Chapter 11: The confrontation.Ethan's Pov;I received countless messages from Sally, she was persistent and refused to back off. I still had a lot on my plate, Yvonne's sudden scandalous rumor has been giving the both of us major headaches and I wouldn't want to add another.It was over between me and Sally and I won't be going back on that. She made it clear to me that didn't want anything to do with so why the pretends now. I tapped my feet gently on the floor, laying back on my seat, thinking if I should go meet her up or pretend I never saw the message. But the moment I read the message, I felt old wounds open up, the love I felt then and the hate I had developed in those past years clashed, I didn't know what to feel anymore. If I meet with her now, she might deem me as weak but I wanted to let go of her and everything that I ever felt, except the revenge I had mapped out.Having conversations with her, might get things complicated, she had this charm that lured men into their

Chapter 13: The Secrets That We Keep Ethan was still too busy to look at me; he focused and typed on his computer as if his life depended on it.I wouldn't even know what to say to him if eventually he stopped talking to me. I waited for a while, but he wasn't there yet. I heard a beep on my phone and decided to check it out.The message was from Reporter Harry. My heart raced when I saw his message; his message meant trouble. He only contacted me when there was some news coming about me, and that news is always bad.I hesitated; I was in a good mood, and I didn't want anything to spoil it. I opened it anyway, and just as expected, it was bad, really bad. I tapped my feet and bit my nails. What on earth did I do to this woman?The message was clearly not verified, but it had enough facts to prove my suspicion.~ Miss Yvonne. Derrick and Mr. Ethan's ex-wife, Sally, have been caught meeting up often, and you know what that means.Reporter Harry always reported dangerous things way too

Chapter 15: Shadows of the Past Yvonne's POV:I woke up to my phone buzzing non-stop.At first, I thought it was just the usual flood of notifications, brand emails, fan tags, and gossip accounts. But the more I scrolled, the faster my heart dropped.Everywhere I looked, my name was there."Yvonne Wells was caught lying again.""Model's dark past resurfaces.""Ethan Hank's cheating girlfriend exposed"The headlines were endless; in less than 12 hours, my name was everywhere, people had started making posts about me, and memes were also created.Pictures that I never took existed, the worst of them all; most of the pictures got my angles wrong, and I looked more like a loofer than a model.I dropped the phone, my hands shaking. I tried to calm myself down. I thought the last scandal would be the last, but I was so wrong. I thought I wouldn't feel depressed since I knew beforehand that this was going to happen, but the anxiety of it all kept me awake all night.Everything I ever built-

Chapter 17; After the Smoke Ethan's Pov;The office looked like war.Screens black. Phones ringing non-stop. My employees were running around like someone pulled the floor out from under them.I stood in the middle of it all, still in yesterday's shirt, still half numb from the night before.The hack wasn't just bad, it was surgical. Clean. Targeted. They didn't go for money. They went for everything else. The codes, our clients, our projects. Every trace of the years I'd worked to build this company was now floating somewhere out there in someone else's hands.Derrick's hands.I didn't need proof. I knew his style was too smart, too deliberate. He'd always said he could break me if he wanted to. I used to laugh it off. I'm not laughing now.Maya, my assistant, came running in, breathless. "Sir, the investors are demanding a meeting. They're threatening to pull funding.""Tell them I'll call in an hour," I said quietly."But they're...""An hour, Maya."She nodded quickly and left.

Chapter 19; Raise of another smoke.Ethan's Pov Time moves faster when you are losing instead of gaining, everything around you outruns you within a tick of a second.By Monday morning, half of the board had resigned, and investors had pulled out. My phone didn't stop ringing. Every headline screamed collapse, fraud, failure. I didn't even bother reading them anymore.I put my phone down, and threw it backwards. I took a deep breath and signed. There was still more coming, the investors who hurriedly pulled out were all deceived by Derrick. I needed to clear the fake from the original before stepping out with a solution.My door drew open and Maya walked in, she stood in front of me with her face pale. "Sir, they've started freezing the secondary accounts.""Which ones?""All of them," she calmly said.I rubbed a hand over my face. It felt like fire under my skin."How long are you going to keep up with this Derrick?"I muttered under my breath.She nodded slowly, she wanted to say