Chapter 49

• The day began with a stillness that unsettled me more than any storm could have. The boutique was quiet, too quiet, like the silence that comes right before glass shatters. I stood in the fitting room hallway, fingers trailing lightly along the grain of the wall, trying to ground myself in the physical space I had fought so hard to reclaim. It felt surreal, this calm, as though the walls themselves were bracing for something they already sensed coming.
• Claudia was the first to arrive. She didn’t speak right away, just handed me a folder with tight lips and eyes that avoided mine. I opened it slowly, already knowing I would not like what I saw. Inside were printed screenshots of a thread spreading quickly across the industry’s internal forums, the kind usually reserved for suppliers, PR firms, and event coordinators. Someone had leaked partial financial records. Not current ones, but old enough to be misleading and carefully selected to suggest mismanagement, overspending, and a cash flow problem that no longer existed.
• “This wasn’t random,” Claudia said finally. “And it wasn’t guesswork either. They knew exactly what to release.”