Page 129 of Her Soul to Own

Declan’s management released a blanket denial within an hour of the drop. The usual corporate gaslighting:Fabricated evidence. Selective editing. Vindictive manipulation.

Predictable.

Harper, on the other hand, didn’t even attempt a statement. She just deleted everything. Gone. Every profile, every brand collab, every carefully curated photo set in Santorini, Paris, and those fucking over-filtered beach yoga sessions. All wiped, like she never existed. Her absence became the loudest confession of guilt.

Suddenly, the door to my room bursts open without warning, slamming against the wall like it’s got something urgent to say. Zara barrels in, wild-eyed in sweats and clutching her tablet like it’s radioactive.

“You’re not gonna believe this…” she starts, then freezes when she spots Silas still in bed beside me, shirtless and very much not asleep.

He groans low in his throat, burying his face into the pillow like the presence of another human has physically wounded him.

Zara winces, clearly not sorry at all. “Oops. I let myself in,” she says, grinning unapologetically as she comes toward the foot of the bed.

Silas peels his face away from the pillow just long enough to glare at her and raise his middle finger in salute. “You’re the actual worst,” he mutters, his voice husky with sleep.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, grabs his shirt from the floor, and trudges toward the door without another word, flipping her off again on the way out.

Zara bites down on her laugh, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

I don’t bother holding mine back. I laugh, really laugh, because after everything—the drop, the fallout, the storm we unleashed—this is somehow the exact kind of absurd chaos I need.

That’s when she lifts her tablet again and says, “Okay, seriously. You’re not gonna believe this.”

I raise a brow, already bracing myself.

“There’s a post trending,” she tells me before she reads it out loud.“Sources confirm Harper Eden was found unresponsive last night after an overdose. Suspected suicide attempt. She’s currently hospitalized under private care at an unnamed clinic. No further details have been shared.”

My stomach knots for half a second, but only half. I see it instantly for what it is.

The timing is too convenient, the move too calculated, and the narrative too perfectly positioned to flip public sympathy on a dime. Evander’s fingerprints are all over this.

“She’s not dying,” I whisper, my voice bitter. “She’s disappearing.”

Zara nods grimly. “And your father’s already running the spin. ‘Victim of online bullying,’ ‘driven to the brink by toxic cancel culture,’ ‘young woman destroyed by internet mobs.’ The usual horse shit.”

Of course. Evander’s always been good at this game. He understands public sentiment better than any PR strategist alive. When one of his puppets falls, he doesn’t cut the strings; he rewires them.

“But she’s not at any hospital,” Zara adds, her eyes narrowing.

I glance up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been running location pings since the post dropped.” Zara slides her tablet over to me. “Her private travel logs, the ones I hacked last month for fun, show her jet leaving last night. She was wheels up two hours after your video aired. The last signal pinged over the Mediterranean.”

I stare at the blinking red dot, frozen in place over open water.

“Coward,” I whisper.

Because that’s exactly what this is. She isn’t trying to kill herself. She is trying to vanish off the face of the earth. My father is staging her exit to minimize the blowback, and Harper, Harper fucking Eden, is more than happy to slip away and let the media clean up her mess.

The rage inside me simmers, but I need to tame it and keep myself focused.

I lean back against the headboard, my phone still vibrating beside me like a war drum.

They thought this would break me. But I’ve never stood taller.

And this is only the first strike.

XXX

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