THE BILLIONAIRE'S BARGAIN BRIDE

THE SCANDAL RESURFACES

Chapter Five: The Scandal Resurfaces

The engagement announcement ran Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon, Elena's phone had not stopped buzzing.

Most of it was harmless congratulations from vendors, a slightly unhinged voicemail from her aunt in Sacramento, a bouquet from Margaret with a card that read Welcome to the family, whether you like it or not. Elena had allowed herself, for about six hours, to believe this might actually be manageable.

Then Priya walked into the office holding her phone like it was something that might bite her.

"You need to see this," she said.

The headline was not subtle. COLE HEIR'S MYSTERY FIANCÉE HAS A FAMILY SECRET — REYES NAME LINKED TO 2014 AFFAIR SCANDAL.

Elena's stomach dropped through the floor.

The article was thin on facts and thick on implication old photos of her mother from a decade ago, grainy and unflattering, next to a photo of Elena at last year's industry gala, dressed in green, laughing at something out of frame. The piece didn't say much that was technically false. It didn't need to. It just needed to make the connection: like mother, like daughter, another Reyes woman marrying up.

"They can't possibly think this is news," Priya said, furious on her behalf. "It's a decade-old story about your mother, not you."

"It doesn't matter," Elena said, quietly, sitting down hard in her desk chair. "It never mattered whether it was fair. It just has to be a story people want to believe, and this one writes itself."

She thought of being sixteen, walking into school the week the first version of this story broke, the way conversations had stopped when she entered rooms. She thought of her mother crying at the kitchen table, insisting through gritted teeth that she had not known the man was married until it was already a headline, and nobody caring whether that was true because the story was so much more satisfying if it wasn't.

Her phone buzzed again. Damian.

She almost didn't answer. She'd known this was coming …she'd warned him it might, hadn't she, back at that coffee shop, everyone has things they'd rather stayed private but knowing a storm is coming and standing in it are different animals entirely.

"Elena." His voice was clipped, urgent in a way she hadn't heard from him yet. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said, in the automatic way she said it to everyone, and hated herself a little for the lie.

"You're not," Damian said. "I've read the article three times looking for something you did wrong, and I can't find it. It's about your mother. You were sixteen."

Something in Elena's chest loosened, fractionally, at hearing him say it like that like it was obvious, like the shame she'd been carrying around for a decade was a coat that had never actually fit her in the first place.

"The board will want a statement," she said, because it was easier to talk logistics than feelings. "Some kind of distancing language. I understand if you need to…"

"I don't need to do anything of the sort," Damian said, sharper than she'd heard him. "Elena, listen to me. I am not going to release a statement putting daylight between us over a tabloid piece about your mother's private life from before you could legally vote. If that's what you were bracing for, you can stop."

"You barely know me," Elena said. "You don't owe me your company's reputation."

"I've known plenty of people who'd have handed me a press release by now, distancing themselves from anything inconvenient," Damian said. "You negotiated a contract with me over lukewarm coffee and asked for honesty as your only extra condition. I think I have a reasonable sense of who I'm dealing with."

Elena pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes, willing herself not to cry in front of Priya, who was very deliberately pretending to reorganize a drawer that did not need reorganizing.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"Now," Damian said, "you come to the Foundation dinner tonight. As planned. And you let me handle the rest."

"Damian, if this makes things worse for the company…"

"Let me worry about the company," he said. "That's the one thing I actually know how to do."