BOARDROOM ENEMIES BEDROOM LOVERS

Chapter 5: The Leak

Roman Castellan’s solution to a leaked s*x tape was a marriage proposal I should have run; instead I said yes.

The headline followed me from my house to the subway to the front steps of my own firm, plastered across every screen I passed as though the city itself had decided to humiliate me publicly.

“BILLIONAIRE CEO IN SCANDAL WITH RIVAL LAWYER”

“DID SHE SLEEP HER WAY TO THE SETTLEMENT”?

I stared at my phone in the back of a cab, nausea climbing up the throat with every new alert. The video of Roman and me tangled together in the elevator had been clipped, captioned, and dissected by a hundred different outlets before I’d even finished my coffee.

Comment ma, Miss Vance, a reporter caught me before I’d made it three steps from the cab. Is it true? I did not answer; I ran the rest to Castellan Tower instead, heels be damned.

Roman was in a mid-board meeting when I burst in, twenty faces turning towards me in unison. Out! He said to the room, not even glancing at his board members. Now. The room emptied in under thirty seconds.

What happened? I demanded. The second door shuts, I do not know his voice was tightly controlled in a way that told me he was furious within him. But someone leaked it deliberately; this was not an accident.

Did you?

No, he cut me off sharp. I would never do this to you. Somehow, despite everything, I believed him. We need to deny it, I said, pacing now, my mind racing through every damage control strategy I’d studied in law school and never once I expected to need it myself.

Say it was a mistake, a momentary lapse, something we both regret. Roman laughed low and bitter. A mistake? Imogen, they think you slept your way into a two-billion-dollar settlement. A denial makes it worse.

I'm not a gold digger!

I know that. He crossed the chair, tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear with a gentleness that did not match the tension radiating off the rest of him, but they do not. So what do we do?

We have two options. His eyes had gone dark, calculating in the particular way I’d come to recognize over thirty days trapped in one office together- deny it or own it.

Own it how?

Say we are together. His voice dropped lower. A real relationship made public; it ends the scandal before it can spread any further. That's insane. Is it? He stepped closer, close enough that I had to move my head back to meet his eyes. Or is it the way to protect you? Whoever did this wanted to destroy you, Imogen. If we go public, my enemies become your enemies, and I promise you I'm significantly better at handling mine.

Before I could answer, the door burst open, his assistant, pale and out of breath. Sir, the board wants a statement within the hour, and there is a second video. Roman went very still. From where?

The penthouse hallway camera. The floor seemed to open before me. Roman, if that gets out… I know he ran a hand through his hair the first genuinely rattled gesture I’d seen from him since the day we met. New plan: he turned to me fully.

Marry me.

I blinked. What?

Six months, a contract mariage, drawn up properly, terms we both agree to in advance. It explains the video; it protects you from the press and from whoever is doing this, and it gives me the legal standing to find out exactly who leaked it and why.

You want me to marry you.

I want to protect you. His voice had gone quiet, stripped of its usual amor, and God help me, Imogen, I want you; both things are true at once. Silence stretched between us, filled with everything neither of us had said out loud in the thirty days of shared desks and stolen glances and one reckless night neither of us should have allowed to happen.

Six months, I finally whispered; then it is over completely. Something moved behind his eyes- relief, maybe, or something else I did not have a name for yet. Six months, he agreed.

He held out his hands.

I took it.

That night the announcement went out across every outlet that had spent the morning tearing me apart.

“ROMAN CASTELLAN TO MARRY IMOGEN VANCE”

Later, alone in his office, Roman opened an email that had arrived without warning

An attachment: a bank statement, two million dollars deposited into Imogen Vance’s account that same morning. The sender's name made his jaw go tight. Desmomd kavanagh. Under it a single line, cold and mocking.

Thank you for playing. Phase 2 begins now.

He looked at his laptop for a long time after that, the city glittering coldly beyond his window. For the first time since his father’s name had become a wound he never let anyone see, Roman Castellan allowed himself to feel something close to fear.