Page 83 of Her Soul to Own

I don’t even flinch.

The sponsorship shelf taunts me. It’s already half-empty, stripped bare. The LuxeMara perfumes are gone, and so are the velvet boxes from my jewelry collab. There’s an emptiness in their place that mirrors the pit in my stomach.

My iPad pings. I don’t want to look, but I do. And it’s like watching your own autopsy in real-time.

Brand partners are stepping back until things stabilize.

The board at LuxeMara said the optics are “too high-risk”.

Vivino dropped your collab line.

We’re placing the charity auction photos on hold. No new press releases. No red carpet.

High-risk,like I’m toxic and a scandal waiting to happen.

Every deal I bled for, clawed into existence from the bones of who I used to be, is dissolving. Like sugar in acid.

I refresh the screen again. My follower count is bleeding, down 37k overnight. And another 5k since I woke up.

It’s more than numbers that are decreasing. It’s my identity’s worth. Clout. It’s the difference between being someone and becoming a cautionary tale. The ghost of fame. The pretty girl they all loved to hate.

But right now, I don’t want protection. I want revenge. I want answers. I want my name back. Instead, I sit in the solitude of my own curated life, surrounded by things that were supposed to make me untouchable—Chanel compacts, La Mer jars, diamond-encrusted lipsticks.

None of that can fix this. No amount of daddy’s money can heal this pain. I’ll have to get through it alone.

I get up, the marble of the vanity seat kissing the backs of my legs. My feet find the plush carpet, but it feels like I’m walking on glass. I wrap my robe tighter around me and move to the balcony, stepping out into the garden breeze.

The estate looks peaceful in the early afternoon haze, which is a lie. I can see the view from my balcony door, which opens to a beautiful scene, but that beauty isn’t doing anything for me right now. It’s only making me feel worse. And I’m too fucking tired to fight today.

I step out onto the balcony in nothing but my robe and the fuck-me heels I wore to the gala because those were the only shoes I could find. My legs are goosebumped and tremblingslightly, though not from cold, but just from… everything. But I don’t go back inside because I need the chill. I need this punishment. I need to feel something that doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my own skin.

The marble tiles feel like ice beneath my soles as I pace to the railing. The light robe flutters behind me like something pretending to be elegant. It’s all an illusion. That’s all I’ve ever been to them anyway—a pretty facade, painted just enough to pass as a Vane.

I pull a cigarette from the emergency stash in the antique drawer on the balcony. I don’t even like the taste, but the ritual matters—the smoke, the fire, the inhale like it’s armor, like it might stitch me together.

Flick. Flame. Inhale.

Fuck.

I close my eyes, letting the smoke coil around my face. The taste is bitter. Fitting.

Then I do something reckless.

I can’t sit here any longer, paralyzed by silence and uncertainty. The not-knowing is worse than anything else, so I reach for my backup phone, the one Silas didn’t find, the one he doesn’t even know exists. Because even my own bodyguard doesn’t get all my secrets.

It’s old, its screen cracked at the corner like a splintered memory, but when I press the power button, it lights up. Still alive. Still mine.

I power it up, and a thousand notifications flood in like a tsunami of shame. Mentions, tags, my name in all caps across gossip accounts, hate threads, and God knows what else. But I ignore them.

Instead, I open Instagram. The icon pulses like it knows it’s about to be weaponized.

I go straight to Stories and tap “Record.”

The camera opens. My reflection stares back, disheveled, half-drunk on grief, and entirely out of fucks.

I smile. Wide and vicious.

“Morning, darlings,” I say, my voice sweet enough to make teeth rot. “PSA: If you think I give a fuck about your outrage, I don’t. Cancel me if you want. But spell my name right.”

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