SEVENTEEN
Cece
Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
My mind keeps looping around a random collection of words from the article I saw an hour ago.
Marital clause.
Exclusive photo.
All-too-familiar embrace.
Former flame.
But it doesn’t matter. It’ll blow over. It will.
And I will make sure to not make any public appearances for the next three to four weeks. Perhaps Levi would need to be convinced because this affects him too. And he’d need me to stick with for the sake of our entwined image. But I can convince him.
My hand wanders to my phone again, like it has been for the past 62 minutes. But this time, I open my notes app. The pinned note of my to-do list glaring at me.
I watch the tremor in my fingers impassively, frowning them to submission—as if I could. Then I quickly type out the two bullets that I need to add.
Inform Sebastian Blackthorn about the news article leak
Message my PA to cancel public meetings for the next month
I stare at the items I added. They don’t feel enough. Nothing feels enough. What else can I do? My life is tactfully streamlined into work, family, hobbies, and… love.
But everything is colliding with each other and my thoughts are a dynamic labyrinth of things I can’t control anymore. Constantly moving, shifting—slipping.
The rapid synapses of every single piece of thought fires off before I can catch it. Sebastian will take care of the leak. Maybe. My absence in public will help… help… what?
My knuckles start aching and that is when I realize I’ve abandoned my phone and am currently standing, digging my fist into the wooden desk.
I flinch when a knock sounds on my already open door. My head snaps up to stare at my PA, Amanda.
“Ms. Wentworth, you have a visitor? It’s… Mr. Astor.” Her voice is so careful, almost gentle.
My jaw clenches at the fact that it’s pity. They know. They all probably know.
Suddenly my brain is sadistically hoping for a different Mr. Astor. Perhaps Thomas. I could even take Gareth over the possibility of Levi showing up.
But it’s him. I don’t know how long before Amanda leaves and Levi arrives, but I’m staring at him, leaning against my now closed door, shoulders slightly slumped. And fully defeated.
The silence, for once, is welcome. I don’t want either of us to acknowledge how that single article desecrated our relationship. I don’t care much about the image, but I do know that this was an impressive attempt by his parents. Maybe even a successful one.
“I’ll… fix this, Cece.”
I know it’s him speaking, but his voice is muffled against the wool clouding my every sensory system.
Fix this.
Fix.
I hastily grab my phone again, the notes app still open, and rapidly type out my latest thought.
Press conference or interview to clarify
Christ. This sounds so deliriously insufficient. What would I even say? ‘Yes, I agreed to the marriage but I actually do love him?’
I doubt it would sway public perception when he’s already been pictured with his former flame.
My vision clouds and suddenly fills with a hand grabbing my phone. And I realize Levi is now standing beside me. The lapels of his plaid, open shirt in the direct line of my vision.
I almost grab it—yearning to tug it. But I’ve learned my lesson. He doesn’t recognize it. My signal. And a hug from him right now will be damaging to the cool streak of numbness I have flowing through my veins.
“Baby, please. Look at me?” He’s awfully quiet even when he speaks. I’m guessing he’s cautious about hurting me since the sensory overload episode I had.
Still, I don’t obey. My hand gripping my phone tighter—unable to surrender it to his grasp.
“Sebastian,” I whisper finally.
I watch him nod in my periphery. “Yes. I’ll ask him to help. Baby, I… Taewon has arranged an emergency meeting at the Astor office. To see how we can—fuck—fix this. You up for it?”
Frowning, I manage to finally lift up my face. The coldness in my fingers barely registering the warmth of his hands. “Yeah.”
I feel the stretch of my facial muscles relax when I force the tension away. And that’s when I realize I’ve probably been frowning—or grimacing.
“Let’s…” I sigh. “Let’s go. I’ll call my lawyer, he can—”
“Already done.” His voice is soft. Gentle in the same way as Amanda’s was. Like I’m one wrong word away from breaking.
I’m not. I’m really not.
Levi doesn’t speak further. He simply stuffs my phone in my purse and walks us out. I’m vaguely aware of the pill bottle of my Seroquel sitting near the photo frame I have of me and Levi on my desk.
I don’t grab it, though. I had pulled it out for my noon alarm. But I let it be. Even though my toes itch to turn back around and snatch the pills from my desk.
Forty-three minutes later we’re here. Assembled in the Astor conference room—waiting for the rest of the team to arrive. I didn’t even ask who all were joining us. The moment Levi confirmed that my lawyer was coming, I relaxed. Jenson would know what was needed.
I stare at the massive TV on the wall, the article front and center. It stays there for what feels like eight endless minutes before Levi finally changes the screen. His voice is clipped, agitated.
The meeting has already started now. I didn’t even notice.
My eyes are locked on the television, hoping I can extract some kind of strategy from the visuals alone.
But the screen flashes through bullet points too fast, too shallow.
Whatever game plan they are discussing—if it can even be called that—isn’t meant for me to understand. I’m not able to.
I can still read.
But listening? Comprehending? That is getting harder by the minute.
Every now and then, I feel a squeeze—on my hand, my thigh. Levi. Trying to keep me tethered to the present. But I am already halfway out of it. Escaping it without wanting to.
What feels like only a few minutes later, people have already scattered—signaling the end of the meeting.
“Noona.”
I flinch. Taewon’s voice. Familiar, brash, usually comforting in its sharpness. He always teased Levi when we bickered, slipping effortlessly into the role of an annoying younger brother.
But this isn’t silly anymore. This isn’t something to joke about.
This is a PR catastrophe meticulously engineered to skin us alive. I’ve seen the reposts, the rewordings, the sly reframing of a single article into something more damning.
And the comments.
God—the comments.
False, vicious, perfectly curated like someone was paid to annihilate me. Someone actually could have.
“I’m sorry,” Taewon says, voice thick with guilt I don’t understand. “I should’ve… Are you okay?”
I look at him—really look—searching for the usual spark of confidence in his face. The one that always made me feel like we’d find a way out. He was Levi’s EA, his shadow, his best friend, and his contingency plan. He always has workarounds. There is a reason why he is his inheritor.
But right now, he just looks tired.
So I nod, hoping my voice doesn’t crack from disuse. “I’m fine. Just… weird day.”
Another small pressure coils around my waist. Levi is still beside me, silent. Holding me up without making a show of it.
“Noona—” Taewon’s voice is cut off by another, more urgent feminine one.
“Ms. Wentworth, Could I… I’m just so sorry for how—”
But I’m not listening anymore. The room blurs. Or maybe the voice slips past me. Taewon’s presence fades too. My focus tunnels to the ringing in my ears and the white noise in my chest.
Someone is talking. Arguing. Flailing.
And I’m already somewhere else. Until I hear the one sentence that yanks me out of the stupor.
“You’ve done enough,” Taewon whisper-yells harshly, too loud in the quiet room. “There’s a limit to how much you can interfere. You reached it a long time ago.”
My eyes snap to them. Taewon. Iris. Standing a few steps away, far from the boardroom table. I didn’t even notice she was here. She’s been here the whole time?
Iris looks flustered, even a little angry—her eyes glossy, her jaw tight. “I just wanted to apologize—”
“Keep those damn apologies to yourself,” Taewon snaps again.
Levi stands abruptly, chair legs screeching against the floor. “Can you not do this here, Taewon?”
Taewon barely looks at him. His eyes stay locked on Iris, filled with an unfamiliar fury. “We called you here for a statement. And that’s that. There’s nothing else we need from you.”
“I—” Iris frowns. “I am sorry if this bothers you, Mr. Choi. But these are things that don’t include you—”
“They include me,” Taewon says coldly. “Everything to do with them includes me.”
“Tae, relax,” Levi mutters, stepping forward. “Take this—”
“Can you,” Iris’s raised voice cuts through the tension like a whip, “for one minute, stop being the fucking guard dog to these two? They’re entirely capable of having a civil conversation with me.”
At some point, everyone else must’ve cleared out the conference room, because it’s just the four of us now.
Me. Levi. Taewon. Iris.
And this is no longer about strategy or PR or damage control. This is personal.
I blink. The fog was somehow thinning.
I can hear the heat in Taewon’s words. I can finally see the way Iris’s shoulders have curled in on themselves.
And it hits something ugly in me.
Taewon keeps going, relentless. “You think we don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to salvage from the fuck up you created?”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You’ve always done just enough to stay in orbit. Just enough to get what you need. Until you find another rich bastard to bankroll your next career step.”
“Taewon,” Levi snaps.
But he isn’t finished.
“If you don’t fucking back off from this account, I’ll make sure you never get that research wing—anywhere. But then again… I’m sure you’ll find another sap to scrape off.”
Iris’s face drains of color. Shock radiated off her in waves. And something in me—something raw and sharp and deeply buried—cracks wide open.
Because I know that look. I know that hollow like it’s my own. I know what it feels like to be stepped on. Reduced to something you violently disagreed with.
I untangle myself from Levi’s arm, step forward, hand raised—and smack the back of Taewon’s head, hard.