Chapter 1 1

Eleonora adjusted the angle of the high-lumen ring light. The harsh white glare forced her to squint, a physical reflex that felt like a warning she was ignoring. She checked the monitor. Her skin looked porcelain, flawless, a mask constructed of pixels and light designed to hide the woman beneath it.

Beside her, Chloe was chewing on her thumbnail. The sound was a wet, rhythmic click-click-click that grated against Eleonora's nerves. It was the sound of anxiety made manifest.

Eleonora reached out and placed a hand over Chloe's trembling fingers. She didn't say anything. She just pressed down, a silent command to breathe.

She turned her attention to the audio mixer. The input levels were peaking in the red. Resistance. She twisted the gain knob to the left, smoothing out the potential distortion. It had to be perfect.

On the secondary monitor, the viewer count ticked upward. It moved like a speedometer on a race car. Four hundred thousand. Five hundred thousand.

Eleonora's heart remained a steady, metronomic beat. It was a sharp, physical squeeze in the center of her chest. Half a million people were waiting for blood.

She inhaled deeply, expanding her diaphragm against the waistband of her jeans, forcing the air down to suppress the flicker of adrenaline rising in her throat. Then, she looked at the camera lens and plastered on the smile. It was the smile that built her brand, the one that masked the calculating mind behind the outrage.

The countdown timer hit zero.

The "ON AIR" light turned a menacing red.

"Welcome back," Eleonora said. Her voice was an octave lower than her natural speaking tone, steady and authoritative.

The chat box exploded. It was a waterfall of text, moving so fast it was illegible, a blur of neon colors and angry emojis. They wanted the tea. They wanted the takedown.

"We all know why we are here," Eleonora continued. "We are here to talk about patterns. About men who think they can use women as stepping stones."

She gestured to Chloe, who was sitting just out of frame, a silhouette of victimhood. Eleonora began to recount the narrative. Tyler Brock. The lies. The stolen credit cards. The manipulation. This was the appetizer, the relatable story that primed the audience for the main course.

Every word was a calculated strike. The viewer count surged past eight hundred thousand.

"You want proof?" Eleonora asked, her finger hovering over the iPad screen. "I have the receipts."

The number hit one million. This was the precipice.

Chloe reached for a glass of water on the desk. Her hand spasmed. Water sloshed over the rim, splashing onto the sleek white surface of the desk, dangerously close to the mixer.

"Shit," Chloe whispered.

Eleonora's eyes darted to the spill. A perfect, unplanned opportunity. She grabbed a microfiber cloth to stem the flow before it hit the electronics. "Keep it together," she murmured, her voice a low command meant only for Chloe.

In that fraction of a second, her other hand, still hovering over the iPad, moved with practiced, deliberate speed. Her index finger didn't fumble. It tapped a pre-set macro hidden in the corner of the screen, a command sequence she had coded herself. To the million viewers, it would look like a slip, a frantic mis-click caused by the spilled water.

The system lagged. A spinning wheel of death appeared on the main broadcast screen. A collective, digital gasp.

Then, the image loaded.

It was high-definition. It was black and white. It was a passport-style headshot that radiated cold, sterile power.

The man in the photo had a jawline that looked like it could cut glass. His eyes were dark, deep-set, and devoid of warmth.

It was Kristopher Schaefer. The CEO of Schaefer Media Group. The man who owned half the city.

Eleonora didn't need to see the screen. She was still wiping the water, playing her part.

"This is the face of a leech!" Eleonora shouted, her voice rising with righteous fury, pointing blindly at the monitor behind her. "This is a man who relies on other people's money to fund his lifestyle because he has no spine of his own!"

She hit the soundboard button.

A massive, animated red stamp slammed onto the screen over Kristopher Schaefer's face.

SCUMBAG.

A cartoonish splat sound effect echoed through the speakers.

Eleonora finally looked up, her expression a mask of manufactured shock.

The chat had stopped.

It wasn't a lag. It was a vacuum. The waterfall of text had frozen. Then, a single comment appeared.

Is that Kristopher Schaefer?

Then another.

OMG that is Schaefer.

Did she just call the richest man in New York a leech?

RIP Eleonora.

Chloe let out a sound that was half-squeak, half-scream. She pointed a shaking finger at the monitor.

Eleonora turned her head, letting the blood drain from her face for the camera. The dizziness was real, a byproduct of the adrenaline. Her extremities went cold.

Kristopher Schaefer's face stared back at her, branded with the word SCUMBAG in dripping red letters.

She stood there, frozen, a statue in her own studio.

"No," she whispered.

She scrambled for the iPad, tapping frantically to close the image. The app didn't respond. The traffic overload had crashed the interface. The image was burned onto the screen, a digital curse.

Eleonora reached under the desk and yanked the power strip from the wall.

The monitors went black. The ring light died. The room plunged into the gray gloom of a rainy Manhattan afternoon.

Silence.

Chloe slid off her chair and sat on the floor, hugging her knees. "We're dead. We are actually dead."

Eleonora leaned against the desk, gasping for air. Her lungs felt too small. The first phase was complete.

Her phone began to vibrate. It buzzed against the hard wood of the desk like an angry hornet. Then again. And again. Notifications from Twitter, Instagram, her burner email, her offshore trading account.

She couldn't look.

She knew exactly who that man was. Not just because he was Kristopher Schaefer.

But because, legally, on a piece of paper buried in a safe deposit box she hadn't opened in three years, he was her husband.

She grabbed her trench coat from the rack.

"We have to go," Eleonora said. Her voice was brittle.

"Go where?" Chloe sobbed.

"Anywhere but here. This location is compromised. Grab the drives."

A sharp, electronic chirp echoed from Eleonora's laptop. A red skull icon flashed on the screen. INCOMING BREACH.

"They're already in the network," Eleonora hissed. "They're trying to trace the IP. We have less than five minutes."

She didn't run for the door. She ran to her laptop, yanking a small, encrypted hard drive from its USB port. She shoved it into her pocket.

"Chloe, the fire escape. Now!" Eleonora grabbed her friend's arm and hauled her to her feet.

She didn't bother barricading the door. There was no Tyler to hold back. The enemy was already inside the walls, inside the wires. They were facing a digital ghost, and the only defense was to disappear.

Eleonora looked at the window. Beyond the glass, the fire escape was a black skeleton against the gray sky. Rain was lashing against the pane.

"The window," Eleonora said.

"It's raining," Chloe whimpered.

"It's either the rain or his security team," Eleonora said, unlocking the sash and shoving it up. The wind howled into the room, carrying the scent of wet asphalt and ozone.

She stepped out onto the metal grate. It was slick.

She looked down. Four stories to the alley.

Behind her, the laptop on the desk sparked and went dark, its internal components fried by the remote wipe she had just initiated.