"I didn’t tell anyone," I say.
"So this is true? VELVT lied to you?"
"Yes, but my lawyer told me not to tell anyone. The NDA is ironclad."
"Then someone in your camp did," Randolph fires back. "And now I’m getting calls from sponsors asking why I wasn’t looped in."
Camp… My camp. My lawyer knew, and he told me not to speak.
And then I told Natalia.
The thought hits slow.
She wouldn’t. Would she?
Anonymous insider… Close source. That’s not a leak from VELVT. That’s from inside.
I swing my legs off the bed.
A buzz sounds from her side of the bed. I look over my shoulder to find her phone lit up. She must have left it when she left for the yoga studio.
Her side of the room is a mess of an open laptop, legal pads, highlighter caps. Her phone sits on the bedside table.
I get up and walk over. It’s a text notification from Carey.
I shouldn’t look, but I do.
Carey:Great work on the Popovich case. I knew you’d get him to crack. I don’t normally condone sleeping with a client to advance your career, but it seems to have paid off for you… again. Gabriella is impressed. Congrats.
The air leaves my lungs.
Sleeping with the client. Again.
Get him to crack.
Camp source.
I stare at the screen. It doesn’t feel like the anger I should feel. Instead, it feels like a confirmation.
I told her one thing not to use. One thing that I trusted her with, and this morning its national news.
The headlines blur together as I scroll, but the narrative is already forming in clean, ugly lines.
VELVT misrepresented Olympic clearance. Popovich relied on false assurances. A source close to the athlete confirms.
They’ve positioned it carefully. Not an accusation. Not a lawsuit. Just enough to imply that I was misled, that I am shifting blame, that I am quietly trying to soften the fallout without owning it.
It looks like damage control.
It looks like weakness.
It looks like I ran to a PR rep and handed her the one piece of leverage I swore I wouldn’t use.
A quiet laugh escapes me before I can stop it. There’s no humor in it. Just recognition.
I knew better.
I’ve spent years learning how quickly information becomes currency, how easily vulnerability turns into strategy forsomeone else. And yet, last night, lying in that bed with her wrapped around me, I convinced myself that this time might be different.
