LOGINSELENA POV"Selena Gidotti is Mrs. Blackwood?!""Wait … our Miss Broccoli is the masked model?!""The wife of Mr. Blackwood?!"The flashes became almost blinding, a continuous wall of white light erupting from every direction as the hall dissolved into complete, uncontrollable chaos. Cameras clicked wildly. Voices crashed over each other in overlapping waves of disbelief, every face in the room recalibrating in real time.And slowly … I smirked.Good. Let it sink in properly. Let it travel all the way down.My gaze moved across the crowd with deliberate calm, taking its time.And then I found them.Miranda first.She looked like the floor had shifted underneath her without warning. The color had drained from her face so completely that even her carefully applied makeup couldn't compensate for it. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide. An expression of someone whose entire carefully constructed narrative had just detonated in front of a room full of witnesses.Beside her … Calista.Oh,
SELENA POVSomething about the way she said it made my brows pull together.What on earth was she actually talking about?"Ooh, Selena," Miranda continued, unfolding the moment with the theatrical relish of someone who had been rehearsing it, "I noticed I've been seeing Greg around you constantly…. dropping you off, showing up at the court hearing, always nearby. So I started putting things together." She tapped one finger against her lips with exaggerated thoughtfulness before the grin broke through fully. "That was it. You slept with Mr. Blackwood's PA to climb your way up."The laugh escaped me before I could decide whether to let it.Not a polite one. A genuine, helpless chuckle that came from somewhere deep and unguarded, because the sheer audacity of the conclusion she had arrived at, the leap of logic required to get there, was almost impressive in its own way."Oh, Miranda," I said, letting just enough pity into my voice to make it sting, "what's your business if I c
SELENA POVI still couldn't believe it was actually launch day.The past few days had been nothing short of completely, spectacularly chaotic and that was being generous.Rosy Maurer was sweet in the way that certain people are sweet before they have a job to do. Off the clock, she was warm and funny and the kind of woman who remembered how you took your coffee. The moment training began, however, she became an entirely different creature. Precise. Relentless. Immovable. The kind of professional who had built a career on the understanding that excellence was not negotiated, it was earned, repetition by repetition, correction by correction, until the right way became the only way your body knew."Head raised.""Shoulders straight.""Elegant, Selena. Not stiff. There is a difference.""Again."Her voice had taken up permanent residence somewhere in the back of my skull at this point. I heard it in the shower. I heard it while I was trying to sleep. I heard it every time I walked thro
SELENA POV"But… wait, I thought you contacted Rosy Maurer…"My brows pulled together as I stared at him, genuinely trying to piece it together."Yeah, I did." Alexander loosened his tie slightly and dropped onto the couch beside me with the easy, unhurried movement of someone who had already resolved everything in his head and was simply catching the rest of the world up. "Unfortunately, she slimmed down too much to fit the gown.""Oh…"I nodded slowly, processing that.So that was why.The silence stretched for a beat and then the full weight of it landed on me all at once. My eyes went wide."Wait…" I pointed at myself. "So I'm supposed to model it?"Alexander's lips twitched."And reveal my face?" I added quickly, rubbing my palms together against the sudden nervous energy moving through my hands. "Publicly publicly?""Hey." His voice dropped.. quieter, steadier.He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, dark eyes finding mine and holding them with that particular cal
SELENA POVIt had been two weeks since I got back home.Two whole weeks of the same four walls, the same ceiling, the same perfectly arranged pillows I wasn't allowed to rearrange because apparently even that qualified as unnecessary exertion. Two weeks of being watched, monitored, hovered over, and generally treated like something that might shatter if someone breathed too close to it.Alexander Blackwood had officially decided I was made of glass.I sighed dramatically and rolled over on the bed for what felt like the hundredth time since morning, staring up at the ceiling like it had personally wronged me in a previous life."Bored already?"Adriana's voice floated over from the couch, unbothered and deeply amused, where she sat cross-legged with a bag of chips balanced on her knee and my iPad propped shamelessly in her other hand."Already?" I turned my head to fix her with the flattest look I could manage. "Adriana, I am dying."She burst out laughing…the full, unrestrained kin
SELENA POVMy heart shook violently inside my chest, each beat louder and more unsteady than the last.The entire courtroom had gone completely silent after the judge began speaking, the weight of my fate suspended in the air above me like a storm cloud swollen to its absolute limit. I could feel every eye in that room without looking at any of them. Every breath. Every stillness.My fingers moved unconsciously to my stomach.I swallowed hard, squeezing my eyes shut for just a second. Please…Then the judge's voice came again. Loud. Final. Cutting through every other sound in the world."For the case of Miss Selena Gidotti accused of the murder of Stephanie Stone…"My breath stopped entirely."Miss Selena Gidotti is hereby discharged and acquitted."A broken sound escaped my lips before I could stop it, something between a sob and a gasp that I had no name for. The tears came instantly after, hot and completely uncontrollable, blurring the entire courtroom into a wash of light and c







