Sloane stared at her phone long after the message had been sent. The little “delivered” checkmark blinked up at her, calm and cruel.
The contact labeled D wasn’t Damon. Damon was too reckless for secrets and too arrogant to protect her now. D stood for someone else—someone she hadn’t spoken to in nearly two years.
Derek Vale.
Former journalist. Current parasite. He’d been fired from The Chronicle after running an unverified story about a tech scandal that turned out to be half fabricated—but Sloane had admired the audacity. He’d once told her that the best way to rewrite truth was to make it entertaining enough that people wanted to believe it.
She’d believed him, too—until he’d turned one of her early scandals into tabloid gold, selling her private messages for clicks. She’d sworn nev
