Chapter 41 The Story I Never Licensed
Sloane’s POV
I had barely finished saying, It is time to tell the truth about how we got here, when my PR head tried to cash the check.
He sat across from me now in my office, tablet in hand, tie crooked from too much coffee and not enough sleep. Harper lounged in the chair beside him, legs crossed, expression the particular mix of fond and fed up she reserved just for me.
“A profile,” he said, like it was a reasonable word, not a threat. “Long form. In depth. Not a puff piece. We pick the outlet. We pick the journalist. We reclaim the narrative.”
“No,” I said.
“That was fast,” Harper murmured.
I folded my arms. “Every time I give a piece of myself away, someone turns it into a weapon. My childhood. Berlin. My one night off script. Why would I volunteer more ammunition.”
PR Guy, whose name I really should remember, leaned forward. “Right now they are writing you as whatever suits them. Reckless girlboss. Ice queen who cracked. Victim. Villain. If you do not put your own story on record, gossip and leaks keep being the only sources.”
Harper nodded. “They are already weaponizing your silence,” she said. “Control what you can. Pick one journalist who is not for sale, lay out the context, the cost, the actual war. You do not have to cry on camera.”
“I am not going to cry on camera,” I said.
“You say that now,” she muttered.
I stared at the window instead of them. The city looked back, all glitter and teeth.
“I hate this,” I said finally. “I hate the idea of letting some stranger poke around in my life for three hours so they can sell ads around it.”
“You hate a lot of things,” Harper said gently. “You still do them when it is necessary.”
She was right. I did not have to like it. I had to decide if it was useful.
“Conditions,” I said. “Non live. One long sit down. We pick a journalist with a spine and a brain who has never taken a check from Avalon Ridge. Full fact check for errors. They can be as critical as they want, but they do not get to misquote me.”
PR Guy’s shoulders dropped in relief. “I can work with that.”
“Eli gets a say,” I added, before they could stand. “If they are going to dig into my life, they will dig into his too. I am not volunteering him as content without asking.”
He knocked on my open door an hour later, hair damp from a shower, tie still in his pocket. He glanced at Harper and PR, read the room, and closed the door behind them when they left.
“What did they pitch,” he asked.
“An exorcism,” I said. “On camera.”
I told him. About the profile. About my conditions. About how much I wanted to say no and how much I knew that would be cowardice dressed as principle.
He leaned against the back of the couch, hands in his pockets, listening. That was one of the more dangerous things about him. He really listened.
“Interviews mean new soundbites,” he said. “New clips for people to twist. They will pull the worst three seconds and loop them on every feed.”
“I know,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. “But right now all they see is the armor,” he added. “Press. Employees. Government. If they saw what it costs you to wear it, every day, it might be harder to paint you as a cartoon.”
“That sounds suspiciously like you want me to talk about my feelings,” I said.
“More like I do not want them to keep talking about fake ones,” he replied.
We went back and forth until the fear and the logic reached a draw. In the end we agreed. One respected outlet. One journalist with receipts of fairness. Pre taped. I could fact check for errors, not for discomfort.
The night before the interview, my living room looked like a crime scene made of Post it notes.
Harper had left a stack of suggested talking points on the coffee table. There was a rough timeline of my life in bullet form. Sixteen. First hack. Eighteen. Father’s contract. Twenty three. Mercer cofounding. Twenty six. Legal schism with Noah. Twenty nine. Berlin.
I sat cross legged on the couch, pen in hand, circling things, crossing out others. Eli sat at the other end, bare feet on the coffee table, reading every line like it was code he needed to memorize.
“What are you actually willing to let them see,” he asked finally.
I stared at the paper. At the line that said Sixteen: cracked father’s firm as a joke. “I do not know how to talk about where I came from without looking weak,” I said. The admission tasted like swallowing glass. “My father treating me like an asset. Letting myself be dazzled by Noah. Those are not flattering origin stories.”
He shifted, turning to face me fully. “You were not born with a firewall,” he said. “You built it. Brick by brick. They need to understand there was a reason. That you did not wake up one day and think, I will be cold and distant for fun. You adapted to being used.”
I picked at the corner of a Post it. “You make that sound almost noble.”
“It is not noble,” he said. “It is human. If they cannot handle that, that is on them.”
He reached for one of the pages, eyes scanning. “Your father. College. Noah. First big contract. I am going to remember these in order,” he said. “If you blank tomorrow, I will give you a hint. You can pretend it is spontaneous insight.”
I snorted. “So you are my human teleprompter now.”
He smiled, small and warm. “I have been worse things.”
Later, in bed, the ceiling felt closer than usual. Shadows from the streetlight outside made patterns that reminded me of old network maps.
This would be the first time I publicly said my father’s name with an edge in it. The first time I admitted out loud that I had hacked his firm at sixteen and laughed, that I had seen naming rights sold on my work before I understood what that meant. The first time I spoke about Noah outside legal documents.
I had signed contracts before. With my father. With Noah. With boards and regulators. Each one had carved a piece off me.
This felt like signing something with everyone else. A warped kind of social contract. Here. This is the story you never got to license. Handle it carefully or prove exactly why I never trusted you with it.
Sleep came in thin slices.
The studio the next morning was neutral and too bright. Soft gray walls, pale chairs, a table with untouched water bottles. No dramatic backdrop, no big logo. Just a space designed to make you forget the camera three feet away.
The interviewer stood when I came in. Serious eyes, no overt sympathy, no obvious hunger. Good.
A tech clipped a small microphone to my collar. I sat, smoothing my skirt, forcing my hands not to fidget.
Across from me, she opened a leather notebook. “Ready,” she asked.
No. “Yes,” I said.
The red light on the main camera blinked on.
“Sloane,” she began, voice calm, “what were you like at sixteen.”
I exhaled, feeling the ground crack under old memories, and realized the excavation had already started the moment I walked in.