My breath catches, but my face stays perfectly still. Eleanor's training wins again. I scroll methodically, my thumb moving with practiced precision despite the tremor building inside my chest.
The images are explicit. Unfiltered. Raw.
Me with my lips stretched around him, looking up with hunger in my eyes. Legion's hand in my hair. My breasts exposed.
Me straddling him on that broken couch, his hands gripping my ass, my head thrown back as he thrusts inside me.
The timestamps show they were posted three hours ago. The angles suggest cameras I never saw—one high in a corner, another low and to the side. Professional setup. Not phone snapshots.
I keep scrolling, face betraying nothing while my mind catalogs every detail. The website name. The user who posted them. The comment count already climbing into the thousands.
"They're everywhere," Mama Jo says flatly. "Twitter. Reddit. The porn sites."
My entire life, captured without permission. First by my mother's artistic lens, creating the perfect childhood that never existed. Then by Marcus's social media team, crafting the perfect political wife.
Now this—my claiming, my choice, my one honest moment—stolen and distributed for strangers to consume.
Inside, something ancient and feral is clawing at my ribs, but on the outside, I'm still Savannah Ashby, perfect in all circumstances.
My cheeks should burn with shame, but they don't. I just feel... empty. Like I've been hollowed out by the endless performance of my life.
"And?" I hand the phone back to Mama Jo.
The kitchen falls silent. Five women watching me like I might shatter.
"And?" Brandy echoes, incredulous. "You're fucking famous. These are everywhere."
I smooth my hands down the front of my borrowed jeans. "I've been famous since I was three years old. My mother sold my childhood for followers. Marcus sold my image for votes." I touch my new tattoo, the raw letters spelling PROPERTY OF DEMON. "Why should I care anymore? Why should it bother me?” The words come out calm, almost peaceful. They taste like truth—the first real truth I've spoken in years.
"Where were you three hours ago, Brandy?" Mama Jo says, suspicion hardening her features as she turns toward Brandy.
Brandy's smug smile falters. "Don't look at me. I don't have access to the security feeds."
"You think I don't see you? Creeping around, trying to matter?" Mama Jo's voice is low, dangerous. Not the practiced calm of my mother's disappointment, but something wilder. Protective without possession. "This girl just got here, and you're already trying to burn her house down."
Brandy glances at me, waiting for tears or rage, finding neither. Her certainty cracks. "I didn't leak shit."
"Then who did?" Mama Jo demands.
I laugh softly. "Who cares? Does it matter?"
Mama Jo's face hardens. "Of course it matters. This is about Badlands, not just you."
I don't say anything back. I have nothing to say.
Mama Jo studies me for a long moment, then shakes her head like she doesn't understand me. "I'm taking this to Diesel. This is club business now." She moves toward the door, pausing beside me. "You know perfectly well this matters. Your mother would've had a crisis team on the phone."
"My mother would've been more worried about the lighting than my consent," I snap back.
Some of the women exhale. They make big eyes in my peripheral vision. They snicker.
Mama Jo leaves. And, like magic, the dining room empties quickly.
No one wants to be near the fallout.
I stand alone in the silence, feeling oddly weightless.
What's done is done. The photos are out there. The perfect Savannah Ashby is dead.
