The fallout came quietly.
Too quietly.
The next morning, the blog went dark.
No update. No clarification. No retraction. Just a blank page where Vivienne’s insinuations had lived—like she’d wiped the board clean and stepped back to see what pieces moved on their own.
Alexander noticed first.
He stood in the doorway of the study, phone in hand, expression tight. “It’s gone.”
I looked up from the email I was pretending to read. “Gone?”
“The post. The follow-ups. Even the comments.” He frowned. “That’s not like her.”
No. It wasn’t.
Vivienne never erased. She reframed. She edited reality until it favored her. Silence meant calculation.
“Then she’s thinking,” I said.
His gaze sharpened. “That worries me.”
It should have. But instead, a strange calm settled over me. I’d spent years r
