The first sign of trouble came at 6:47 a.m., when Elian's phone began vibrating with the particular urgency of a crisis unfolding. He'd been awake for an hour already, reviewing documents from Alhaji Suleiman, but the cascade of notifications told him something had changed.
He checked the screen. Fifty-three messages. Most from his team. Several from numbers he didn't recognize. One from a journalist he'd trusted.
The subject line of the journalist's message read: "I'm so sorry. They wouldn't tell me where they got the information."
Elian opened it. Attached was a link to a story published at 6:00 a.m. on a gossip site with three million followers. The headline:
"EXCLUSIVE: ELIAN ATHEN'S DARK PAST EXPOSED – WHY HIS WIFE REALLY LEFT."
He read it slowly, letting each word land like a ph
