I watched the whole thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROSE
The studio was smallerthan I expected.
I’d imagined something clinical, bright lights, a news desk, the sterile polish of broadcast television. Instead, Melanie had booked a space that looked like a living room. Two chairs, warm lighting, a camera crew of three people who moved quietly and didn’t make eye contact. The setup was designed to feel intimate. Conversational. The kind of environment where you’d forget the cameras were there and say things you couldn’t take back.
Which was, of course, exactly the point.
Melanie met me in the hallway. She was in her late fifties, silver-streaked hair pulled back, wearing a blazer over a plain black shirt. No jewelry. She looked like what she was, a woman who’d spent three decades asking questions that made powerful people uncomfortable.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Terrified.”
“Good. Terrified people tell the truth.” She gestured toward the studio door. “We’ll start soft, your background, the ranch, how you started it. Then we’ll move into the financial situation, your employees, and the insurance. Then Graham.” She met my eyes. “The Graham section is where this interview lives or dies, Rose. People come for the scandal. They’ll stay for the love story. But only if it’s real.”
“It’s real.”
“Then we won’t have a problem.” She opened the door. “Ready?”
I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready. I walked through the door anyway.
The interview lastedtwo hours and fourteen minutes.
Melanie started where she said she would, the ranch. How I’d built it. Why I’d built it. The inheritance from parents I’d never known, the decision to create something with my own hands instead of living off money that felt like a consolation prize for being left with no parents.
I told her about the horses. About Cassiopeia, the mare Patrick bought me when I was fifteen because he’d read somewhere that horses helped with anxiety, and how she’d been the first living thing I’d ever trusted completely. About Ricky, who flinched at everything and taught me that patience wasn’t a virtue, it was a practice. About Brutus, who wouldn’t give you an inch unless you earned it, and how I’d loved him for that.
Melanie listened. Nodded. Let me talk.
Then she shifted.
“Tell me about Denise Harlow.”
I took a breath. This was where it got dangerous. I had no proof. Everything I suspected about Denise was exactly that: suspicion. A feeling in my gut that had taken root the moment Graham first askeddo you believe her?and had been growing ever since, fed by every inconsistency I’d told myself not to look at.
But suspicion wasn’t fact. And saying what I believed on a livestream, to the world, about a woman who could sue me for defamation, was the kind of thing that could take whatever was left of my life and burn it to ash.
“Denise was my business partner and my best friend for six years,” I said, starting with what I could prove. “She managed the administrative side of the ranch, bookings, vendor payments, insurance, financial records. I trusted her completely.”
“And that trust was misplaced.”
“Yes.” The word came out steady. I’d practiced it in the mirror at Maggie’s apartment, standing in the bathroom sayingyesover and over until it stopped tasting like glass. “An embezzlement scheme stole seventy-two thousand dollars from my business through shell companies and inflated vendor payments. Her boyfriend, Taylor Marsh, was the front man. His name was on the accounts, his credentials were on every transaction. When I discovered the theft, Denise blamed him. I believed her.”
“Why?”
“Because she was my friend.” I held Melanie’s gaze. “And because if I had to admit that she might have been involved, itmeant I couldn’t tell the difference between people who loved me and people who were using me. And I couldn’t face that.”
Melanie tilted her head slightly. She had this way of listening that made you feel like she was hearing the words you hadn’t said yet. “You said Taylor was the front man. That’s an interesting word choice.”
I felt my pulse spike. I hadn’t planned to sayfront man. It had come out on its own, the way the truth does when you’re too tired to keep editing it.
“What I mean is?—”
“You mean you don’t think Taylor acted alone.”
