CHAPTER 6 - RUMORS AND REALIZATION

Elara’s hand hovered over the coffee mug. The heat should have steadied her, but when she looked at the phone held by her officemate, the world tilted a little.

“The Billionaire and the Architect — New Flame or Office Scandal?”

The headline blinked like a neon sign. Her own face stared back at her, framed beside Adrian Veylen’s—an image stolen from the other night. He was mid-movement in the photo, his arm protective around her waist—she looked startled, mouth half-open as if the flash had cut the moment in half.

“Put—ano ‘to?!” she heard herself blurt, and she almost knocked the mug over. The porcelain clinked against the desk and she forced her hand to steady. Heat rose to her cheeks, not from the coffee but from a surge of something raw and ugly.

“Elara, trending ka sa social media… look.” Lyra’s voice was small and loud at the same time, the way people sound when they’re both thrilled and nervous to be the one to deliver bad news.

She leaned in. The article was venom dressed as curiosity—words that smelled of gossip. The comments already threaded the same idea: “Is she his new lover?” “Ito ba ang dahilan kung bakit siya nahire?” A thousand strangers shaping a story she hadn’t agreed to live.

“Chemistry?” Lyra whispered, a strange mix of awe and teasing in her tone. “Parang may spark kayo, no?”

“Chemistry?!” Elara slammed her palm down on the desk. The sound cut the small office like a blade. “That man— that arrogant man— probably planned this para lang sirain ako. Para isipin ng lahat na may relasyon kami! Bwisit talaga!”

She could feel her pulse at her throat. Even as she said the words, her chest tightened with a confusion that tasted like sugar and ash. The photo didn’t lie—the angle, the shadows, the way his hand rested—intimate, almost careful. But the camera had a way of making small things look like fate.

She inhaled, forced her thoughts to order. ’Focus. Revenge first. Feelings never.’ It sounded like a mantra, but the echo in her ribs had its own plans.

By ten that night, the building hummed with a different kind of life—laptops, low voices, people polishing the last details of projects. Elara was still at her desk, the sketches around her like a loose army of lines. The window threw the city back in a smear of lights.

“Miss Cruz.” The voice arrived as calm as a closed door. Adrian stood by the glass, silhouette sharp against the skyline. He wore that suit that made him look carved out of shadow. ”Why still here? Wala nang tao dito sa building.”

She didn’t look up at first—didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Work doesn’t finish itself,” she muttered, pulling a stack of sheets closer to hide her hands.

He stepped in without hesitation. The hum of the city felt thinner when he entered. “About the rumors,” he said, and the words carried like a low tide. “You don’t need to worry. I’ll handle it.”

She let out a dry laugh. “I’m not worried, and of course you will.” But the lie stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her phone had already blown up—screenshots, private messages, questions about her character like knives in a row. People talked. People always talked. She’d expected noise—not this particular kind.

He tilted his head, and the slant of his face softened in a way that made her lungs forget how to work. “Still… I don’t like seeing your name dragged with mine without your permission.”

The way he said ’without your permission’ landed somewhere her logic couldn’t touch. Protective, he’d said—almost like it was a window his usual cold didn’t reach. Her stomach fluttered in a way that made her feel ridiculous.

Then he smiled—small, not smug. “Unless… you don’t mind the idea?”

Her jaw actually dropped. She heard her own voice: “Excuse me?!”

He only chuckled, and the laugh sounded familiar in a way that made her want to roll her eyes. “Relax, Miss Cruz. I’m kidding.”

“Hindi nakakatawa,” she muttered. Her pulse moved to a steady thud in her wrist.

He leaned over a blueprint on her desk, fingers brushing the paper. “You’re talented, Elara. And stubborn.”

She crossed her arms. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is.” He looked at her, and his eyes were sharper than the evening’s glare. “But you also make too many enemies too fast.”

“Ano?”

“Meaning…” his voice dropped to that private register, “…Cassandra’s been asking too many questions about you.”

Her spine remembered the cemetery cool, the way her father’s name felt like a map. “Don’t let your guard down around her,” he added quietly. “She doesn’t like sharing the spotlight.”

Elara’s mouth opened to respond—defend herself, push back—when the door glided. Cassandra stepped in like she owned the lighting in the room—silk blouse, red lips, the kind of confidence that smelled like old money and calculated patience. In one hand, two wine glasses. In the other, a smile.

“Adrian,” she said, sugar-sweet enough to make bees disoriented. She didn’t so much as glance at Elara. “You’re still here. I thought you’d gone home.”

Elara felt the air fold into a new shape. Cassandra’s lips moved, but her eyes delivered knives. Hays, Grabe makatingin, angsarap tusukin ng mata. “Miss Cruz. Working overtime again? How… dedicated.”

“Just doing my job,” Elara said, tone practiced to a cool line.

Cassandra set the glasses with a slow, deliberate motion. “I brought something special—the Bordeaux you like.”

Adrian’s face didn’t change. “Thank you. But I think I’ll pass tonight.”

Cassandra’s smile faltered a fraction. “Because you’re… busy?” The little tilt of her head was all venom.

Elara gathered her things. The paper crackled under her fingers. “Actually, Paalis na ako, kaya excuse sainyo ha.”

“Good,” Cassandra said. Her voice softened to deadly. “You look tired.”

Elara wanted to say ’And you look desperate’, but chewed the words down into her pocket where they could do no damage.

As she reached the door, Adrian stopped her. “Miss Cruz.”

She turned half-way, one hip still outside.

“Tomorrow morning. I want you in my private meeting room. We’ll discuss the new project proposal.”

The request landed like a loaded gun. Their eyes met—clear, bright, and charged.

She climbed the stairs of resolve and answered, “Fine. But this doesn’t mean I like you. Nakakakilabot.”

A faint smirk—just a line—skated across his face. “Good. I’d be worried if you did.”

She left with the smirk pressed into her back like a thorn.

---

He watched the door close. The outline of her in the corridor, the quick set of her shoulders—something in him tightened. He couldn’t name it cleanly. ’I should have ignored her,’ he thought, but the idea had no footing anymore.

Cassandra still lingered by the window, pretending the skyline was the only thing worth watching. He could hear the thin silk of her smile.

“You’re… unusually protective of her,” she said as if confessing a private mischief.

“She’s an employee,” he said. “And she’s good at what she does.”

Cassandra’s mouth shaped a slow, careful sound. “Good enough to get your attention,” she muttered—almost under breath.

His eyes turned. “Watch your words, Cass.”

Her smile stayed. The kind that could be dipped into poison. “You used to say that to me, you know. When we were younger. When I’d tease you about girls who never looked your way.”

“Those were different times.”

“Were they?” Her voice drew closer, and for a breath he felt the years like a thin rope between them. “Because I think you’re still the same, Adrian. Always trying to fix broken things.”

He felt the echo of that truth. His fingers curled around the edge of the desk. “Go home, Cassandra.”

She lifted a wine glass—just one—her nails catching the light. He didn’t look away as her heels clicked out of the room like distant thunder.

---

Cassandra’s penthouse scent was of polished wood and the shadow of strategic smiles. She dropped the glass in her hand and watched it shatter across the marble like a small, pretty wound. Wine spread like a dark flower. The noise of the break echoed louder than the rain.

She didn’t flinch. She had practiced this moment in gardens of her own making—plans that grew thorns.

“Pathetic,” she whispered to the dark. The word tasted like iron.

She stared at herself in the pane—every contour arranged with care. But the reflection wavered. Her hands shook now as if the wine had been salt rubbed into something already raw.

For years she had cornered alliances, closed deals, soothed scandals. She had placed herself at Adrian’s side and helped carve his throne. She had been patient.

And yet—now—some young architect had folded smoke into a look and made his jaw slacken. Made him watch her walk away as if the world had tilted.

Her fingers tightened until she felt a strike of pain. Blood prickled at her palm. She welcomed it like proof that she was real.

“No,” she breathed. This was not surrender. She took out her phone and dialed a number she chose for its secrecy.

“Do it,” she told the voice on the other end. Her voice was a blade she had polished and kept. “Find out everything about Elara Cruz—and I mean everything.”

There was a small hesitation, then a murmur of agreement. She smiled and felt the smile like a knife. “Let’s see how long she lasts under my game.”

---

Back in her small apartment, Elara unplugged the world for a while, but not completely. Her phone buzzed again and again—messages piling like unfinished sentences. A hundred small people already told her story with their own sharp edges. The photo followed her as if pasted on the floors she walked.

She stood in the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. The woman who stared back had the same cheekbones, the same stubborn mouth. Tiredness had gathered at the edges of her eyes. ’You wanted this path,’ she thought, pressing fingers to her forehead. ’You chose to fight. Don’t waver now.’

Sleep came later, jagged and thin. In the quiet, she tried to make a plan—how to twist a rumor back into a weapon for her own cause, how to spin the narrative into a sheet strong enough to cover her father’s blueprints. She arranged steps in her head like bricks. Strike here. Reveal there. Use the press when they bend incorrectly.

In the morning, the city didn’t care that she barely slept. It wore the same indifferent face as always. But she moved with a new armor—lined not with steel but with a quiet that made other people wonder what it would be like to be steady for once.

---

Adrian watched her from the glass-walled office as she moved through the floor the next day. He kept rehearsing the lines he would give to anyone who asked. ’She’s professional.’, ’That story is untrue.’, ’We stand by our people.’ Those were the safe versions.

But safe never made him act. When someone in the press asked in the corridor—cameras already angled—he stepped out and said, “Miss Elara Cruz is a lead architect here. She deserves respect. The rumor is false.”

People blinked. Cassandra watched, lips pressed thin. Her chest tightened in a way Adrian had learned to read like a map: she would move a piece soon.

Elara met his eyes across the room. There was a hard swallow in her throat and a fold of gratitude—quick as a blink but there. She flicked a small nod that meant more than words: thank you. Keep me safe. Don’t let this make me small.

He found himself thinking about small mercies afterward—defending someone in public, the quiet of an office lamp after midnight. He’d been a man who paid for protection, manipulated headlines, built walls tall as towers. He didn’t like the way this particular wall had a window in it now through which he could see a woman who moved like the tide.

That evening, as the office emptied and the city folded into its neon pockets, Cassandra’s voice found him in the hallway.

“You stood up for her,” she said, a quiet accusation.

“I did,” he replied.

She stepped in close enough that he could smell the expensive perfume she wore—jasmine and steel. “Do you have a reason, Adrian? Or did you finally grow a heart?”

He didn’t answer. He just watched her, feeling both the tilt of loyalty and the scrape of something older, a friendship worn into the grooves of memory.

She left him then—one last look tossed like a gauntlet. He picked up his glass from the meeting table and watched the room empty, a reluctant monarch left with his thoughts.

---

Elara slept that night with a plan in her pocket, but everyone else had started to draw their maps. The city read the picture before it read the person. And in that race, hands already reached for the controls.

The rumor hadn’t just been a headline. It had been a shove, and the shove had woken up something that would not be easily soothed.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Inside, the plan was only beginning.