20. Headlines

“You need to see this. Now.”

Clara didn’t look up from her laptop. “If this is another rumor blog, I’m not interested.”

“It’s not a blog,” Abi said quietly. “It’s a headline.”

That made Clara pause.

“What headline?” she asked.

Abi turned the screen toward her.

And just like that, the room went very still.

The words stared back at Clara in sharp black font, too clean, too confident.

VALE CEO REUNITES WITH FORMER PARTNER AMID INTERNAL POWER SHIFT

Below it, a photo of Adrian and Serena.

Captured mid-step outside a private restaurant. Too close to be accidental. Too intimate to be a coincidence. His hand on her lower back was not possessive, but familiar. Her head tilted toward him, smiling like she had already won something.

Clara felt it first in her chest.

A slow, sinking pressure.

Then the burn followed.

“That’s not” Abi stopped herself. “I know what it looks like. But still.”

Clara’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, then dropped to her lap.

She didn’t blink.

Didn’t react.

Didn’t breathe for a long moment.

“How long has this been up?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes,” Abi replied. “It’s already spreading.”

Of course it was.

Serena never released information without intention. And this wasn’t just gossip. It was positioning.

“They’re framing it as a reconciliation,” Abi added carefully. “Sources say she’s been ‘advising’ him again.”

Clara let out a slow breath.

“She never stopped,” Clara said quietly.

Abi watched her. “Are you okay?”

Clara nodded automatically. “I’m fine.”

It was a lie.

But it was a practiced one.

Adrian saw it an hour later.

Not online.

Not through press alerts.

Through a board member who stormed into his office unannounced.

“What the hell is this?” the man demanded, tossing a tablet onto the desk.

Adrian glanced down and felt the ground shift beneath him.

“No,” he said immediately. “This is not”

“You’re walking around with Serena Hale while your internal consultant steps back due to ‘conflict,’” the man snapped. “Do you have any idea how this looks?”

Adrian stood. “It looks manipulated.”

“That doesn’t matter,” the board member replied coldly. “Perception always wins.”

The door slammed behind him.

Adrian didn’t sit back down.

He grabbed his phone, hesitated, then put it back.

He already knew Clara had seen it.

There was no world where she hadn’t.

Clara left the office early.

Not because she was overwhelmed.

Because staying would have meant pretending she wasn’t.

The drive home blurred past her. Traffic lights. Horns. Voices. All of it is distant.

Her phone buzzed.

Once.

She didn’t check.

Twice.

She muted it.

At home, she dropped her bag by the door and leaned against it, eyes closed.

This wasn’t about jealousy, she told herself.

It wasn’t about hurt.

It was about clarity.

Serena had made her move publicly and decisively.

And Adrian? Adrian had let it happen.

Her phone buzzed again.

This time, she looked.

Adrian: I need to explain.

Clara stared at the message.

Then deleted it.

Another followed almost instantly.

Adrian: Please don’t shut me out.

She laughed softly.

Not because it was funny.

Because it hurt in a way she hadn’t expected anymore.

The explanation came anyway.

That evening.

A knock at her door.

She didn’t need to look through the peephole.

She knew.

She opened it halfway.

“Yes?” she asked, cool, distant.

“Can I come in?” Adrian asked.

She studied him.

He looked tired. Fractured. Like someone who had lost control of a narrative he’d believed he was managing.

“No,” she said.

That stopped him.

“Clara”

“You’re not welcome inside my space anymore,” she said calmly. “That boundary matters.”

He nodded once. “Then I’ll stay here.”

She crossed her arms. “Talk.”

“The photo means nothing,” he said immediately. “She orchestrated it.”

“And you participated,” Clara replied.

“I didn’t know”

“That’s the problem,” she interrupted. “You never know. And somehow, it keeps costing me.”

He flinched.

“I didn’t touch her like that,” he said. “She stepped into frame. She timed it.”

“And you didn’t step away,” Clara said.

Silence.

“That’s what the headline shows,” she continued. “Not intention. Outcome.”

He swallowed. “I was trying to neutralize her.”

Clara smiled faintly.

“That’s what you told yourself when you kissed her too?” she asked softly.

His head snapped up. “What?”

She held his gaze.

“I saw the extended cut,” she said. “The version they’re holding back.”

The color drained from his face.

“It wasn’tl”

“Don’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t need details. I need truth.”

He exhaled sharply. “She kissed me.”

“And you let her,” Clara replied.

It wasn’t an accusation.

It was an observation.

Serena watched the fallout from a distance.

Exactly as planned.

She sipped her drink as messages flooded in, journalists, investors, old allies suddenly curious again.

Her phone buzzed with one name she hadn’t expected yet.

Adrian.

She smiled.

Didn’t answer.

Let him sit with it.

Because the power wasn’t in the kiss.

It was in the silence after.

Back at her apartment, Clara closed the door gently after Adrian left.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t throw anything.

She simply stood there, absorbing the final shape of what had shifted.

This was no longer about where she stood with him.

It was about what she would do next.

She walked to her desk, opened her laptop, and pulled up a file she hadn’t touched in weeks.

A contingency analysis.

One she’d started the night she was attacked.

She scrolled.

Paused.

Then added a new line.

Public leverage event — Serena Hale.

Her phone buzzed.

A new message.

Unknown number.

You handled that well. He’s unraveling.

Clara typed back slowly.

You underestimated something.

The response came quickly.

What’s that?

Clara’s lips curved not in a smile, but in resolve.

My silence isn’t surrender.

Three dots appeared.

Then vanished.

Outside, the city hummed, unaware that something had just tilted.

Clara closed the laptop.

For the first time since the headline broke, her pulse steadied.

Because now?

Now she wasn’t reacting.

She was preparing.

And somewhere across the city, Adrian stood alone in his apartment, staring at his phone, realizing too late that the woman he was losing wasn’t walking away

She was repositioning.