Chapter 26: Media Storm
465 words
Sarah sat on the lumpy motel mattress, clutching her knees to her chest. The cheap TV in the corner flickered, the volume turned low, but the red banner at the bottom of the screen screamed louder than any shout.
BREAKING: CEO Julian Blackwood Linked to Witness Attempted Murder.
Marcus leaned against the peeling wallpaper, scrolling through his phone with a grim satisfaction. “It’s trending, Sarah. #JusticeForSarah is number one globally. For six months, he used his billions to make you invisible. Now, the entire world is watching him.”
She stared at the screen. Aerial footage showed a swarm of news vans encircling Julian’s penthouse tower like sharks sensing blood in the water. Her hands trembled, not from cold, but from adrenaline.
He had taken her home, her career, and almost her life. Seeing the chaos at his doorstep felt like the first breath of air after drowning.
“He’s coming out,” Marcus said, pointing a scarred finger at the screen.
On the live feed, the heavy glass doors of the Blackwood Tower swung open. Julian emerged, flanked by a phalanx of security guards. Usually, he walked with the arrogance of a king inspecting his subjects. Today, head down and shoulders hunched, he looked like a cornered rat.
A wall of camera flashes exploded. The light was blinding, a strobe effect of judgment.
“Mr. Blackwood! Did you order the car bomb?”
“Is it true the drug causes birth defects?”
Julian tried to shoulder past a cameraman, his pristine suit getting jostled in the crush. He looked up, his steel-blue eyes wide with a panic Sarah recognized intimately. It was the same panic she had felt when her credit card declined at the pharmacy. Now, he was the one with zero credit.
“Get back! All of you!” Julian roared, his voice cracking on the live audio. He shoved a microphone away, his composure shattering. But the mob didn’t care about his stock portfolio. They smelled fear.
Suddenly, the camera panned to the building's private side entrance. A sleek white limousine waited there, its trunk popped open.
A woman in oversized sunglasses stepped out of the service elevator, followed by porters loading a stack of Louis Vuitton trunks.
Sarah gasped. “Tiffany.”
Julian stopped dead in the middle of the media scrum. He watched, mouth slightly open, as his ‘perfect genetic match’ slipped into the back of the hired car without even glancing in his direction.
The camera zoomed in mercilessly. Tiffany checked her phone, looking bored, as the driver slammed the trunk shut. She wasn’t fleeing with him. She was fleeing from him.
One final flashbulb popped, capturing Julian’s face in high definition as it crumpled. In that second, the billionaire realized he was poorer than the woman sleeping in a motel.
End of Chapter 26
