POV: Jasmine
The anonymous texts had to be coming from Adelyn.
Who else would benefit from the threat? Who else had the motivation to dig into my past, to unearth the one secret that could obliterate everything I'd built? The timing was too perfect, the information too specific. This had her fingerprints all over it—calculated, patient, designed to maximum destruction.
I stared at my phone, weighing options that ranged from terrible to catastrophic. I could tell the brothers, watch them unleash their legal team on a hunt for the source. I could tell Patricia, let her file motions and objections that might buy time but wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
Or I could do what I'd always done when my back hit the wall.
Handle it myself.
My fingers moved before I could second-guess the impulse.
We should talk. Privately. Without lawyers.
The response came twenty minutes later, cautious and intrigued.
Why would I meet with you?
Because I'm tired of this war. And I think we can make a deal.
The typing indicator appeared, disappeared, appeared again. I could almost feel her calculating—weighing the risks against the potential reward, trying to figure out my angle.
Tomorrow. 3pm. The Langham bar. Come alone.
The Langham's lobby bar was all polished marble and muted jazz, the kind of place where deals were made over fifteen-dollar cocktails and discretion was included in the service charge. Neutral ground. Public enough that neither woman could try anything dramatic.
I arrived ten minutes early, claimed a booth in the corner with sightlines to both exits, and ordered sparkling water I had no intention of drinking.
She swept in at exactly three o'clock, dressed in an ivory cashmere coat that probably cost more than my first car. Her makeup was perfection—subtle enough to look natural, precise enough to hide whatever guilt she might feel. If she felt any at all.
The successful victim, perfectly costumed for her role.
"You wanted to talk," Adelyn said coolly, settling into the booth across from me. She didn't remove her coat, didn't order a drink, didn't do anything that suggested she planned to stay longer than necessary. "Talk."
"The anonymous texts." I kept my voice low, steady. "That's you, isn't it? Threatening to expose the Virtue Exchange?"
Adelyn's smile was razor-sharp, cutting through the ambient jazz like a blade. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Cut the shit." I leaned forward, holding her gaze with everything I had. "You've been trying to destroy me since the photos leaked. The press conference ambush. The lawsuit. The whisper campaign that turned half my colleagues against me. This is just your latest weapon."
Something flickered in her eyes—satisfaction, maybe, or the pleasure of being recognized for her work. She arranged her features back into careful neutrality, but I'd seen it. The crack in her armor.
"Even if I did have information about your... financial history..." Adelyn examined her manicured nails with studied boredom. "What would you offer to make it disappear?"
There it was. The admission wrapped in denial, the opening move of a negotiation she'd probably rehearsed for days.
"How much do you want?"
Her lips curved. "Straight to business. I appreciate that."
"I don't have time for games."
"No, I suppose you don't." She flagged down a server, ordered a gin martini with the casual confidence of someone who expected the world to arrange itself around her preferences. "Not with the second hearing coming up. Not with all that evidence about to become public record."
I waited while she performed the ritual of the first sip, watching her savor both the drink and the power she held.
"I've given this considerable thought," Adelyn continued. "What I want isn't just money—though money will certainly be part of it. What I want is vindication."
"Okay."
"The world needs to see me as the wronged woman. The whistleblower who exposed corruption at the highest levels of Cadence Records." Her eyes glittered with something that looked almost like religious fervor. "I want to be the hero of this story, Jasmine. Not the villain you and your lawyers have been painting me as."
"And what does that vindication look like, specifically?"
"A public acknowledgment." She ticked items off on her fingers like a shopping list. "You admit the relationships were inappropriate. The brothers admit they showed me favoritism before discarding me for a younger model. The lawsuit settles with a number that proves I was right all along—proves that Cadence Records was so desperate to silence me that they paid through the nose."
"That's a lot of admissions."
"I'm not finished." Her smile sharpened. "One million dollars. Paid directly to me, separate from any official settlement. Consider it compensation for emotional damages."
The number hung between us like a grenade with the pin pulled.
"And if I refuse?"
Adelyn set down her martini with deliberate care, her expression shifting into something almost sympathetic. Almost.
"Then everyone learns that Cadence Records' rising star sold her virginity online to save her addict brother." Her voice was sweet poison, each word precisely calibrated to inflict maximum damage. "How's that for a headline? I can see it now—'Music Industry Darling's Sordid Past Exposed.' The tabloids will have a field day. Your career will be over.
The threat landed like a knife between my ribs, but I'd learned long ago how to take a hit without showing the wound. I kept my face neutral, my breathing steady, my hands flat on the table where they couldn't betray me by shaking.
Adelyn watched me, clearly expecting tears or rage or desperate pleading. When none came, something uncertain flickered across her features.
I stood slowly, gathering my bag with movements that felt almost ceremonial. Every eye in the bar tracked me—or maybe that was paranoia, the constant sensation of being watched that had become my baseline since the press conference.
"We can work with that."
Adelyn's eyebrows rose. "Excuse me?"
I looked down at her, letting the full weight of everything I'd survived settle into my expression—the foster homes, the parents who chose drugs over their children, the desperate choice to sell myself to save my brother, Jackson's hands on my body, the public humiliation that had nearly broken me.
Nearly. But not quite.
"I said we can work with that. But know this—" I leaned close enough to see my reflection in her pupils, close enough to watch the confidence flicker in her eyes. "I've survived worse than you. And I don't lose."