33. Walk of Shame
Walk of Shame
SLOANE
The executive wing carpet is charcoal and deep enough to swallow a secret.
Today, it feels like quicksand, every step toward the elevators a fight against the urge to turn back and peel the smug, corporate veneer off Graham Voss’s face with my fingernails.
My dignity is currently somewhere in the pile of the rug, muffled and discarded.
"Keep moving, Sloane," the security guard says, his voice a low rumble behind me. His name is Ray. I’ve brought him coffee on early recording mornings for three years. I’ve asked about his daughter’s gymnastics meets.
Now, he won’t look at me. He looks at a point exactly two inches above my left shoulder, his hand hovering near his belt as if I’m a threat he’s been trained to neutralize.
The bullpen is deathly quiet. This is the place where news is broken, where stories are dissected, where the truth is supposed to be the only currency that matters.
But as I’m paraded past the glass-walled offices and the open desks, the truth feels like a lead weight in my stomach.
The silence isn't respectful; it’s a physical barrier, thick and suffocating.
I see Derek Halloway standing by the breakroom, a paper cup in his hand and a look of poorly concealed triumph on his face.
He doesn't look away. He wants to witness the fall.
He wants to see the exact moment the 'No-Bull' brand collapses under the weight of a lie so loud it’s currently trending on three different social platforms.
My eyes sting, but I refuse to blink. If I blink, the tears might actually win, and I’m not giving this building the satisfaction of seeing me break. I’ve survived Marcus. I’ve survived a divorce. I’ve survived the slow, grinding machinery of corporate apathy. I will survive this walk.
Inez is at her station, her hands still resting on the soundboard. She’s the only one who looks at me. Her expression isn't pity—it’s a quiet, burning fury that matches the one simmering under my ribs. She gives me a single, sharp nod. It’s a promise. The logs are safe. The receipts are coming.
We reach the elevators. The chime is a cheerful, jarring sound in the stillness.
Ray steps into the car with me, the air between us heavy with everything he isn't allowed to say.
My reflection in the brushed steel doors is a stranger: pale, sharp-edged, a woman whose world just went up in digital smoke.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Donovan," Ray murmurs as the doors slide shut, cutting off the view of the office I spent a decade building. "Orders are orders."
"I know, Ray," I say, and my voice sounds like it’s coming from a very long distance. "I know exactly whose orders they are."
The lobby is worse. The glass walls offer no protection from the mid-morning sun or the handful of people already gathered near the entrance, phones held aloft like modern-day torches. News travels fast in this city, and a disgraced podcast host is a high-value target for the hungry.
Ray leads me toward the revolving doors. My badge, the one with the photo of a younger, more hopeful Sloane, is clipped to my blazer. He reaches out, his fingers brushing my lapel as he unclips it. The absence of that small piece of plastic feels like a severance of my nervous system.
"You have to leave the premises immediately," he says, his voice returning to the professional drone. "A courier will deliver your personal effects to your home address within forty-eight hours."
"My plants," I say, and the words are small and pathetic. My career is a radioactive crater, my brand is a punchline, and I’m fixated on a Haworthia. It's supposed to be indestructible. "They need water on Fridays. Graham will let them rot just to prove he can."
Ray doesn't answer. He just gestures toward the street.
I take a breath, square my shoulders, and step out into the light.
The noise hits me first—the city traffic, the distant sirens, and the immediate, sharp click of a camera shutter.
I keep my head down, my hair falling forward to hide my face, and start walking toward the curb.
Then I see the car. It’s a dark SUV, idling illegally at the bus stop, and leaning against the passenger door is the only person who hasn't treated me like a biohazard in the last hour. Cooper Ellis looks like he’s been through a war.
His shirt is rumpled, his hair is a mess, and his eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that makes the rest of the world blur into a gray smudge.
He doesn't wait for me to reach him. He moves, three long strides that eat up the pavement, and before I can say a word, his hands are on my shoulders. He’s warm. He’s solid. He smells like the coffee he didn't get to finish and the rain that’s threatening to fall from the heavy clouds above.
"I’ve got you," he says, and the sheer, unadulterated conviction in his voice does what the security escort couldn't. It breaks the dam. I lean into him for a heartbeat, my forehead resting against the rough cotton of his henley, and let out a breath that feels like a sob.
"They took my badge, Cooper," I whisper into his chest. "They walked me out like a criminal."
"They’re idiots," he says, his grip tightening just enough to be a tether. "They’re idiots who just handed us the keys to their destruction. Look at me, Sloane."
I pull back just enough to look up at him. His face is a map of protective fury, the kind of expression I’ve spent my whole life trying not to need from anyone. But seeing it now doesn't make me feel weak. It makes me feel like I’ve just been handed a weapon.
"We aren't going home to hide," Cooper says, his thumb brushing against my cheek, catching a stray tear before it can fall. "We’re going to Tessa’s. Inez is already sending the raw files to her personal drive. We’re going to take every single lie they just told and we’re going to burn the building down with them. "
A photographer tries to edge closer, the lens of his long-range camera glinting in the light.
Cooper doesn't even look his way. He just shifts his body, shielding me from the view, and opens the car door.
He ushers me inside, the leather of the seat cool against my skin, and shuts the door with a finality that feels like a period at the end of a very long sentence.
He climbs into the driver’s seat and pulls away from the curb before my seatbelt is even clicked. We don't talk for the first few blocks. I watch the NovaWave building recede in the rearview mirror—a glass tower that suddenly looks less like a kingdom and more like a tomb.
"Milo," I say, the panic finally finding its voice. "Cooper, the news. If he sees it—"
"Tasha’s already at the school," Cooper interrupts, his hand reaching across the center console to find mine.
He weaves our fingers together, his palm a steady, grounding heat.
"She’s taking him to her place for a 'superhero playdate.
' No screens. No news. Just LEGOs and distractions until we’re ready. "
I close my eyes, the tension in my neck finally starting to give way to a dull, throbbing ache. He thought of everything. While I was being humiliated in the executive wing, he was building a perimeter around my son.
"You’re supposed to be the sunshine, Cooper," I say, my voice trembling. "You aren't supposed to be good at the tactical retreat."
"I'm not retreating," he says, his jaw tight as he maneuvers through traffic. "I'm repositioning. There's a difference."
He squeezes my hand, and for the first time in an hour, I don't feel like the victim of a corporate hit. I feel like the architect of a counter-strike. The humiliation is still there, a bitter tang at the back of my throat, but beneath it is something sharper. Something more dangerous.
We pull into Tessa’s driveway twenty minutes later. Her house is a small, vibrant bungalow that usually smells like lavender and chaotic energy. Today, the front door is already open, and Tessa is standing on the porch, her laptop tucked under one arm and a look of grim determination on her face.
"Get in here," she calls out as we climb out of the car. "Inez just sent the metadata for the AI filter. It’s a mess, Sloane. They didn't even try to hide the timestamps on the manipulation."
I walk up the steps, Cooper right behind me, and step into the house. It’s cluttered and warm and safe. It’s the exact opposite of the sixty-eight-degree precision of the NovaWave studios, and as the door clicks shut behind us, I realize that I don't miss the glass tower at all.
"Okay," I say, sitting down at the kitchen table as Tessa clears a space among the stacks of research papers and coffee mugs. "Show me what we have."
Cooper sits next to me, his chair pulled close enough that our shoulders touch. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to. The way he stays in my space, the way he watches the screen as Tessa pulls up the audio files, says everything I’ve been afraid to believe about him.
"This is the original clip," Tessa says, clicking a file. "And this is what Rhea aired. See the spike in the frequencies here? That’s the AI stitching. It’s amateur hour, guys. They were so confident you’d just roll over that they didn't even hire a professional to clean it up."
I listen to the sound of my own voice, twisted and distorted into a weapon against me.
I listen to the words I never said, the cruelty I never felt, and I feel the last of my fear evaporate.
You can only destroy a person with a lie if they believe they deserve it.
And looking at Cooper, looking at the steady way he handles the chaos, I know I don't deserve this.
"We can't just release the raw audio," I say, my professional brain finally clicking back into gear. "They’ll claim we doctored it after the fact. We need the server logs. We need the proof that Rhea accessed the AI suite on the nineteenth floor."