Page 96 of Every Shattered Note
Eddie’s voice cuts through me like a slap.“The press is running with it.VH1’s trailer dropped last night—three A.M.slot.Prime for gossip shows.They’ve got leaked audio.Your dad is talking about a payoff.”
My stomach flips.
I close my eyes.“Audio?”
“Edited to hell, but yeah.And there’s new footage.You walking into the hotel lobby.Looks like the night it happened.”
“It’s not,” I snap, already clenching my fists.
“I know.But the timeline’s close enough for them to twist it.The guy looks too close to you in a grainy video.No one cares about fucking facts.They care about how scandal sounds over morning coffee.”
I drag my hand down my face, try to breathe through the heat crawling up my neck.
He continues, relentless.“We’re meeting with the lawyers in an hour.They want your statement ready before noon.You’ll need to sign off.”
The SUV winds through studio gates—our so-called safe house.The irony burns.It’s never safe here.Just controlled.Contained.
Across the street, a line of paparazzi has already formed.Their voices claw through the windows like sandpaper on skin.
“Dexter!Over here!Dexter Vaughn!Is it true?Did you know?!”
Even though they can’t see my face, they scream like they can peel away the tint and read every secret I’ve ever held.
The flashbulbs don’t even have to catch me.Their residue lingers behind my eyelids like punishment.
Inside the lot, everything reeks of burnout—old coffee, recycled air, panic.A PR team paces like they’re preparing for war.Conference tables are littered with headlines, stills from grainy footage, articles printed out and highlighted like evidence in a courtroom.
The Vaughn Files: New Evidence Emerges.
Was the Son Involved?
Who Really Killed Her?
I see my name once and stop reading.I already know what the rest say.They don’t care about the truth.Just proximity.Just blood.
Eddie slides a folder across the table.“They want you to do a sit-down withMercury Edgemagazine.Controlled questions.Exclusive.They’ll frame it as redemption.”
“Redemption for what?”My voice cracks, low and raw.“For being born to him?”
He doesn’t answer.Just scrubs his hand down his face like he can erase the last two decades and start over.Like any of us can.
A woman in a pinstriped suit clicks into the room, smelling like Chanel No.5 and lawsuits.She’s efficient, clinical.Eyes void of empathy.She opens her briefcase and begins listing talking points like a grocery list.
I nod when I’m supposed to, but my body is still on that plane, my mind somewhere else entirely.
Back in San Cristóbal.
Back in that kitchen, her laugh catching in the air like music.Bare feet on terracotta tiles.Her fingers brushing flour from my jaw as if we had all the time in the world.
I can still feel her saying it.
“I’m not leaving you.”
But I already left her.
I said a lot more than just a goodbye just not with words.
I let the fear, the scandal drag me back into this circus of absolution I never asked for.And she—she stayed.Brave.Soft.Still believing in something we couldn’t name.
