15. Chapter 15
Claire
The morning is quiet enough that I can hear the soft tick of the clock on the wall. I'm skimming the summit briefing, trying to get ahead of the day, when my phone buzzes beside the cold coffee.
A message from Darius.
Camille called.
Shit. The deadline flashes through my mind like a warning light I'd forgotten to check.
I close the laptop. Reach for my coat.
***
Twenty minutes later, I'm riding the elevator to his penthouse, the kind of ride where every floor feels like it's stalling on purpose. My pulse hasn't settled since his text.
He opens the door in a gray t-shirt, phone already in his hand. He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. The tension is already in the room.
I step inside. He taps the screen.
Camille's voice fills the space — honeyed Southern accent, every word landing like it was gift-wrapped.
"Sugar, I hope you understand what ignoring me means."
The sweetness in her tone is wrong — stretched thin, like it's holding back something sharper.
"And I hope your… advisor… understands it too."
My breath catches. Not fear — recognition. She's not just angry. She's watching.
Camille continues, her voice tightening around the edges.
"I gave you a window. A generous one. And now we're down to hours, not days. If you won't cooperate, then I'll move forward without you. But I'd prefer to handle this face-to-face. Before the summit begins."
A beat. A soft, humorless laugh.
"I have a proposal that benefits everyone involved. I expect both of you to show up. And I expect you to remember that I always keep my promises."
The voicemail ends.
The silence afterward feels like it has weight.
I listen to it again.
When it stops, I look at him. "What did you say when you called her back?"
"I didn't." He sets the phone down, jaw tight. "I texted you instead."
Something in my chest steadies — not relief, but clarity.
"Good," I say. "Because this isn't PR anymore."
He waits, shoulders tense.
"She referenced the deadline. She referenced me. That's escalation." A beat. "We need legal counsel looped in."
He exhales, slow. "I have an attorney."
"Then call him," I say. "Now."
He nods once — like he already knew but needed to hear it out loud. I move to the counter. There's a coffee waiting for me — the right amount of cream — and somehow that small detail hits harder than the voicemail.
I open my notebook.
"We have four hours before the summit doors open," I say.
His jaw sets. "Then we use all of them."
***
The lobby of the Marriott Marquis hums with the kind of energy only a league event can generate.
Sports journalists crowd around charging stations, team reps cluster in tight circles, sponsors glide through the room with branded tote bags and practiced smiles.
Everyone is talking, moving, shaking hands — completely unaware that the real story of the day is walking in through the front doors.
Darius steps beside me and the room feels it before anyone looks up. It's not just recognition — it's him. The way he moves, the way he carries himself, like the air around him runs on a different frequency. Heads turn. Conversations slow. People nudge each other and reach for their phones.
He's composed in a charcoal suit, no tie, shoulders relaxed in a way that looks effortless but isn't. I'm in my cream blazer, notebook tucked under my arm, left hand bare where the ring should be — it's at the jeweler getting sized, but the absence feels louder than jewelry ever could.
We cross the lobby together, and cameras lift before we even reach the second set of doors. Three flashes, maybe four. I don't have to manufacture anything. We don't pose. We don't slow down. We just walk — united, steady, prepared.
Everyone else is here for panels and press. We're here for a confrontation.
And the closer we get to the conference wing, the more it feels like the air is tightening around us.
Camille spots us before we're even halfway across the lobby.
Chanel. Pearls. Hair sprayed into immobility. She's mid-sentence with a league communications director, smiling like she's posing for a holiday card.
Then her eyes land on us — on Darius's arm linked with mine — and her whole face seizes.
She tries to keep smiling, but the expression curdles. The muscles around her mouth twitch like she wants to frown but the Botox won't let her. Her eyes go flat and cold, locked on me with a look that says I hate you so clearly she might as well have spoken it out loud.
She doesn't blink. She doesn't breathe. She just stands there, frozen, staring at us like we've walked in holding a lit match over everything she built.
Darius slows beside me, sensing it too — the way the air tightens, the way her gaze sharpens into something territorial and vicious.
I hold her stare and smile. Calm. Deliberate. The kind of smile that says I see you, and I'm not moving.
Her jaw ticks. Her chin lifts a fraction. And she turns back to her conversation like she didn't just give herself away in front of half the lobby.
First round goes to me.
***
The mid-morning coffee break empties the ballroom in under four minutes. I'm refilling my cup at the far end of the refreshment table when Camille materializes beside me.
No greeting. No warning. Just her perfume and her precision.
"I'll keep this brief, Miss Wells," she says, fluttering her fingers in the air like she's announcing herself on a stage.
"I know the engagement is staged. I have enough sourced detail to make that story credible — the timeline, the NDA structure, the fact that you proposed the arrangement.
" She adds, almost sweetly, "And no, I won't reveal my sources. "
My fingers tighten around the coffee urn handle.
She fills a cup without looking at me.
"What I want is simple. Darius signs a statement framing the Atlanta incident as a misunderstanding that my husband escalated out of proportion. One page. Measured language."
I keep my voice even. "And if we don't?"
She smiles — slow, poisonous.
"Then I run the story. All of it. And when the public finds out you engineered a fake engagement to manipulate optics?" She tilts her head. "Sweetie, you'll be laughed out of the circles you think you just won your way into."
The words hit like a slap. Heat flashes up my neck. My pulse spikes hard enough to feel in my teeth.
There it is. The real threat. Not to my employment — to my reputation.
She leans in, voice softening into something sanctimonious.
"I'm in marriage counseling. Working on my marriage. Doing the responsible thing." A beat. "Optics matter more than ever right now."
For one second — one — the polish cracks. A flicker of desperation under all that Chanel.
She needs this lie to survive her divorce. She needs it like oxygen.
She straightens, sets her cup down, and smooths the front of her jacket.
"I'll need to speak with him first," I say.
She nods like she expected exactly that, then turns to go. She's almost to the door when she pauses — one hand resting on the frame, not quite looking back.
"Seventy-two hours, Miss Wells." Her voice is pleasant. Final. "After that I stop being generous."
She walks away, unhurried, certain she's cornered me.
I stand there holding a cup of coffee I no longer want, replaying every word, every implication, every threat. I need to think through every option before I bring it to him. I need to know which move protects him and which move protects me, because right now I'm not sure those are the same move.
I push the thought down and go back inside.
***
Darius is in the fourth row when I slide into the seat beside him. The afternoon panel is already underway — three league executives discussing media transparency, which is almost funny given the morning I've just had.
He leans slightly toward me without turning his head. "Well?"
"Later," I say quietly.
He goes still for half a second. Then he faces forward again.
Under the table he passes me a piece of cinnamon gum without looking at me, and I take it without looking at him. Then his hand finds mine and squeezes once — steady, quiet, no performance in it — and we sit side by side through the entire panel while I run scenario after scenario in my head.
The gum is still in my fist when the panel ends.
***
The afternoon networking session spills into the main corridor and out onto the hotel terrace. I am standing near the windows with a glass of water and my phone when I hear Camille's voice carry across a cluster of communications executives.
"The most interesting thing about image rehabilitation," she's saying, "is how often the publicist becomes part of the story."
She pauses for the laugh. Gets it.
Then she glances at me.
Direct. Deliberate. A half-second of eye contact that says she knows exactly where I'm standing and chose those words anyway.
My stomach drops.
She's not posturing. She's not rattled. She is standing in a room full of the people who control sports media narratives and she is telling them, in the most elegant possible way, to watch me.
Seventy-two hours just got a lot shorter.