Live and Uncut

Chapter Eleven

Priya sent the clip four seconds after the call connected. Wren watched it standing barefoot on Alaric's office floor, still in his shirt, her own dress crumpled somewhere near the couch, and felt her stomach fold in on itself with every word out of Camille's mouth.

Camille sat across from a news anchor in a studio too bright for the story she was telling, dressed in soft gray, composed, sympathetic, every inch the woman being forced into an uncomfortable truth rather than the one writing it herself.

"I've worked beside Alaric Voss for a decade," Camille said, voice steady, eyes glistening at exactly the right moment. "I've watched him build something extraordinary. I've also watched him become someone I don't recognize when it comes to the Ashby family. What started as business became personal a long time ago, and I believe Wren Ashby became a tool in that, whether she understood it at the time or not."

The anchor leaned in. "Are you saying Ms. Ashby was aware of Mr. Voss's intentions?"

"I'm saying," Camille said carefully, "that a woman who spent a year publicly investigating Alaric Voss doesn't accidentally end up in his bed within a week of getting close to him. I think Wren Ashby is smarter than that. I think she made a choice, and now that choice is being framed as a love story instead of what it actually was."

Wren's hands had gone cold around the phone. "She's rewriting the whole thing," she said. "Making it sound like I planned this. Like I used what happened between us."

Alaric took the phone from her gently, watched the last ten seconds himself, and set it face down on the desk with a控制ed calm that didn't match the tightness in his jaw. "She's good at this," he said. "Better than I gave her credit for. She's not defending herself. She's making you the story so nobody asks the harder question about her."

"Which is?"

"Why a senior executive at my company happens to know, in specific detail, exactly when you and I started seeing each other, and exactly how to frame it for maximum damage." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "That's not guesswork, Wren. That's someone who's been watching both of us closely enough to build a narrative in advance."

The thought settled over Wren like cold water. "You think she's been tracking us since the first night."

"I think," Alaric said slowly, "we need to assume she has, and plan accordingly."

Priya arrived at Voss Holdings twenty minutes later, hair still damp from a shower she'd clearly cut short, laptop bag slung over one shoulder, expression somewhere between fury and focus. She didn't bother with pleasantries.

"Okay," she said, dropping into the chair across from Alaric's desk and pulling out her laptop without asking permission. "I've been doing damage control for other people's disasters for six years. This is officially the worst one I've ever worked, mostly because I actually care about the people involved this time, so bear with me if I'm blunt."

"Blunt is fine," Alaric said. "Blunt is what we need."

"Good, because here's where we stand." Priya turned the laptop toward them, a timeline already sketched across the screen. "Camille went live forty minutes ago. That interview is already being clipped and shared everywhere, and the framing that's sticking, the one people are repeating in comment sections, is that Wren seduced her way into a story to protect her father, and you," she nodded at Alaric, "used that to bury a scandal that was never really about business in the first place. It's ugly, it's simple, and it's exactly the kind of story people want to believe about a billionaire and a journalist."

"We have proof that contradicts all of it," Wren said, sliding Theo's folder across the desk. "The original leak. The correspondence. My father's confirmation. This clears both of us, if it gets out."

Priya flipped through the pages fast, eyes narrowing as she read. "This is good. This is really good, actually, but timing matters more than content right now. If we release this in a written statement, it reads as defensive. Reactive. Like we're scrambling to catch up to Camille's version of events." She looked up at both of them. "We need to control the delivery, not just the facts."

"What are you thinking?" Alaric asked.

"A joint interview," Priya said. "Both of you, same room, same camera, no scripted talking points that make it look rehearsed. You tell the real story, in your own words, and you let people see two people who clearly care about each other instead of two people executing a plan." She glanced at Wren. "It only works if it's true. If there's any part of this that's still performance, Wren, now's the time to tell me, because live television will find the crack and split it wide open."

Wren looked at Alaric, at the exhaustion and worry etched into his face, at the man who'd spent the last hour holding her like she was the only steady thing left in his life. "It's not performance," she said quietly. "Not anymore."

"Then that's our move," Priya said, already typing. "I'll reach out to a producer I trust tonight. We do this fast, before Camille has time to build a second wave."

It was nearly midnight when Priya finally left to start making calls, and Wren found herself alone with Alaric again, the office quiet except for the low hum of the city through the windows. He'd loosened his tie at some point in the last hour, and he looked, for the first time since she'd met him, genuinely tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour.

"Can I ask you something?" Wren said, settling into the chair across from his desk.

"You can ask."

"If this goes badly. If the interview doesn't work, if Camille gets ahead of us again, if the board forces you out or worse. Do you regret any of it? The invitation, the club, any of it?"

He was quiet for a long moment, studying her with an intensity that made her chest ache. "I regret how it started," he said finally. "I regret that the version of you I met behind a mask was built on a lie I chose to tell. But I don't regret a single hour I've spent with you since, and if the cost of having this is losing the company, then I already know which one I'd choose."

Wren felt something in her chest crack open, warm this time instead of frightened. "That's a dangerous thing to say to a journalist."

"I know," he said, and something almost like a smile crossed his face for the first time all night. "I'm saying it anyway."

His phone buzzed on the desk between them, and the almost-smile vanished instantly. He glanced at the screen, and whatever color remained in his face drained out of it.

"What is it?" Wren asked, already bracing.

He turned the phone toward her without a word. A message from Voss Holdings' general counsel, timestamped two minutes ago.

The board is calling an emergency session for 9 AM. They're putting a vote on the table to suspend your authority as CEO pending an internal investigation into the Ashby matter. You need to be ready to respond before they convene.

Wren stared at the screen, then up at Alaric, watching the last of his composure finally, visibly, begin to break.

"They're trying to remove you," she said quietly. "Before we even get a chance to tell our side."

"They're trying," Alaric said, voice low and dangerous, "to do exactly what Camille wants them to do. Which means either she's already gotten to them, or she's about to."