The first day ended without any major disasters.
No one fell off the terrace.
No one tried to livestream Nathan in the shower.
No one burned the house down.
By midnight, the estate had quieted.
Sophie finally made it to her room, toes throbbing, brain humming like an overtaxed circuit.
She toed off her boots, flopped face-first onto the bed, and let out a muffled groan into the duvet.
Her phone buzzed somewhere on the nightstand.
She considered ignoring it.
Then thought of generators, weather, and her own inability to let go.
She rolled over and groped for it.
One new notification.
EMAIL: URGENT – STREAMWAVE SOCIAL PULL
Her stomach dropped.
She thumbed it open.
> From: Priya Shah > To: Sophie Turner > Subject: URGENT – Leak? > > Hey— > > I don’t want to freak you out at midnight, but we might have a problem. > > Someone at StreamWave (not on-site) just posted a screenshot of what looks like a page from Nathan’s new draft in our internal Slack. It’s already leaking onto standom Twitter. People are freaking out because it “confirms” a fan theory about the book’s plot. > > I’m trying to get ahead of it, but it’s spreading fast. Dan says it’s “great organic buzz,” but Isabel looks furious. > > Did Nathan authorize *anyone* to see pages beyond you and his editor? > > —P
Cold spread through her chest.
She sat up.
No.
No, he hadn’t.
He’d trusted her with a sliver.
He hadn’t given StreamWave anything.
Not yet.
Her mind raced.
How could they have gotten a page?
The answer slammed into her so hard she almost dropped the phone.
The Story Lab.
One of the creators had been filming B-roll earlier with printouts as props.
Hoodie had mentioned “storyboarding” his own ideas and asked Nathan, half-jokingly, if he could “show off any spicy lines” on camera.
Nathan had snorted and said no.
But had he left any pages lying around elsewhere?
The study.
The library.
His desk, covered in printed chapters.
Her stomach turned.
She typed back, fingers flying.
> From: Sophie Turner > To: Priya Shah > > Nathan did NOT authorize any draft pages to be shared. > > Can you send me the screenshot? And find out which Slack channel it came from? > > I’ll talk to Nathan and Howard now. > > We need to contain this before he sees it in the wild.
She didn’t even change out of her clothes.
She shoved her feet back into her boots, grabbed her key card, and headed for the study hall.
The house was quieter at night than she remembered.
The hum of the generator was a low, steady presence under everything.
Her footsteps sounded too loud on the hardwood.
The glass door to the study glowed faintly.
Light spilled out from under it.
He was awake.
Of course he was.
She didn’t knock.
She tapped her card and went in.
He looked up from his desk, pen in hand, brows drawn.
He saw her face.
His expression shifted.
“What happened?” he asked.
She closed the door behind her, heart pounding.
“StreamWave has a leak,” she said. “Your pages. Or parts of them.”
His pen clattered onto the desk.
“What?” he said.
She moved closer, holding out her phone.
“Priya just emailed,” she said. “Someone posted a screenshot of a page in their internal Slack. It’s already bleeding into fan spaces.”
He took the phone.
His eyes scanned the email fast.
Jaw clenched.
“Which page,” he said. “Exactly.”
As if on cue, another email buzzed in.
Priya, sending the screenshot.
Sophie opened it and held it out.
Even in her adrenaline haze, she recognized the scene.
The one he’d sent her weeks ago.
The one with the you-adjacent character breaking into a corporate facility and telling a billionaire client, Your money doesn’t impress me. Your ability to not be a dick under pressure does.
The screenshot had captured the line.
Highlighted it.
The caption, in some internal chat, read:
> CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING 😱 Cross really went there #Blackout2Spoilers
Her heart hammered.
She watched Nathan read it.
His face went pale.
“This is… Chapter 14,” he said, voice flat. “First pass. I printed it… yesterday. To mark up.”
“Where?” she asked, already knowing.
He gestured vaguely to the stacks on his desk.
“I went to the kitchen,” he said, slow. “Rafe yelled at me for stealing a cookie. I… must have left the top sheet loose.”
Her mind supplied an image: one of the creators passing by the open study door, eyes flicking in.
An opportunistic hand.
A snap of a phone camera.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
He stood abruptly, chair rolling back and hitting the credenza with a dull thud.
“Who?” he said. “Which one of them?”
“We don’t know yet,” she said. “Priya’s trying to trace it. But the Slack screenshot she sent—it was in a channel called #hype-room. Anyone at the company could have seen it once it was there.”
He ran both hands through his hair.
For a second, he looked less like the man who’d commanded a room that afternoon and more like the nineteen-year-old who’d lain under a roof, suffocating.
His breath hitched.
“I told them no pages,” he said, more to himself than to her. “No excerpts. No… nothing. Not until I was ready.”
“I know,” she said.
“It’s not finished,” he said. “It’s not good. It’s… raw. And now they’re… picking it apart like vultures over an autopsy.”
Her phone buzzed again.
She ignored it.
“Nathan,” she said, stepping closer. “Look at me.”
He didn’t.
He stared at the screenshot.
His hands shook.
“Nathan,” she repeated, firmer.
His head jerked up.
His eyes were… wild.
Like when the power had gone out.
Like when the storm had pressed white against the glass.
“This is a violation,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
The hateful calm in his voice scared her more than a shout would have.
“I let them into my house,” he said quietly. “Into my space. On my terms, I thought. I set boundaries. I… believed you when you said we could control it.”
Guilt stabbed.
“Some asshole walked past my desk and decided my work was… content,” he went on. “Not pages. Not… blood. Just… fuel for hype.”
“Nathan,” she said. “We can—”
“Control the damage?” he snapped. “Spin it? Say, ‘Look, organic marketing, how fun’? This isn’t a fucking meet-cute on a streaming show, Sophie. This is my… insides. Out there. In a way I didn’t choose.”
She flinched.
She deserved that.
Not because she’d caused it, exactly.
But because she’d promised security.
And something had slipped through.
“I’m not going to pretend this isn’t awful,” she said, meeting his gaze steadily. “It is. It’s a betrayal. Of your trust. Of the parameters we set. I’m not going to say ‘at least it’s just one page’ or ‘the buzz will help sales.’”
His face tightened at the word “buzz.”
“What I am going to say,” she continued, voice gentler, “is that we can decide what to do next. Together. You don’t have to react alone.”
He laughed, a short, harsh sound.
“Together,” he said. “Easy to say when it’s your name trending alongside mine with a fucking ship tag.”
Heat flared.
“That’s not fair,” she said.
His eyes flashed.
“Isn’t it?” he said. “You get… articles. Profiles. ‘Power fixer’ pieces. You get job offers from men in camel coats. You get your phone blowing up with congratulations. I get… leaks. Fanfics about my trauma. Teenagers on TikTok psychoanalyzing me with sparkly captions.”
Her chest burned.
“Don’t you *dare* pit that against each other,” she said, low. “I’ve never once asked for attention at your expense. Every piece, every spotlight, I’ve tried to redirect. To share. To protect you.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The anger there wasn’t really about her.
She knew that.
But it still stung.
“You were the one who said yes to this,” she went on, softer. “To StreamWave. To cameras. To people. I didn’t drag you. I advised. You decided.”
“I decided based on your word,” he said. “Your… scaffolding.”
“A scaffolding that’s holding,” she said. “Even with this. The house isn’t collapsing. The summit is still happening. Your draft is still mostly private. One stupid, stolen image doesn’t define all of it.”
He stared at her like she’d spoken a language he half-understood.
“What do you want to do?” she asked. “Specifically. Not in abstract rage. In action.”
He exhaled, shaky.
“Find who did it,” he said. “Make sure they never work with me again. Make sure they know exactly what line they crossed.”
“Good,” she said. “We can do that. Priya can trace the Slack origin. Howard can work with StreamWave’s internal team. They have logs. We can get a name.”
“And then?” he asked bitterly. “I send them an angry email? Tweet a passive-aggressive subtweet? I don’t do public shaming.”
“No,” she said. “You do private boundaries. You tell Isabel and Dan exactly how close they are to being uninvited from your life. You make them police their own. This is as much their failure as the individual’s.”
He paced away, hand at the back of his neck.
“I want to cancel tomorrow,” he said. “Kick them all out. Tell them to take their ring lights and go.”
She swallowed.
“That’s an option,” she said carefully. “It would burn bridges. It might feel good in the short term. It might also… haunt you later. In ways that have nothing to do with leaks.”
He stopped.
“Spare me the career lecture,” he snapped.
“I’m not lecturing,” she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. “I’m reminding you of what *you* said. About intention. About choosing this. About not feeding the machine and then being surprised when it bites.”
He looked at her, furious and hurting and… lost.
Her chest clenched.
“You’re allowed to be pissed,” she said. “You’re allowed to freak out. You’re allowed to never want a camera near you again. None of that is… wrong.”
“But?” he said.
“But you’re also allowed to take a breath,” she said. “To not torch everything in the first hour of panic. To remember… we have tools. We have people. You’re not nineteen under a roof with no one in charge.”
His throat bobbed.
He looked, briefly, like he might break.
She stepped closer, slow.
“Sit,” she said softly. “Please. Before you fall.”
Something in her tone must have gotten through.
He dropped into the chair like someone had cut his strings.
She crouched in front of him, hands hovering over his knees, not quite touching.
“Breathe with me,” she said, the way she’d once done for a bride hyperventilating over wilted flowers. “In for four. Out for six.”
He glared.
“Don’t—”
“Humor me,” she said. “Please.”
He snapped his mouth shut.
In.
His chest expanded.
Out.
Shoulders dropped a millimeter.
Again.
In.
Out.
She matched him, exaggerating her own breaths so he could sync.
Slowly, the wildness in his eyes receded a fraction.
His hands unclenched from the armrests.
“Better?” she asked quietly.
“Marginally,” he muttered.
“Good,” she said.
She straightened, legs protesting.
“Now,” she said. “Next steps.”
She thumbed open her phone, ignoring the dozen new notifications.
“First, call Howard,” she said. “He needs to be looped in.”
Nathan made a face. “He’s going to be insufferably calm,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “We need his brand of boring right now.”
She stepped aside as Nathan hit Howard’s number.
Within two minutes, Howard was there, hair slightly mussed, tie gone, but eyes sharp.
He took in the scene—Nathan white-knuckled, Sophie stiff, the phone on the desk glowing with the leak.
His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
“Oh dear,” he said.
It was the British version of “fuck.”
They laid it out.
Howard listened, then nodded once.
“I’ll call Isabel,” he said. “We’ll need to press them hard on internal security. And on whose ass this ultimately lands.”
“You think they’ll admit fault?” Nathan asked bitterly.
“They’ll have to,” Howard said. “If they want to keep working with you. Which they do.”
He squeezed Nathan’s shoulder briefly.
“Try not to go nuclear before we have more information,” he added gently. “You’ll have plenty of time for that later, if needed.”
Nathan snorted.
Howard left, already dialing.
Sophie leaned against the edge of the desk, crossing her arms to keep them from shaking.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Nathan said abruptly.
She blinked. “Which question?”
“Do you regret this,” he said. “Saying yes. Coming back up. Bringing them here.”
She didn’t hesitate.
“No,” she said. “I regret the leak. I regret that someone took advantage of your openness. I don’t regret… us doing this.”
His eyes searched her face.
“Yet,” he said.
“Yet,” she allowed.
He huffed.
“Are you… mad at me?” he asked, quiet.
The question cracked something in her.
Mad?
At him?
“No,” she said, the word surfacing from somewhere deep. “I’m mad *for* you. I’m mad at them. I’m mad at the system that makes your pain a commodity. But not at you.”
“You’re allowed to be,” he said. “At me. I was… an ass. Just now.”
“Yes,” she said.
He blinked.
“You’re supposed to say ‘no, you weren’t,’” he said.
“You were,” she repeated. “You took your rightful anger at SteamWave and sprayed it in my direction because I was here and you knew I wouldn’t run. That doesn’t make you evil. It makes you human. It also means you owe me an apology.”
He stared.
Then, slowly, “I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
“That was surprisingly easy,” she said.
“Don’t get used to it,” he muttered.
She exhaled, tension loosening.
“Thank you,” she said.
He swallowed.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you need… anything?”
The question caught her off guard.
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
He narrowed his eyes.
“Liar,” he said.
She sighed.
“I need… sleep,” she admitted. “And for no more crises to happen between now and breakfast. And for some underpaid social media intern to get a stern talking-to and a mandatory ethics course.”
He huffed.
“You need someone to have *your* back,” he said. “For once.”
“I have people,” she said. “Miranda. Lia. You, sometimes.”
“Not just sometimes,” he said. “More than you let yourself admit.”
Her chest squeezed.
The urge to touch him—the way she had in the kitchen, hand on his arm—flared.
She resisted.
Barely.
“Get some rest,” she said instead. “We’ll know more in the morning. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it then. Not at two a.m. when everything feels twenty percent worse.”
“You’re kicking me out of my own study?” he asked.
“I’m kicking you out of your own panic loop,” she said. “Go to your room. Drink water. Try to sleep. Text me if the roof starts talking.”
He sighed.
“Bossy,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s my charm.”
He stood, slower this time.
As he passed her, he paused.
For a heartbeat, he hovered close.
His hand lifted, fingers brushing a loose strand of hair off her forehead.
The touch was feather-light.
Intimate.
She froze.
Rule two screamed.
He let the strand fall behind her ear.
His hand dropped.
“Thank you,” he said.
Her throat was dry.
“For what?” she managed.
“For… scaffolding,” he said. “Even when the bolts shake.”
Emotion burned behind her eyes.
She swallowed it down.
“Go,” she said.
He went.
She stayed in the study a few minutes longer, staring at the screenshot on her phone, the highlighted sentence that had set the internet ablaze.
Your money doesn’t impress me. Your ability to not be a dick under pressure does.
The irony wasn’t lost on her.
The man who’d written that was currently holding his own against a system designed to reduce him to content.
She put her phone down, dragged her fingers through her hair, and let herself sag into his chair for a second.
Then she stood.
There were emails to send.
Damage to mitigate.
Summit schedules to hold steady.
She was tired.
Angry.
Protective.
But not broken.
Neither was he.
Not yet.
If she had any say in it, not ever.
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