CHAPTER 21
1034 Words
Damian's POV
Celeste made her move Wednesday.
I was in a meeting with the estate lawyers when Lena came in without knocking, which she only did when something required immediate attention. She set her phone on the table in front of me, face up, and stepped back.
It was a media piece. A lifestyle publication, the kind with reach in exactly the circles Celeste had spent twenty years cultivating. The headline was clean and deliberate.
“Harlow Heir's Mystery Wife: Who Is Reina Castillo, and What Does She Want?”
I read it in forty seconds. It was surgical. No outright lies, Celeste was too intelligent for that. Just framing. Strategic omission. The suggestion woven through every paragraph that Reina was a woman of unclear motive who had appeared in a billionaire's life under unusual circumstances and was now firmly embedded in it. There was a photo, Reina outside the hospital, taken without her knowledge, probably within the last week.
Theo had missed it. Or it had happened before Theo.
I closed the phone. I looked at my lawyers. "Give me ten minutes."
They filed out. Lena stayed.
"It's already circulating," she said. "Three reposts in the last hour."
"I know." I was already dialing.
Reina picked up on the second ring. "I've seen it."
Her voice was steady. That particular steadiness of someone who had already moved through the initial reaction and arrived at function. It should have reassured me. Instead it made my chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with the legal situation and everything to do with the image of her reading that piece alone.
"Are you alright?" I said.
"I'm at work. I don't have the option of not being alright."
"Reina."
A pause. "I'm angry," she said, quieter. "And I feel—" She stopped. "Exposed. Which I haven't felt in a long time and don't enjoy."
"I know." I kept my voice level. "This is Celeste. It's a response to Monday. She can't fight the legal filing so she's shifting the narrative."
"I know what it is. That doesn't make it nothing."
"No," I said. "It doesn't." I paused. "I want to respond publicly. I want to be clear about who you are and what actually happened. But I won't do that without your consent."
Silence. Long enough that I waited it out.
"What does that look like?" she said finally.
"A statement. Simple and factual. My name is attached, not yours. The outline of what Celeste did, framed around the estate fraud proceedings already on record." I paused. "It takes the story away from her framing and replaces it with the truth."
"And it puts me further into your public life."
"Yes," I said. "I know."
"Give me until tonight," she said. "I need to finish my shift and think."
"Take whatever you need." I paused. "I'm sorry this happened."
"Stop apologizing for things she did," she said. Not harsh. Just firm. "Save your energy for doing something about it."
She ended the call.
I sat for a moment. The anger I'd been managing since Monday's filing tightened into something more specific. Celeste wasn't fighting the fraud claim — she was punishing adjacently. Going after the thing she'd correctly identified as the most important variable.
That was a miscalculation on her part. Because she'd assumed Reina could be made to look small in print. She'd underestimated what Reina actually was and what I was willing to do about it.
I called Lena back in. "Draft a statement. I'll review it at four."
Reina called at seven.
"Do the statement," she said. No preamble.
"Are you sure?"
"I thought about it for five hours. If I stay quiet she controls the story and that piece sits there as the version people find when they search my name." Her voice was even. "I'm not letting her define me."
"Okay."
"I want to read it before it goes out."
"Of course."
"And Damian." A pause. "Include the endowment. Your father's original designation. People should know what she redirected and why."
"That's already in the draft."
A beat of silence. "Good." Then: "How are you holding up?"
She did that. Pulled the focus back to me when I least expected it. Every time it caught me off guard because nobody in my professional world did it — they watched my face for cues but nobody actually asked.
"I've been angrier," I said honestly. "Today felt less like anger and more like clarity."
"Clarity is better."
"Yes." I paused. "She went after you because she knew it would get to me. She was right. But she thought it would make me reactive."
"And instead?"
"Instead I want to dismantle everything she built with the same patience she used to build it." I paused. "Methodically. And completely."
Reina was quiet for a moment. Then: "There's something else."
I heard it in her voice. The careful tone she used when she was about to say something she'd been sitting with.
"The article mentioned my mother's facility," she said. "By name. Not directly — it referenced a family in Queens requiring ongoing care. But it's enough for anyone looking to find it."
The cold moved through me.
"I'll have Theo add coverage there by morning," I said immediately.
"I wasn't asking….."
"I know you weren't. I'm telling you." I kept my voice steady. "Nobody gets near her. That's not negotiable."
Silence.
"Okay," she said softly.
"Reina. I need you to hear me clearly."
"I'm listening."
"She escalated to get to you. Which means she's more threatened than she's showing." I paused. "This is going to get harder before it gets easier. If there's a point where you want to step back from any of this.."
"Don't finish that sentence," she said quietly. "I don't step back from things."
"I know."
"Then don't offer me the exit."
Something tightened in my chest and released simultaneously.
"Come over," I said. "Tonight. Not for anything — I just want you somewhere I can see you after today."
The pause was shorter than I expected.
"Send the car," she said.
I already had my phone out to call the driver before she finished the sentence.
- Writer
