Chapter 19
The chicken was almost done when Miller heard Astoria’s name.
She’d been standing at the stove, pushing pieces around in the pan without really seeing them, her mind still stuck on the motion she’d spent all afternoon drafting.
The television was on for the background noise—some local news program she never actually watched—and she’d tuned it out the way she always did, letting the new anchors’ voices blend into white noise.
But her brain snagged on those two familiar syllables: Shepry.
Miller turned, spatula still in hand.
On the screen, Astoria’s corporate headshot filled the frame. It was the same photo Miller had seen dozens of times. Next to it, in bold red letters: “brEAKING: LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL TURMOIL IN SHEPRY DIVORCE.”
The spatula clattered against the stovetop. Miller crossed to the couch and sank onto the edge of it, reaching for the remote to turn up the volume. The anchor was already mid-sentence.
“—financial records obtained by the Tribune appear to show erratic spending patterns in the months following the separation, including several large cash withdrawals and transfers to accounts not previously disclosed in court filings.”
The screen cut to documents. Miller recognized them immediately. They were the discovery materials, the kind of financial records that would have been exchanged between legal teams months ago. Someone had photographed them and sent them to the press.
“The documents paint a troubling picture,” the anchor continued. “Legal experts say these revelations could significantly impact the ongoing divorce proceedings.”
Miller’s chest had gone tight. The coverage cut to a legal analyst, some talking head she didn’t recognize who was already spinning the narrative.
“What we’re seeing here is a pattern,” he said, gesturing broadly. “These aren’t the actions of a stable CEO. The spending, the timing of these withdrawals, they paint a picture of someone who may not be fit to retain control of a multi-million-dollar company.”
Bullshit. Miller’s hands curled into fists.
Those financial records were divorce expenditures. Astoria had bought a house after she’d moved out of a shared mansion to rebuild her life from scratch, and she was paying two legal teams. Of course her spending patterns changed. Anyone’s would have.
But stripped of context, photographed at unflattering angles, and read aloud by anchors who’d never met Astoria, they became weapons to accuse her of being erratic, volatile, and unfit.
The coverage continued, cycling through the same handful of documents and damning excerpts. Miller sat on the couch frozen, the smell of burning chicken finally registering somewhere in the back of her mind, but she didn’t move to turn off the stove.
Her phone buzzed, then again, then a third time in rapid succession. She glanced at the screen. Texts from colleagues at the firm.
“Have you seen the news?”
“Holy shit, the Shepry case is everywhere.”
“Isn’t this your old case? What happened?”
Miller turned the phone face-down and kept watching.
They were showing footage of Shepry Global’s headquarters now, the glass tower downtown that Miller had driven past a hundred times.
A reporter stood outside, delivering a breathless update about stock implications and board concerns and what this might mean for the company’s future.
None of it mattered. None of it was the point.
The point was that someone had taken private documents from an ongoing divorce proceeding and handed them to the press. Someone had decided that Astoria Shepry needed to be publicly humiliated and her financial records broadcast to anyone with a television.
And Miller knew exactly who that someone was.
She thought about Valerie in the conference room all those months ago, trying to convince Rachel to present fabricated claims. She remembered her cold fury when Miller had caught the lie. This was what Valerie did: she rewrote reality to fit her narrative, then smiled while she twisted the knife.
And now she was doing it on the evening news, weaponizing private information.
Miller finally got up and went to the kitchen.
The chicken was charred on one side, dark-gray smoke rising from the pan.
She turned off the burner and moved the pan to the sink, but she didn’t scrape out the food.
She just stood there, her hands braced against the counter, staring at the ruined dinner she wasn’t going to eat.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, it was Nadia. “Honey, are you watching the news? Call us if you need to talk.”
Miller’s throat clenched. She typed back a quick response. “I’m okay. Will call tomorrow.” She pressed send, then set the phone face-down again.
She wasn’t okay, really. She was standing in her kitchen while the woman she’d been sleeping with for the past month was being eviscerated on television, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
She couldn’t show up at her door, couldn't sit beside her while she weathered this, couldn't acknowledge publicly that she knew Astoria as anything other than opposing counsel on a case she'd stepped away from a month ago.
The news had moved on to weather by the time Miller made it back to the couch. She muted the television and sat in the silence, her mind turning over the same thoughts like stones in a tumbler.
Valerie had surely leaked those documents. Miller was certain of it. No one else would be this calculated, this willing to humiliate Astoria publicly. There was nothing to gain from it.
And if Valerie had done this—if she was willing to go scorched earth with financial records—what would she do if she found out about Miller?
Rachel’s voice echoed in her head. That conversation at the coffee shop, two weeks ago. “She’s asking questions. Looking for ammunition. If there's anything to find, she'll find it.”
Miller had promised to be careful; she had convinced herself that would be enough.
But watching tonight's news, she understood something she hadn't fully grasped before. Valerie’s suspicion had curdled into something more dangerous, and she was hunting.
And when Valerie found her prey, she didn't hesitate.
She didn't worry about ethics or fairness or collateral damage; she just destroyed.
If Valerie discovered what Miller and Astoria had been doing, she'd claim Miller had sabotaged the case by feeding information to the opposing side.
None of it was true, of course, but it wouldn't matter.
The accusation alone would be enough to destroy Miller's career, undermine Astoria's credibility, and throw the entire case into chaos.
The affair had become a loaded weapon, and Valerie was searching for it.
Miller picked up her phone, her thumb hovering over Astoria’s name.
She wanted to call. She wanted to hear her voice, ask if she was okay, tell her she was coming over.
But she could picture what was happening on the other end: lawyers calling, PR teams strategizing, Gloria fielding inquiries while Astoria dealt with the fallout in whatever way she dealt with things.
She’d be in full-on crisis mode with all her walls up.
Miller wouldn’t be able to help with any of that. She'd just be one more thing to manage.
She typed out a message instead. “I saw the news. I'm so sorry. I'm here if you need me.”
The response came nearly an hour later. “It's been a long night. Gerald's handling it. I'm okay.”
Only three sentences, all polite and measured, the kind of response you’d send to a colleague. Even though Miller understood that Astoria was in survival mode, her ice queen armor fully in place, it still made her chest ache.
She typed back, “thinking of you,” and left it at that.
The evening stretched into something shapeless. Miller tried to read but couldn't focus, then tried to clean up the kitchen and abandoned it halfway through. She ended up in bed by nine, lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling while her thoughts circled.
She thought about Astoria watching the news alone in that big house on the cliff. The house Miller had never seen because they always met at hotels, always kept things compartmentalized, always told themselves they had it under control.
But they didn’t.
Miller was lying in the dark, holding a secret that could destroy them both, but she didn’t sleep. By morning, she knew what she needed to do. She didn’t want to end it, but she refused to be the weapon Valerie used to destroy Astoria.
The right thing to do was obvious. But doing it was going to shatter her.
That night, Miller’s GPS led her down a private road that wound through Cliffside, past gated driveways and properties hidden behind exquisite landscaping.
Astoria's house sat at the end, perched above the ocean.
It had modern architecture, walls of windows catching the last of the evening light, and native plants framing a pathway around the house.
It was the kind of place where you could disappear from the world entirely.
Miller parked in the circular driveway and sat for a moment. Through the windshield, she could see the front door—heavy wood, expensive brass hardware—and beyond it, the woman she was about to hurt.
She got out of the car before she could talk herself out of it.
The walk to the door felt endless. Her heels struck against the stone pathway, too loud in the evening quiet.
No neighbors were visible, no sounds of traffic, just the distant crash of waves against the cliff below and the pounding of her own heart.
She rang the doorbell.
Astoria opened the door within seconds, as if she'd been waiting for her.
She was wearing clothes Miller had never seen on her—soft pants, an oversized sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She looked exhausted. The shadows under her eyes were darker than they'd been two days ago, and her face had that drawn quality that came from too little sleep and too much stress.