But here, in the wreckage of a carefully controlled afternoon and a couch that wasn’t designed for two people who’d stopped pretending, I held the woman who’d seen through every wall I’d built and chosen to stay anyway.
Whatever came next, we’d face it from the same side.
I was certain of that now in a way I hadn’t been certain of anything in years.
Chapter Sixteen
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The coffee had gone cold three hours ago.
I stared at the mug on my cluttered desk, watching the fluorescent lights of the newsroom reflect off the murky surface like some kind of metaphor I was too tired to unpack. Around me, phones rang and keyboards clacked — the symphony of deadline chaos that usually felt like home. Today it felt like background noise to the storm in my head.
My report had detonated across every major news outlet eighteen hours ago. Richard Hartley’s face was plastered on screens nationwide, his smug corporate headshot now synonymous with corruption and fraud. Victor Corsetti’s name had finally surfaced in the public consciousness, dragged from the shadows where he’d operated for decades.
I should have felt triumphant.
Instead I felt like I was standing in the eye of a hurricane, waiting for the second wall to hit.
My phone had buzzed so many times since dawn I’d stopped registering individual notifications. I’d answered the ones thatmattered — Howard, Marco, two calls from journalists at competing outlets who wanted comment — and let the rest roll to voicemail.
Jenna:Girl, are you okay? The gossip sites are going INSANE. Call me.
I typed back:Fine. Busy. Talk later.
A lie wrapped in professional obligation. The truth was messier — Sebastian and I had parted ways at his office sometime around dawn, neither of us quite knowing what came next. He had a company to salvage. I had a career to defend. Somewhere between those two imperatives, we’d both been too exhausted and too full of what the day had been to figure out if there was still an us on the other side of it.
I assumed there was. I was afraid to examine that assumption too closely.
“Rivera.”
Howard’s voice cut through my fog. My editor stood at the edge of my desk, his salt-and-pepper hair more disheveled than usual, his expression caught somewhere between pride and the specific concern of a man who’d seen brilliant journalists burn out on exactly this kind of story.
“Your piece is being syndicated to fourteen national outlets,” he said. “AP wants an exclusive follow-up. CNN’s requesting you for a panel tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” I managed.
“It’s exceptional.” He lowered his voice, leaning closer. “But the other shoe’s about to drop. Laurent Enterprises is holding a press conference in two hours. Word is the board’s meeting right now.”
My stomach clenched. “Do we know what they’re announcing?”
“Nothing official.” Howard studied me with the careful assessment of a man who’d watched careers rise and fall onthe same day. “But given what you’ve exposed, I’d prepare for Laurent to either fall on his sword or come out swinging.”
“He’ll come out swinging,” I said, and was surprised by how certain I sounded. “That’s what he does.”
Howard’s eyebrow lifted slightly. He’d known me long enough to hear what lived underneath the professional certainty.
“Take care of yourself,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder — an uncharacteristic gesture that made my throat tighten. “You just took down one of the most powerful CFOs in Chicago and exposed a decades-long corruption scheme. The people you’ve pissed off aren’t going to forget that.”
“I know.”
He nodded once, then retreated to his office. I watched him go and thought about the envelope under my door. The threatening calls. The photograph with my address annotated beneath it. The man in the shadows at the Peninsula who had looked at me like something that didn’t yet know it was being hunted.
They hadn’t broken me then. They wouldn’t break me now.
My phone buzzed. Sebastian’s name lit up the screen, and I stared at it for one full breath before opening the message.
Board meeting in progress. Situation volatile. Wanted you to know — whatever happens in the next few hours, I’m handling it. Don’t watch the press conference.
