CHAPTER ONE

It was 7:00 am, a little early for most, but not for the workaholic billionaire, Declan Rowe. 

His office still held the cold from the previous night’s heavy rainfall, and for some reasons, the man refused to shut the windows, allowing the cold morning air to move through the room in slow currents.

The silence of the office was broken as the familiar rhythmic sound of the secretary’s heels, kissing softly against the marble floor, disrupted the holy quietness of the office as she walked in. Nora Haines, whose usual composure had developed a crack so thin most people would have missed it stood in front of  Declan’s desk. She held a slim manila folder, her fingers lingered a half-second too long on the folder's edge before she released it, placing it noiselessly on the desk without ceremony. She took a step back and straightened her blazer afterward, the way she cleared her throat before speaking exposed the storm brewing beneath her composure.

"Sir," Nora began, her voice remained neutral as it has always been, "there has been a development overnight that requires your immediate attention."

Declan did not look up from the contract he had been reviewing. His fountain pen continued moving in smooth, deliberate strokes across the document. 

"What kind of development?" he asked, without sparing the woman a glance. 

Nora drew a small breath. "Images, sir." She paused, and looked at her boss. His left brow slightly jerked upwards, questioning her without words. 

"Pictures of you. Circulating online."

The pen stopped. 

But, not abruptly. There was nothing abrupt about Declan Rowe. The pen simply stopped moving against the documents, leaving a striking dot on the paper. He set the pen down beside the contract, aligned it parallel to the document's edge, picked up the folder, and then opened it.

The silence that followed was the loudest thing Nora had ever heard in six years of working for this man.

She had printed only three of them. Three of the scandalous photographs was enough. Three were, in fact, already too many. Thinking to herself, while eyeing her boss, searching for any expression from those dark eyes of his, she sighed inwardly. 

The images were simply too sophisticated. She would grant whoever had done this the applause they deserve.They were not the blurry, pixelated fabrications of an amateur paparazzi. The pictures were seamless. Each one revealed Declan Rowe, photographed at galas and business events over the years, yet, the pictures had been meticulously extracted from his contexts and repositioned into entirely new ones. In one image, he had his arm around a woman in a red dress, who leaned a little too close to him, body pressed so much that every outline of it could be seen in the pictures. In another, he was leaning across a candlelit restaurant table, his hand covering the hand of a brunette who was laughing as though he had said something devastatingly charming. In the third, he was stepping out of a hotel elevator, a woman's silhouette just visible behind him.

Both the secretary and man in question knew that none of it was real. And yet, they also know that reality has very little to do with what people chose to believe, especially when it comes to matters of mysterious public figures like him. 

Wordlessly, he closed the folder. Nora stiffened, letting out a calculated breath. The atmosphere turned colder. 

Declan's fingers found the edge of his desk and he tapped them there, once, twice, three times. The weight of the storm raging within him could be felt as the sound of his fingers rapping against the desk resonates across the room. A slow tap of the forefinger, then middle, then ring, then back again. His face remained what it always was – cold, dark, impenetrable. 

"How long have they been circulating?" he asked, finally breaking the silence. 

"Since approximately eleven o'clock last night, sir. They originated from three different anonymous accounts across two platforms and were picked up by entertainment blogs within the first hour." Nora's voice had steadied itself back into professionalism. She had worked for Declan long enough to know that he preferred information delivered cleanly, without the soft packaging of sympathy. "By this morning, two of the images are trending nationally – the most scandalous ones.”

Declan said nothing. He rose from his chair and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window behind his desk, the one that looked out across the city from the forty-second floor. The morning skyline was pale and steel-grey, the sun still too low to catch the glass towers and turn them golden. His eyes slowly lowered, his long dark lashes casting a shadow as he looked down on the city from above. No one could tell what he was thinking. Nora remained stilled in her position, not daring to breathe too loudly, else disrupting the man’s thoughts. 

Since climbing the ladders of success, Declan has been faced with all kinds of opposition. But not one has directly attacked his reputation like this. 

The door to his office opened a second time, neither Declan nor Nora needed to turn around to know who had entered. Ethan Webb had a particular way of entering a room, he always took very loud and large steps and his cologne always arrived three seconds before the rest of him.

Ethan was Rowe Consolidated's head of Public Relations, he first placed his own tablet on the desk rather than simply holding it, as though he needed both hands free for what came next.

"Declan." Ethan was known to always drop the 'sir' when the news was genuinely bad. "I need you to hear the full picture." He uttered, staring at Declan's straight back. 

Declan finally turned from the window. "Speak."

Ethan took a short breath. "We flagged the accounts and submitted takedown requests to both platforms within the first ninety minutes. Standard protocol. The content was removed from the original accounts." He paused. "And then it was reposted. By user accounts, not bots. This time, real people keep sharing, screenshotting, re-uploading. By the time we dealt with the second wave, a third had already started. We are dealing with something designed to be resistant to containment, Declan. Whoever did this built in a replication mechanism. The images don't need the original accounts anymore. They're self-sustaining."

The tapping of Declan's fingers resumed on the windowsill. Slow. Deliberate.

"The stocks?" he asked.

Ethan took back his tablet from the desk and scrolled. "Rowe Consolidated opened down four point three percent this morning. Analysts are already attributing it to reputational uncertainty. Two of our investors have contacted the board requesting a statement." He set the tablet face-down. "There is also the matter of social media."

"What about it?" 

"The hashtag has been trending for six hours. The public commentary is..." Ethan said carefully, searching for the next diplomatic word and, to his credit, found a truthful one instead. "Unforgiving."

Declan's expression did not change. But something behind his eyes shifted 

"And the press?" he asked.

"Seventeen media and news outlets have formally written to the company's communications department requesting interviews," Nora said, pausing briefly before continuing. "Five television networks. Four major digital publications. Three newspapers. The rest are radio and independent media. All of them want you specifically, sir. On record."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Ethan straightened. "Declan, I have to be honest with you about our options and their timelines. Each minute that passes without a response from you personally permits the narrative to write itself, silence will fan the flame and that's bad for the company. I’d say the press conference option is our most effective tool."  He glanced slightly at Declan whose expression remained the same. 

"One hour. You walk in, you address the images, you deny them, of course and you field three or four questions from pre-selected journalists and you walk out. Trust me, we will restore credibility before the week is out."

Finally, Declan's expression shifted and he looked at him. However, that gaze was not a warm one. It was the look of a man who was listening and simultaneously arriving at a conclusion that had nothing to do with what was being said.

"No," Declan said curtly.

Ethan and Nora looked at him in shock. 

"Declan–”

“Sir?” Both uttered simultaneously. 

"I will not stand before a wall of cameras and deny photographs like a man who owes the public an explanation." His voice was quiet. 

Ethan parted his lips to speak but was strongly interrupted before he could let out a sound. 

"You are requesting that I beg for belief from the people? I don't perform contrition for something I didn't do." 

"Then what do you propose?" Ethan asked carefully. "Because right now, silence reads as guilt."

"I'm not proposing silence." Declan moved back to his desk. He sat, and the simple act of sitting held more authority than most men's standing ovations. He opened the folder again and looked at the images, not with disgust this time, but with the precise, calculating gaze of someone studying an opponent's hand.

"Someone spent considerable resources building this problem for me. Which means a denial, however well-executed, is a temporary solution. They will simply build another problem. Another story. Another set of images." He closed the folder again. "What I need is a counter-narrative. A construct that makes anything they fabricate next look like desperation."

Nora and Ethan exchanged a glance 

"What kind of counter-narrative?" Ethan asked the question lingering on both’s minds.

Declan leaned back in his chair. His fingers, which had been tapping, went still. 

"The images paint me as a man with no ties. A man with no loyalty, and a faulty morality. So I will acquire a new image for myself."

"Sir?" Nora said.

Declan looked up at them both. His expression was unreadable as he parted his lips. 

"Marriage," he voiced. 

The word landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water.

Nora's composure, so carefully reconstructed over the last twenty minutes, suffered another fracture. Ethan opened his mouth and then closed it again.

The silence stretched.

Declan picked up his fountain pen, pulled the contract back toward himself, and continued where he had left off, maintaining his calm, unhurried, absolute countenance as though he had not just uttered the impossible. 

Nora looked at her boss, hoping to understand his clear intentions, yet she found nothing. His still face revealed little to no information about the content of his mind. The man just suggested marriage out of the blues like it was some business term that can be easily maneuvered. 

Seeing that the man no longer paid any attention to them and his mind was already set, Nora and Ethan excused themselves out of the office. Each going about their day as though the reputation of their boss was not at stake on the internet.