Chapter 3 His Career or Yours

"Yes." A quiet breath left him. "Then let me be straight with you." His voice was quieter now, but no less final. "I don't want to do this. Fake dating, managing a story, any of it. I don't want it." He glanced once toward the door behind him. "We won't see each other again after tonight anyway. Consider this me helping you out of a bad spot. Don't worry about the rest. I'll deal with it myself." "Hey-" He was already turning, already walking, and he didn't stop. Zoya stood alone in the room, her phone still lit in her hand, the number of shares climbing without her, she realized she had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do next. --- {The next morning} Zoya's phone had ninety-one notifications by the time she woke up, and she understood, somewhere between the first and the ninth, that "morning" was no longer a private word. Her name wasn't in any of the headlines. That was the only mercy in it. "Thayer Mystery Girlfriend" one read. "Who Is The Woman Who Broke The Internet's Most Private Man" read another, beneath a photo that had already been cropped, filtered, and reposted a thousand different ways. Her hand on his arm, her face turned slightly away from the camera, just distant enough to still be a stranger to the world, even as she stopped being one to him. A message from Ilya sat at the top of her lock screen. "You awake? Call me. Also - Papa wants to see you. Today." She sat up slowly, phone screen glowing in the dark of her bedroom, and understood with a sinking, familiar feeling that the version of this story circulating online was already more real to everyone else than whatever had actually happened in that room.

Thayer saw the reporters before he even reached the building. He was driving himself, which was already unusual. He'd sent his driver home the night before and told him not to come in this morning, because he didn't want anyone watching his face when he read the headlines. Now he was glad for it. Half a block from Sunrise Entertainment's main entrance, he caught sight of them. A dozen or more, cameras up, microphones out, clustered near the glass doors like they'd been there since dawn. More than he'd seen outside the building in years.

He didn't slow down. He turned the wheel smoothly and cut toward the side street that fed into the private underground garage, one hand steady on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift. The security gate lifted after a beat, recognizing his plate, and he pulled inside.

The garage was quiet, dim, a handful of expensive cars parked in reserved spots. He pulled into his, killed the engine, and sat there for a second with his hands still on the wheel.

Get it together.

He grabbed his jacket from the passenger seat, stepped out of the car, and shut the door. His footsteps echoed through the concrete space as he walked toward the private elevator at the far end. He pressed the button. Waited. The doors opened.

He stepped inside and pressed the button for the top floor.

The elevator ride up was almost worse than the garage. A handful of people from other floors shared the car with him. Every one of them found a reason to glance his way, quick and curious, like he couldn't see them doing it. He kept his eyes forward, jaw tight, his own voice dry in his head. What is wrong with everyone. Am I the only person in this entire building who's ever had a scandal?

The doors opened on his floor. The floor was chaos. Phones were ringing on every desk. Someone from the PR team had three screens open at once, scrolling headlines faster than she could read them.

Another was mid-call, voice pitched low and urgent. "No comment at this time, we'll have a statement shortly."

Nobody looked up as he passed. He pushed open Daniel's office door without knocking.

Daniel was standing at the window, arms crossed, looking down at the crowd of reporters still gathered on the street below.

"What's her name?" Daniel said, without turning around.

"I don't know."

That got Daniel to turn. "You don't know."

"Zoya. Something." Thayer dropped into the chair across from the desk, dragging a hand through his hair. "I don't have a last name. I don't know anything about her, except that her family clearly isn't short on money."

Daniel studied him for a long moment before finally sitting down. "We're not denying it."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Daniel slid a tablet across the desk, a wall of headlines and share counts lighting the screen. "Look at this. Then tell me denial helps you."

"It's a stranger who grabbed my arm at a party. That's the whole story. I say that, once, and it's over."

"It's not over, because you didn't correct it in the room." Daniel's voice was even, the practiced calm of a man who'd talked far more volatile clients off far worse ledges. "You smiled. You shook her father's hand. You called her honey, Thayer, in front of two reporters with press credentials. If you deny it now, the story isn't 'misunderstanding.' The story becomes 'why did he lie about it for a full night before changing his mind.' That story is worse. Much worse."

Thayer's jaw tightened. "So what, we just let it run?"

"We control it." Daniel folded his hands. "You and the girl play it out. Six months. Real enough to be believable, distant enough to be manageable. Then we stage a clean breakup, no fault on either side, and it fades exactly the way stories are supposed to fade. Because it ended on our terms instead of the internet's."

"No."

"Thayer-"

"I said no." He was on his feet without remembering standing. "I'm not spending six months of my life performing a relationship for people who don't know either of us, built on a lie some stranger told to get out of an argument with her father. Find another way."

Daniel studied him for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted. Not anger, something closer to regret.

"You know what happens if you walk away from this the wrong way. You've done it before. I watched what four years of silence cost you the last time a story got away from us. I am not doing that again. Not to you."

The room went quiet.

"If you refuse this," Daniel said, quieter now, "I can't promise the story stays this small. I can't promise it doesn't reach back for anything else it can find. You might have to walk away from all of it. Maybe even quit."

Thayer looked at him for a long moment. Something cold settled behind his eyes.

"Why are you suddenly reacting this way over a scandal that isn't yours?" His voice was low, controlled, but there was an edge underneath it that hadn't been there before. "It's mine to decide if I'll agree to the relationship or not. Not yours. Not anyone else's."

Daniel opened his mouth.

"And because of this scandal," Thayer continued, cutting him off, "I'm not quitting. No matter what. You hear me? I'm not walking away from my career because of a photograph." He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked out.

--- Daniel waited until the door clicked shut before he picked up his phone. "It's done," he said, the moment the call connected. "I told him what you asked me to."

A pause on the other end. "He's angry. He walked out." The call ended. Daniel sat there for a moment, phone still in his hand, a knot of guilt settling low in his stomach that he didn't examine too closely. Because examining it would mean admitting what he already half-suspected. That the studio could have handled this scandal quietly, easily, without any of tonight's pressure at all. --- {Ames Estate, Ames Mansion} The car hadn't fully stopped before one of the guards was already moving, jogging around the front of the vehicle to reach her door before the driver could.

"That's not necessary," Zoya said, stepping out before he got there, offering him a small smile. "I have hands, Yuri. I promise."

The guard, young, still new enough to look faintly embarrassed, dipped his head anyway. "Welcome home, Miss Zoya."

She'd grown up in this house and still, every time she came back, the sheer scale of it struck her fresh. The long gravel drive curling up to steps wide enough to fit a car sideways, the pale stone façade rising three stories against the afternoon sky, windows catching the light like something built to be looked at from a distance rather than lived in up close. A row of staff had already assembled near the entrance, the quiet, practiced choreography of a household that ran on anticipation rather than instruction. They inclined their heads as she passed. She nodded back at each of them by name, the way she always did, and pretended not to notice when it visibly surprised the newer ones.

The great doors to the main living room swung open ahead of her.