The First Leak

Chapter Seven

The photo was grainy, taken from across a street at night, unmistakable once Wren's eyes adjusted. Herself, in the black lace mask, stepping through the brass door of The Undisclosed. Timestamped. Geotagged. Already circulating on a financial gossip account with an alarmingly large following.

Who's the mystery woman slipping into the city's most secretive members' club? Sources say a certain reclusive tech billionaire has been seen in the same building on the same nights. Details to come.

"Where did this come from?" Alaric's voice had gone flat, controlled in a way that felt different from his usual composure. A man bracing for impact, not managing a room.

"I don't know yet," Camille said. "It went up twenty minutes ago. Legal's already looking at takedown options, but Alaric, this account has ties to Grant Whitfield's outlet. If this is coming from inside their network"

"Jonah Pruitt," Wren said quietly. Both of them looked at her. "A freelancer who works with Whitfield. I've run into him twice this year, digging around the same story I was digging around. If anyone's been watching that building closely enough to catch me walking in, it's him."

Alaric's jaw tightened. "Does he have anything beyond the photograph?"

"I don't know what he has. But I know how he works. He doesn't run a story until he thinks he can make it undeniable. If he's willing to post this much publicly, he probably has more he hasn't used yet."

Camille was already typing, expression unreadable. "I'll get ahead of this from the PR side. Frame it as unrelated. A philanthropic event, a private function, anything that isn't The Undisclosed by name." She glanced up, something sharp moving between Wren and Alaric. "Assuming there isn't a much bigger problem hiding under the photograph."

The silence told her everything.

"I need the room," Alaric said quietly.

Camille looked like she wanted to argue. After a long beat she nodded, tucked her phone away, and left without another word, though the look she gave Wren on the way out carried a weight Wren didn't understand yet. Less like suspicion. More like recognition.

The second the door shut, Alaric exhaled like a man setting down something heavy he'd carried too long. "I need you to understand something," he said, turning back to her, all the executive polish gone. "Whatever happens with this photo, whatever Jonah Pruitt thinks he's building toward, none of it changes what I told you on that terrace."

"You still haven't told me the important part," Wren said. "You said you built your life to make up for something you lost. You never told me what, or why my father's name is tangled up in it."

He was quiet a long moment, hands braced on the desk, and when he spoke his voice had gone rougher, stripped of the practiced control she'd watched him wear since she walked in. "My father built a shipping and logistics company from nothing," he said. "Smaller than Ashby Communications, less glamorous, but everything to him. Fifteen years ago he entered a partnership your father's firm was contracted to manage the public narrative around. A merger that should have secured our family's company for another generation."

Wren felt something cold settle in her stomach. "What happened?"

"It collapsed. Publicly, catastrophically, in a way that made my father look incompetent instead of betrayed, because that's exactly how the story was allowed to run." His jaw tightened. "It took years to understand the collapse wasn't bad luck. Someone leaked confidential merger details to a rival bidder at exactly the moment it would do the most damage, and the firm managing our public narrative, your father's firm, never disclosed it, never corrected the story, and let my father take the full weight of a failure that wasn't entirely his."

"You think my father orchestrated that."

"I was certain of it, for a long time. Certain enough that when Ashby Communications started collapsing under its own scandal eighteen months ago, I made sure Voss Holdings was positioned to acquire what was left. I told myself it was strategy. It was also, if I'm being honest the way I promised myself I would be, retaliation."

Wren's hands had curled into fists at her sides. "My father lost everything," she said, voice shaking despite herself. "His reputation, his health, most of his friends. And you're telling me you engineered part of that on purpose, as payback, for something you're not even certain he did?"

"I'm telling you," Alaric said, "that I've spent the last several weeks realizing I'm no longer certain of anything I used to believe about your father's involvement. Including whether he was ever the one who leaked that information in the first place." He met her eyes directly, something raw moving across his face. "There's a name I've come across recently in old internal correspondence from that period. A name that had access to the same confidential merger details, working inside a firm connected to both companies. I don't have proof yet. But it isn't your father's name, Wren."

The room seemed to tilt. "Whose name?"

Alaric's gaze flicked, almost involuntarily, toward the closed door Camille had walked through.

Wren followed the look, and felt something horrible click into place. "Camille."

"I don't know for certain," Alaric said quickly, though how he said it made clear he suspected far more than he was willing to say out loud. "I need proof before I say anything to you or anyone. If I'm wrong, I destroy the reputation of someone who's worked at my side for a decade. If I'm right—"

"If you're right," Wren finished, "everything my father lost, everything you took from him believing he deserved it, might have been built on a lie someone else told to protect themselves."

Alaric didn't answer. He didn't need to. His guilt answered for him.

Wren pressed a hand to her mouth, the last week crashing over her at once. The mask, the ring, the terrace, the photo now circulating publicly with her face barely hidden behind lace, and under all of it, a betrayal that might not have started with either of their families at all, but with someone standing just outside this door who'd managed both their lives with careful precision for years.

Her phone buzzed in her bag before she could say anything.

An unknown number. One line, no context.

I know who you really are, Seven. And I know exactly what he did to get you into that club. You might want to hear my side of the story before his PR team finishes writing yours for you.

Wren stared at it, stomach dropping, and looked up at Alaric with a question she wasn't sure she wanted answered.

"Someone else knows," she said quietly. "And I don't think it's Jonah."