CHAPTER 1 — THE RETURN
River City had a habit of pretending it had moved on, but anyone who lived here long enough knew the city never forgot a scandal. It only waited for the next opportunity to reopen it.
Aisha Malik learned that the moment she stepped out of the courthouse.
Camera flashes ignited like a storm of lightning. Reporters pushed forward, microphones thrust at her face, voices colliding into an ugly symphony.
"Miss Malik! Is it true you leaked Hale Corporation's financial documents?"
"Did CEO Adrian Hale file action against you?"
"Was this revenge for the breakup?"
She froze just long enough for the headlines to snap their photos, then forced her legs to move. The late-January wind sliced through her coat as she descended the courthouse stairs. Wrong day for heels. Wrong day to come alone. Wrong day to believe silence would save her.
Because it didn't.
By evening, every news station, blog, and gossip channel had collected their favorite angle and wrapped it with a bow.
THE WOMAN WHO BROUGHT A CEO TO HIS KNEES.
BROADCAST STAR OR CORPORATE SABOTEUR?
THE SCANDAL NOBODY SAW COMING — OR DID THEY?
Aisha kept walking, ignoring the shouts, ignoring the cameras hungry for a breakdown, ignoring the city that once adored her when she was on-screen and disposable.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket for the eleventh time. UNKNOWN CALLER.
She declined it.
It buzzed again.
She exhaled sharply. "Persistent," she muttered, answering without slowing her pace.
Before she could speak, a voice rolled through the line—smooth, cold, unmistakably controlled.
"Report to Hale Tower. Top floor. Ten minutes."
She halted mid-step.
Adrian Hale.
"You must be joking," she said. "I have nothing to say to you."
"I didn't ask you to speak," Adrian replied. "I said report."
Click.
Call ended.
Of course he hung up first. He always did. Even when she was twenty-one and stupidly in love with him, he never let her have the last word. Some things didn't change.
The elevator ride to the fifty-seventh floor felt like traveling through time and straight into a wound she never properly healed.
Hale Tower hadn't changed. Polished marble. Glass walls. The smell of money and ambition. Assistants who walked too fast and talked too little. Every person who passed her eyes flicked with recognition, then quickly looked away.
Scandal was contagious. Nobody wanted to be seen catching it.
The receptionist glanced up. Her expression flickered for half a second — shock, pity, curiosity, fear — before she smoothed it back to corporate neutrality.
"Ms. Malik. He's expecting you."
He. As if there were only one he in this building.
Aisha stepped into the office before she was ready.
Adrian Hale stood with his back to her, hands tucked in his pockets, staring out at the skyline like he'd never once doubted the city belonged to him. Power looked good on him. It always had.
"You're late," he said, without turning.
"I didn't agree to come," she replied, leaning against the doorway. "Consider it impressive I showed up at all."
He finally turned.
Five years should've softened something. Anger, memory, grief — anything. But Adrian wore time like another tailored suit: precise, expensive, and perfectly cold.
He didn't smile. "Sit."
She didn't move.
His brow twitched. "Still stubborn."
"Still arrogant," she countered.
A ghost of something—amusement or annoyance—hovered over his mouth before disappearing.
"You came alone," he observed.
"You came with lawyers, a board, and half the media behind you," she said. "Not everyone needs an entourage."
"You should be more careful, Aisha. This city eats people alive."
"Funny," she said, "I was just thinking the same about you."
He slid a folder across the desk. She glanced down.
PUBLIC RELATION REHABILITATION CONTRACT
Her stomach dropped.
"You're serious," she whispered.
"Completely."
"You expect me to sign anything from you?"
"I expect you to save both our careers," Adrian said, tone steady. "Yours is sinking. Mine is bleeding. And the media is foaming at the mouth because sacrifice stories sell."
She held his stare. "Why me?"
His jaw flexed once. "Because no one else would make it believable."
There. The first slip. Not of guilt — Adrian didn't do guilt — but of something the cameras had never captured.
"They think I leaked your financials," she reminded him.
"They think a lot of things," he said.
"Did you correct them?"
He didn't answer.
Of course he didn't.
The silence between them was thick enough to suffocate on. Not just because of the scandal now, but because of the one before it — the one the city never learned about. The one that wasn't about corporate betrayals or leaked documents or shareholder wars.
The one about him and her.
The one that ended with her leaving his penthouse at three in the morning with shaking hands and a heart she didn't recognize anymore.
Aisha flipped the folder open, scanning terms. Appearances. Interviews. Narrative guidelines. Relationship milestones. Brand alignments. Talking points.
It wasn't a contract, it was choreography.
"You want us to pretend we don't hate each other," she said.
"Pretend?" Adrian's voice lowered. "We will be photographed together. Interviewed. Seen. The rest is optional."
"And if I refuse?"
Adrian didn't blink. "Then the board removes me. Hale Corporation fractures. And you never work in broadcasting again. The scandal follows you. The networks blacklist you. The public forgets you in a week, but the industry remembers forever."
He said it clinically. Like this was a business forecast. Not two ruined lives.
Aisha swallowed hard. "You destroyed my career."
"You destroyed mine first," he said.
The words hung in the air like a match over gasoline.
She stared at him, stunned. "You really believe that."
"I don't need to believe it," Adrian replied. "I lived it."
For a heartbeat, something raw flickered across his face — too fast to read, too painful to name.
She shut the folder. "I'll think about it."
Adrian stepped forward, blocking the door with one hand — not touching her, just placing himself between her and escape like he had every right to.
"There's no time," he said. "The narrative is already out of control. The board votes in twelve days."
"You don't command me anymore," she snapped.
"Not commanding," he said quietly. "Negotiating."
"You don't negotiate," she shot back. "You dictate."
His eyes flicked — brief, involuntary — to her mouth. A mistake. A memory. Something alive and unburied.
"You're too smart to pretend you have better options," he said.
Her phone buzzed again. LINDA REYES — Executive Producer.
The offer she'd fought for. The one interview that had gone well before the scandal detonated.
Adrian saw the name. Of course he did.
"They're retracting it," he said. "They have to. Dead weight doesn't anchor a broadcast. It drowns it."
Aisha's fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles whitened.
He wasn't wrong.
He never was.
She turned back toward the contract, toward the skyline, toward the city that built idols then burned them for entertainment.
"What's the alternative?" she whispered.
Adrian stepped aside, letting her walk past.
"A partnership," he said. "One year. Mutual benefit. Public unity."
Aisha paused at the doorway.
"You really expect the city to buy that I'd ever get back with you?"
Adrian met her eyes without a shadow of hesitation.
"They already did once."
Her breath caught in her throat.
Because he was right about that too.
The cameras didn't need truth. They only needed a good enough story.
And theirs had always been one.