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Months later, Paris smelled like fresh rain and cigarette smoke. The city had a way of holding onto contradictions, of being both soft and sharp, warm and cold, alive and aching with ghosts. For Sherry, it mirrored exactly what lived inside her.It had been four months since she walked out of Enzo’s life, since the night she left behind the quiet devastation of his father’s office and booked a one-way ticket to Paris. She remembered the cold glass of the plane window pressed against her cheek that night, the blur of lights fading beneath her, and the way her body felt like it was made of glass, fragile, breakable, yet somehow still holding together.Now, Paris had become her stage. Her name buzzed across fashion magazines, her designs filled glossy spreads and her face was caught in paparazzi flashes as she stepped onto red carpets in gowns she had sketched on scraps of paper in the middle of sleepless nights. The fashion world had welcomed her back and not just welcomed her, but crown
The drive to the old Blackwood estate was wrapped in silence.Not the quiet they had built between them in recent weeks, the kind that felt like shared breath and unspoken understanding, but the heavier kind, dense with unsaid words. Silence that held questions with answers neither of them wanted to voice.Sherry sat stiffly in the back seat beside Enzo, her eyes fixed on the blurred landscape rolling past the tinted glass. The video from the night before still echoed in her skull, while circling her like a vulture.Love is leverage. It wasn’t just a phrase. It was a curse, one her heart had already begun to believe.Enzo hadn’t said a word since it played. He hadn’t tried to soothe her, hadn’t tried to dismiss the venom of his father’s voice. He had just… sat in it. Like he was carrying the weight of two legacies at once, the one he was born into and the one he had chosen with her.Only this morning had he finally broken the silence. His eyes had been hollow, his voice almost unrecogn
The morning after the storm didn’t arrive with thunder or with the dramatic sweep of lightning across Manhattan’s skyline.It came with something much smaller, softer and almost ordinary.The steady ticking of Sherry’s wall clock in the kitchen. The faint scent of orange blossoms drifted through the cracked-open window and the quiet weight of Enzo Blackwood sleeping on her couch, like a king stripped of his throne and exiled to something far less ceremonial than velvet chairs or mahogany boardrooms.She stood barefoot in her kitchen, wrapped in a robe that had once belonged to her mother, staring at the mug of coffee in her trembling hands. She hadn’t taken a sip yet. The steam curled upward like smoke from a fire she wasn’t ready to put out.She couldn’t stop looking at him.He hadn’t stirred once since she’d draped the blanket across his chest the night before. Enzo Blackwood, the man who had ruled rooms with a glance, who had made titans bend and lovers burn, looked strangely boyish
The studio lights were merciless. They weren’t built for intimacy, for the fragile kind of honesty that tasted like blood in the back of your throat. They were built to strip, to expose and to burn away whatever shadows you tried to hide beneath.And tonight, Sherry Hart walked willingly into the fire.She sat straight-backed in the steel-gray chair, a red silk blouse draping elegantly against her shoulders and black slacks tailored sharp enough to cut. Her makeup was precise, her hair pinned into a sleek twist, every detail curated not for vanity, but for armor, because when the world wanted to destroy you, the smallest crack was all it needed to strike.Across from her sat Richard Lane, America’s most notorious interviewer. His reputation stretched across decades of political assassinations disguised as interviews, of corporate titans unraveling under his questions, of movie stars crumbling into apologies. He was known for his cruelty, his surgical precision and his refusal to let an
The safe deposit box was hidden beneath marble and time. Inside a midtown Manhattan bank, cold and old enough to predate both her fashion house and her shame, Sherry stepped into the private vault room. The manager handed her a small brass key, the kind that felt ceremonial in her palm. She opened the drawer.Inside: a black leather-bound journal, a USB drive and a faded envelope with her name handwritten in her father’s curling script. She felt sad, immediately remembering her deceased parents now.SherryHer breath caught. She touched the paper as if it might crumble. Or like she might.The seal broke with a whisper.“If you are reading this, it means I failed to protect you from the truth I spent half my life hiding.”Back at her apartment, she spread the contents out like pieces of a broken map.The USB drive was labeled "Personal."The … PersonalThe journal? A log of financial transactions and handwritten notes, documenting everything from hidden deals to business lunches with me
The jet touched down in New York just after sunset. The city sprawled beneath them like a restless beast, its towers glinting with indifferent light, streets already alive with horns and voices, a pulse that didn't soften for anyone. To Sherry, it felt less like homecoming and more like sentencing. New York didn't embrace you when you fell; it devoured you. Tonight, it greeted her like a judge in a black robe, cold, formal and unbothered by pleas for mercy.The second her heels hit the tarmac, the weight of the headlines pressed down on her shoulders. She was no longer walking onto familiar ground. She was walking into a courtroom where the verdict had already been written.By the time the convoy of cars pulled into Midtown, the world had already sharpened its knives.The first reporter broke from the barricade before the car had fully stopped. His voice cut through the night, eager and greedy."Ms. Hart! Do you have any comment about falsifying corporate evidence?"Another shoved forw