"Change of plans, how?"
"We're getting married on July Sixteenth."
My heart hammers so hard I feel it in my teeth. "No, Hudson. We are not. We talked about this. It's over."
There's a pause. Long enough that I can hear him breathing.
"I really didn't want to do this to you, Harper. But you've given me no choice."
The temperature in the room drops.
"My father will not sign over the company until he sees me get married. After the wedding, LA Press is mine. But I need a bride. And not just anyone." His voice hardens. "My bride. You."
I take a shaky breath. "Hudson, are you insane? You can't force someone to marry you. Trust me, you really don't want to push this."
If I tell Ace what he's doing, Ace will kill him. That's not a figure of speech. That is a factual statement about what will happen if these words reach Sterling Ranch.
Hudson laughs. "You're about to receive an email from a secure sender. Open the link. Have a look. Then call me back." He pauses. "Because if you say no, if you refuse to marry me, I will publish that link. You might have been running investigations, Harper, but so have I. I have enough to ruin your boyfriend. His family. Their entire operation. And I'vegot contacts who I can pay that won't just burn down Sterling Ranch. They'll kill them. All of them. Wyatt included."
The room tilts.
"Open the link," he says. "Call me back in five minutes."
He cuts the call.
My phone screen goes dark. I stare at it. My reflection stares back. A woman sitting on a childhood bed with a gold necklace around her neck and her hands shaking so badly she can barely hold the device.
The email arrives. I open it. A link. An encrypted passcode underneath. My fingers are trembling so violently that it takes me three attempts to type in the password.
The page loads. Black background. A list of women's names.
Abigail. Chloe. Sabrina.
I stop scrolling. Sabrina. That's the girl from accounts. The one who dated Hudson and then left crying. I keep scrolling. My throat is closing. My vision is narrowing to the screen in my hands and nothing else.
At the bottom. My name.
Harper Jones.
I tap it.
The headline loads first:"Cheating fiancée and professional bull rider, Ace Sterling, get steamy on a video call."
Photographs. Photographs of me. Screenshots taken from my phone. Images I sent to Ace and only Ace. Private. Intimate. My body, my face, my vulnerability captured in moments I shared with the man I love and no one else. Moments that were sacred. Moments that were ours.
They're all here. Organized. Timestamped. Annotated.
I scroll further. A video. The thumbnail is a still from the FaceTime call. The night I was at Hudson's house. The night of the dinner with his parents, when I locked the bedroom door and called Ace, and let him see every part of me because I trustedthat the distance between us was the only distance that existed. That no one else was watching.
The same day that Hudson borrowed my phone to print the documents for Gianna. That asshole.
I press play.
My own voice fills the room. My moans. Ace's voice coming through the speakers.
My mother is downstairs making coffee, and my father is reading the paper, and neither of them knows that their daughter's most intimate moments have been recorded and weaponized by a man she trusted enough to work for.
I throw the phone on the bed and run to the bathroom.
