Zayden’s POV
Jocelyn's phone won't stop vibrating.
It's been going off for twenty minutes straight, a relentless buzz against the desk surface that sounds like a wasp trapped under glass. Each notification makes her flinch, and I watch her shoulders tense incrementally with every sound until she's holding herself so rigid she might shatter.
"Turn it off," I say.
"I can't." Her voice is hollow. "I need to see what people are saying, and need to know what we're dealing with."
She picks up the phone with hands that aren't quite steady. Her thumb scrolls, and I watch her face drain of what little color it had left.
"Jocelyn."
"They're calling me a gold digger." She keeps scrolling, compulsively, like she can't stop even though every word is a knife. "Saying I knew what you were when I married you. That I'm complicit in Vivienne's abuse. That I'm—"
Her voice cracks. She sets the phone down with careful precision, like it might explode.
I move around the desk and take it before she can pick it up again.
The screen is a nightmare of notifications—the social media she'd promised to stop checking has been checking on her instead.
Push notifications she never turned off, emails from reporters requesting statements, DMs flooding every account she owns from strangers who feel entitled to tell her exactly what they think of her life choices.
You married a monster.
How can you defend him? She lost a BABY.
Gold-digging bitch probably knew the whole time.
Hope you can sleep at night knowing what he did.
The messages scroll on endlessly, each one worse than the last. Hundreds of people who've never met us, never heard our side, already convicted me and appointed Jocelyn as either willing accomplice or tragic victim depending on which narrative fits their worldview better.
"Don't read this shit," I say, powering down the phone completely.
"They're right about one thing." Jocelyn's staring at her hands now, fingers twisted together in her lap. "I did marry you knowing your history, knowing you're capable of being cold, calculating. What if they're right about the rest?"
"You don't believe that."
"I don't know what I believe anymore." She looks up at me, and the doubt in her eyes is worse than any of those messages. "You dated Vivienne for almost a year, had a whole relationship I only know the sanitized version of. What else don't I know about how you treated her?"
The question lands like a physical blow.
"Nothing." I crouch in front of her chair, forcing eye contact. "I told you everything. Every fight, every manipulation, every reason I ended it. There was no pregnancy, no violence, no miscarriage. This is fiction designed to destroy us."
"But you can't prove that."
"No." The admission tastes like ash. "I can't prove something didn't happen. That's what makes it such an effective lie."
Her hand moves unconsciously to her stomach, protective, and I remember she's eight weeks along with a baby the world doesn't know about yet. The timing is so perfectly, cruelly orchestrated I almost have to admire Vivienne's strategic brilliance.
Almost.
I stand, pulling my own phone from my pocket. "We need to get ahead of this legally. Control what we can control."
"You're going into fix-it mode." Jocelyn's voice carries something that might be relief or might be exhaustion. "I can see it happening."
She's right. I can feel the shift occurring, that familiar narrowing of focus that happens when emotion becomes a luxury I can't afford.
The part of my brain that built empires and crushed competitors is already cataloging assets, identifying weaknesses, constructing battle plans.
"Someone has to," I say, already dialing Landon's number.
He answers on the second ring. "I've been watching the coverage. It's bad."
"It's about to get worse. I need a counterstatement drafted. Something that denies the allegations without giving them more oxygen. Can you have it ready by morning?"
"I can have it ready in two hours."
I hear the keyboard clicking in the background.
"But Zayden, you need to understand—denying domestic violence allegations is a minefield. Anything too aggressive makes you look defensive. Too soft makes you look guilty."
"Then find the middle ground. That's what I pay you for."
"What about travel records? You mentioned you were in Tokyo during the timeframe she's claiming."
"Pull everything. Flight manifests, hotel receipts, meeting schedules. I want a complete timeline proving I was overseas when this supposedly happened."
I'm pacing now, thinking out loud.
"Also pull medical records showing I was never listed on any prenatal documentation, never consulted about pregnancy care, never—"
"That assumes she'll claim she told you about the pregnancy," Landon interrupts. "She could just as easily say she kept it secret initially, that the violence happened before disclosure."
He's right. Every defense we construct, Vivienne can reframe. Every piece of evidence we provide, she can explain away.
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Stick to provable facts. You dated for eleven months, the relationship ended three years ago, you deny all allegations of physical violence. Period. Don't engage with specifics because that's playing her game."
Jocelyn makes a small sound, and I turn to find her watching me with an expression I can't quite read.
"Draft the statement," I tell Landon. "Send it to me for review before filing."
"One more thing." His voice drops. "Morrison Trust already pulled their funding commitment. Officially citing 'ongoing concerns about leadership stability.' More will follow."
The foundation we built is bleeding out while I'm on the phone drafting legal defenses.
"Let them pull out." The words come out harder than I intended. "We'll find other donors. People who actually give a damn about facts."
I end the call and find Jocelyn standing now, arms wrapped around herself.
"The Morrison grant was two hundred thousand dollars," she says quietly. "The youth employment program runs on that money. Without it, we have to cut staff or reduce services."
"We'll figure it out."
"When do we figure it out, Zayden?"
The question isn't hostile, just exhausted.
"Between legal statements and media management and trying to prove you didn't do something that never happened? When exactly do we save the foundation from collapsing under the weight of your ex-fiancée's revenge?"
I don't have an answer that won't sound hollow.
She moves to the window, looking out at the city lights below. "There's something else we need to consider."
"What?"
"If the media finds out I'm pregnant right now, in the middle of all this…"
She pauses, and I can see her working through the implications.
"They'll spin it. Say I trapped you, that I got pregnant deliberately to secure my position before your reputation crashed. Or worse, they'll compare our pregnancy to her alleged miscarriage. Make it some kind of sick narrative about replacement babies."
The thought hadn't occurred to me, but of course she's right. Of course the media would weaponize even this.
"We can keep it quiet," I say. "At least until—"
"Until when? Until I'm showing? Until someone notices I'm not drinking at foundation events?" Her laugh is bitter. "There is no good time to announce this, Zayden. Every possible moment gets contaminated by Vivienne's lies."
She turns from the window, and I see tears she's refusing to let fall.
"I wanted this baby to be a celebration. A new beginning after everything we survived rebuilding the foundation and our lives together. But instead it's going to be another weapon people use against us."
I cross to her, pull her against my chest despite her initial resistance. She stays stiff for a moment before melting into me, her forehead pressed against my shoulder.
"They can't take this from us," I say into her hair. "Whatever narrative they build, whatever lies they spread—this baby is ours. Our truth. Not theirs."
"I'm scared," she whispers.
"I know."
"I'm scared they'll make me hate being pregnant because of the timing. I'm scared the stress will hurt the baby. I'm scared…"
Her voice breaks completely, and I just hold her while she trembles against me.
Outside, the world is deciding who we are based on a television interview and calculated lies. Inside this office, I'm holding my pregnant wife while she fears the media will turn our joy into ammunition.
Vivienne wanted to destroy us.
This might be how she finally succeeds.