Valemont Studios – VCN Headquarters, 7:45 A.M.
The lights were too bright.
The cameras are too close.
And Selene’s heart was beating so fast it almost drowned out the questions she’d rehearsed in her head.
She sat beside Cassien on a cream velvet couch in the VCN morning show studio across from a talk-show anchor who smiled with shark teeth and perfectly glossed lips. The nation’s most-watched broadcast. The kind of program that could make or break careers, rewrite reputations, or, in their case, topple an empire.
Cassien had chosen this moment. This platform. This woman.
Because if you were going to drop a truth bomb that could rip apart a billion-dollar empire, you might as well do it in front of ten million viewers and a live global stream.
The studio hummed with nervous energy.
