pulled it before it went to press. You have an army of people who exist specifically to manage situations like this. And instead, you’re standing here telling me it’s complicated. ”
“Because it is—”
“No. It’s simple.” I stepped back one more time, creating distance that felt like miles.
“Either I’m your partner, which means my name and my work get treated with the same respect as yours.
Or I’m just another asset to be managed, leveraged, absorbed into the Laurent machine whenever it’s convenient. ”
Sebastian’s expression cracked — something raw and desperate breaking through the control he’d been working so hard to dismantle. “You know that’s not how I see you.”
“Do I? Because right now, all I see is a man who still can’t stop trying to protect his empire long enough to protect me.”