She Changed The Strategy

Brody's POV,

My publicist lasted exactly four minutes before Emilia dismantled her entire strategy.

"Soft touches to his arm," Vanessa was saying, gesturing with a tablet full of storyboarded gestures like she was directing a commercial. "Lean into him when reporters ask difficult questions, let him field anything hostile. The public responds to a devoted, slightly overwhelmed fiancée–"

"Overwhelmed," Emilia repeated flatly.

"It reads as sympathetic."

"It reads as fake." Emilia crossed her arms, unimpressed. "I'm not playing a woman who can't answer her own questions, Vanessa. If Serena's calling me a liar, I'm not going to stand there clinging to his sleeve like I need him to speak for me."

Vanessa glanced at me, waiting for the correction I usually issued the moment someone deviated from a plan I'd already approved.

I didn't give one.

"Let her answer naturally," I said instead, and watched three people in the room try not to look surprised.

I rarely let anyone touch my strategy once it left my desk, but something about Emilia bristling at the idea of playing helpless made the entire performance feel unnecessary. She wasn't helpless. Making her pretend otherwise would only hand Serena a weaker story to pick apart.

Later, alone in the study, I laid out the real danger.

"Serena's built this entire campaign on emotion," I said, sliding the forged ultrasound printout across the desk. "She's betting the public sympathizes with a pregnant woman faster than they'll trust a billionaire's denial. Facts don't matter here, optics do."

"So she'll go after me," Emilia said, studying the document. "My background, how I look next to you, whether I seem like I belong in this world."

"Almost certainly."

"Then why haven't you denied it outright? Held a press conference, shut it down before it spread this far?"

"Because she wants me angry." I leaned back. "Public fury reads as guilt, regardless of what's true. The moment I look rattled, she's already won the narrative."

Emilia went quiet for a moment, turning that over. "Then we don't let her control the conversation at all. We don't react to her story, we prove ours existed first. Show the public we were already together before her announcement ever aired."

I studied her; it was, annoyingly, a better instinct than half my strategy team had produced in a week.

××××

We ran the entrance twice, cameras positioned exactly as they'd be at the venue, security walking the same path we'd take through the crowd. Emilia's shoulders kept creeping toward her ears every time the mock flashes went off.

"Chin level," I said, stepping behind her, my hand settling at the small of her back to guide her posture. "Shoulders down. You're not bracing for an attack, you're walking into a room you already own."

"Easy for you to say. You've been doing this since birth."

"You're doing better than you think." My hand stayed where it was, fingers spread against the curve of her waist, longer than the correction required. She smelled like the shampoo Delphine had stocked, something warm underneath it that was entirely her own.

I felt the exact moment her breathing changed.

Mine wasn't much steadier.

"Your grip," she said, not turning around, "is very thorough for a posture lesson."

I pulled my hand back like I'd been caught at something, which, unhelpfully, I had. "Every movement gets analyzed tomorrow. I'm making sure it holds up."

"If you want this to look real," she said, finally turning to face me. One eyebrow lifted, her eyes narrowing slightly. "You might want to stop treating every touch like a business instruction, Brody. People can tell the difference.”

The observation landed harder than it should have. Mostly because she wasn't wrong, and I couldn't immediately explain, even to myself, why that particular touch had lasted four seconds longer than the lesson required.

I opened my mouth to say something, I still don't know what, when the wall screen behind us flickered to life without warning, Vanessa's emergency alert override cutting into the display.

Serena's face filled the screen, dabbing at manufactured tears, a grainy ultrasound printout clutched to her chest like a shield.

"Brody promised me everything," she was saying, her voice trembling as she dabbed at the corner of her eye. "A wedding, a family, and the moment I needed him most, he abandoned me and our unborn child for some woman he barely knows."

The room went dead silent.

Emilia's eyes snapped to mine. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and the corner of her mouth twitched as she caught the anger in my face.

"Well," she said quietly, watching Serena's performance without so much as a flicker of surprise. "Looks like we're not waiting until morning.”