Veronica Hale’s world wasn’t crashing, not yet, but it was teetering on the edge of something irreversible.
She sat alone in her Bel Air estate, the polished chrome of her tablet screen flickering with unread alerts. Articles. Tweets. Clips from Celeste’s live broadcast. Every network had aired it. Every outlet had dissected it. And worst of all, every whisper she'd ever planted, every calculated lie, was being peeled back like rot beneath gold leaf.
"She's... winning," Veronica whispered aloud, the words foreign on her tongue.
Across from her, a half-drunk flute of champagne sat untouched on the table. Beside it, a stack of glossy printed emails, doctored communications, falsified testimonials, now worth less than the paper they were printed on.
The door opened sharply. Diana, her mos
