She sent it before she could second-guess herself. It was the kind of response that bought her time without pushing Miller away. Her phone buzzed again almost immediately.
“Okay, try to sleep. I’m here if you need me.”
Astoria stared at the message until the screen timed out and went dark.
19
Chapter 19: Miller
The chicken was almost done when Miller heard Astoria’s name. She’d been standing at the stove, pushing pieces around in the pan without really seeing them, her mind still stuck on the motion she’d spent all afternoon drafting. The television was on for the background noise—some local news program she never actually watched—and she’d tuned it out the way she always did, letting the new anchors’ voices blend into white noise.
But her brain snagged on those two familiar syllables:Shepry.
Miller turned, spatula still in hand.
On the screen, Astoria’s corporate headshot filled the frame. It was the same photo Miller had seen dozens of times. Next to it, in bold red letters: “BREAKING: LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL TURMOIL IN SHEPRY DIVORCE.”
The spatula clattered against the stovetop. Miller crossed to the couch and sank onto the edge of it, reaching for the remote to turn up the volume. The anchor was already mid-sentence.
“—financial records obtained by the Tribune appear to show erratic spending patterns in the months following the separation, including several large cash withdrawals and transfers to accounts not previously disclosed in court filings.”
The screen cut to documents. Miller recognized them immediately. They were the discovery materials, the kind of financial records that would have been exchanged between legal teams months ago. Someone had photographed them and sent them to the press.
“The documents paint a troubling picture,” the anchor continued. “Legal experts say these revelations could significantly impact the ongoing divorce proceedings.”
Miller’s chest had gone tight. The coverage cut to a legal analyst, some talking head she didn’t recognize who was already spinning the narrative.
“What we’re seeing here is a pattern,” he said, gesturing broadly. “These aren’t the actions of a stable CEO. The spending, the timing of these withdrawals, they paint a picture of someone who may not be fit to retain control of a multi-million-dollar company.”
Bullshit.Miller’s hands curled into fists.
Those financial records were divorce expenditures. Astoria had bought a house after she’d moved out of a shared mansion to rebuild her life from scratch, and she was paying two legal teams. Of course her spending patterns changed. Anyone’s would have.
But stripped of context, photographed at unflattering angles, and read aloud by anchors who’d never met Astoria, they became weapons to accuse her of being erratic, volatile, and unfit.
The coverage continued, cycling through the same handful of documents and damning excerpts. Miller sat on the couch frozen, the smell of burning chicken finally registeringsomewhere in the back of her mind, but she didn’t move to turn off the stove.
Her phone buzzed, then again, then a third time in rapid succession. She glanced at the screen. Texts from colleagues at the firm.
“Have you seen the news?”
“Holy shit, the Shepry case is everywhere.”
“Isn’t this your old case? What happened?”
Miller turned the phone face-down and kept watching. They were showing footage of Shepry Global’s headquarters now, the glass tower downtown that Miller had driven past a hundred times. A reporter stood outside, delivering a breathless update about stock implications and board concerns and what this might mean for the company’s future.
None of it mattered. None of it was the point.
The point was that someone had taken private documents from an ongoing divorce proceeding and handed them to the press. Someone had decided that Astoria Shepry needed to be publicly humiliated and her financial records broadcast to anyone with a television.
And Miller knew exactly who that someone was.
She thought about Valerie in the conference room all those months ago, trying to convince Rachel to present fabricated claims. She remembered her cold fury when Miller had caught the lie. This was what Valerie did: she rewrote reality to fit her narrative, then smiled while she twisted the knife.
And now she was doing it on the evening news, weaponizing private information.
Miller finally got up and went to the kitchen. The chicken was charred on one side, dark-gray smoke rising from the pan. She turned off the burner and moved the pan to the sink, but she didn’t scrape out the food. She just stood there, her handsbraced against the counter, staring at the ruined dinner she wasn’t going to eat.
