Chapter 1

After the awards ceremony ended, Laura Dawson had said something to me.

"I'm grateful for the six years we weathered together, but love can't be forced. The day you brought Leo home, I knew our relationship wouldn't last. But we can still be friends."

The very next day, the internet exploded with a hate campaign against me.

The six years I'd spent standing by Laura got twisted into a story about me holding her hostage with old debts.

She stood in front of the cameras, eyes rimmed red.

"When he first confessed to me, I never meant to say yes. But he threatened me with Leo, so for six years, I did whatever he told me to.

"I took the terrible scripts, went on the terrible variety shows, and gave my fans a bad experience because of it. I'm so sorry."

Six years had sharpened her acting until it gleamed. She bowed, and tears hit the floor right on cue.

The young man I'd helped raise up stood at her side, his eyes red.

"Laura and I were afraid of what Will would do to us. For years, I never dared to even see her. I never dreamed we'd get to stand together in the spotlight like this. Thank you all for your support."

Maybe she felt bad about how unfair it all was. Laura had an extra ten thousand dollars transferred onto my card.

I almost laughed.

In six years of running myself ragged pulling resources together for her, the loose change alone had been worth more than twenty thousand.

I didn't say anything.

Small stuff like that, I could just hand off to my PR department.

The PR team I'd built myself, all those years ago, had originally existed to handle the ugly smear campaigns against Laura.

Now I was using it to go after the very woman it had been built to protect.

Then my department head called me.

"Mr. Chappell, the whole department's decided to resign, all of us together. The letters are already on your desk. Sorry about this. We're done working for you."

Before I could get a word out, the line went dead.

I called around to the rest of the team in a hurry. Every single one of them had blocked me.

The department I'd built with my own two hands, to protect Laura, had just kicked me out.

I checked. Sure enough, they'd all gone to work for the new company Laura and Leo had opened together.

I shrugged. They had no idea what kind of opportunity they'd just walked away from.

I called around to other PR firms.

But something was off.

Agency heads who used to greet me politely every time now saw my number and hung up without a word.

One of them, someone I actually knew well, picked up. But his tone was evasive.