Chapter 101 The counterstrike
Veronica's POV:
Laura's scream was hysterical, echoing off the conference room walls even as the police officers tried to establish order.
"You HIT me!" she shrieked, her hand pressed dramatically to her reddening cheek. "Everyone saw it! You assaulted me! I'm filing a lawsuit! Battery, assault, emotional distress... I won't spare you, Maxwell Ashford! I'll take everything you have!"
Her voice rose higher, becoming almost manic. The police officers were trying to calm her down, but she was beyond all of that.
She was pointing at Max with a shaking finger.
"She is really a psycho." I whispered.
"Arrest him!" she shouted. "He attacked me! I'm the victim here!"
Something inside me snapped.
All the hours of being held prisoner, the hunger, the thirst, the humiliation, the fear I'd felt... it all boiled over into pure rage.
"Go ahead!" I yelled, stepping between Max and Laura despite the police officers' attempts to keep us separated. "File your lawsuit! Talk about abuse! But what about the abuse you did to ME, Laura? How is it that you get a free pass from everything while others have to suffer?"
Laura's eyes widened, not expecting me to fight back at her narcissistic behavior.
"You locked me in this room for hours!" I continued. "You starved me! Refused me water! Held me at gunpoint! Forced me to make a false confession or stay imprisoned! And you want to talk about abuse? About being a victim?"
"That's different..." Laura started.
"It's not different!" I shouted. "It's criminal! It's kidnapping! It's coercion and blackmail and every crime the police are about to charge you with!"
I reached up and carefully removed one of my earrings... the left one, the one with the tiny recording device embedded in it. The one Theo had given me weeks ago as a "safety measure" after everything with Chase.
I held it out to Theo, and our eyes met. Understanding flashed immediately in his green eyes. Of course, he understood... it was he who'd given them to me in the first place, he'd insisted I wear them whenever I was meeting with anyone I didn't fully trust.
"You're going down soon, Laura," I said, turning back to her as Theo carefully took the earring. "Very soon, it will be the downfall of Bellamy's."
Laura's expression shifted from fury to uncertainty, her eyes darting between me and the tiny piece of jewelry in Theo's hand.
"What is that?" she demanded. "What are you?"
"Everything," I said simply. "Every word you said. Every threat. Every moment of this nightmare. All recorded."
"The damage is already done by you," Laura shot back, desperately. "You have already said it on Live. Everyone heard you confess. You'll never recover from that. I've already won."
But I was already walking away, Max and Theo flanking me as we headed for the door.
The police officers let us pass after taking our contact information, focusing instead on Laura's security guards and Laura herself, who was still screaming threats about lawsuits and arrests.
We didn't stop moving until we'd found an empty conference room three doors down. Theo checked it quickly... no hidden cameras this time, just a basic meeting space... before Max locked the door behind us.
"Let me see it," Theo said urgently, already pulling out his laptop from the bag he'd somehow managed to keep with him through all the chaos.
I sank into a chair, my legs finally giving out now that the adrenaline was fading. My hands were shaking. My head was pounding. But I forced myself to focus, to watch as Theo carefully dismantled the earring.
The recording chip was tiny, almost invisible, embedded in the decorative post. Theo extracted it with practiced ease and plugged it into a small adapter that connected to his laptop.
"How long does it record?" Max asked, pacing behind us like a caged animal.
"Continuously," Theo said, his fingers already flying across the keyboard. "Uploads to cloud storage every hour. But the last hour is always saved locally on the chip in case cloud access is compromised."
Audio files appeared on the screen along with the timestamped and organized. Theo scrolled through them, finding the relevant period... the hours I'd been locked in that conference room.
"Here," he said, clicking on the first file.
Laura's voice came through the laptop speakers, crystal clear:
"You're going to say all of that. On camera. Live. To your followers, to the press, to everyone."
Then my own voice, trying to refuse:
"This is insane. None of this is true!"
"That's irrelevant. What matters is that you say it..."
The recording continued, capturing every threat.
"This is good," Max said, listening intently. "This proves she forced you..."
"It's not enough," I interrupted, dull with exhaustion. "The confession video is already out there. Thousands of people watched me say those words. And this?" I gestured at the laptop. "This is just audio. Video is more watchable. More trusted. People will say the audio could be edited, taken out of context, faked."
Theo was already uploading the files to Instagram, posting them as audio clips with captions explaining what had happened. I could see his carefully crafted words appearing on the screen:
"Earlier tonight, Veronica was held hostage and forced to make a false confession. Here is the proof of coercion. Here is what really happened. #Truth #Blackmail #HostageSituation"
But even as he posted, even as the audio started spreading across social media, I knew he agreed with my assessment.
"You're right," Theo said quietly, his fingers pausing on the keyboard. "Two different kinds of information are now circulating. The video confession that makes you look guilty, and the audio recordings that prove coercion. Some people will believe the audio. But others..."
"Will say I'm just trying to cover my tracks," I finished. "That I made the confession freely, and now I'm inventing this blackmail story to walk it back."
"We need something more," Max said, slamming his hand on the table. "Something visual."
"The hotel security footage," Theo said suddenly. "The encrypted feed I accessed. It showed Laura eating while Veronica was clearly suffering. It showed the armed guards. It's video evidence of the coercion."
"Can you post it?" I asked, hope flickering despite my exhaustion.
"It's encrypted hotel footage," Theo said, conflict clear in his voice. "Posting it would be... legally questionable. I only accessed it to find you, but distributing it publicly... for that we have the permission of the hotel owner."
"Do it," I said firmly. "Whatever the legal consequences are, I'll face them. But I need people to see the truth. All of it."
"The hotel owner won't agree with us," Max said. "He has a connection with Bellamy's, and he won't just randomly give away the footage."
And I've hit yet another iceberg. Again.
"We have to steal it," Max said, grinning wickedly. "Who will come with me?"