Chapter 157 Her Fake Tragic Victim Broadcast
The click of the button echoed through the empty auditorium. I braced for the shockwave, my muscles tightening as I waited for the concrete and steel to tear apart.
Instead, a harsh, electronic screech filled the air.
Heavy steel fire shutters dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the floor in front of the exit doors with a bone-rattling thud. The stage was sealed. The massive digital screens behind us flickered, the blank displays replaced by a live feed of the very room we stood in.
Celeste lowered the small remote. She let out a dry, broken laugh. It was not a bomb. It was a lockdown.
She turned away from the balcony edge and walked toward the narrow maintenance stairs that led down to the stage. Her movements were jagged, stripped of the grace she used to command the city’s galas.
"Did you think I would just walk away in handcuffs like my father?" Celeste asked. Her voice bounced off the steel shutters. "Did you think I would let you sit in the Chairman's seat and pretend you earned it?"
I did not step back. I watched her descend. "The audit is public, Celeste. The bank ledgers are in the hands of the federal prosecutor. You have nothing left to protect."
"I have my narrative," Celeste replied.
She reached the stage floor. She reached into the pocket of her torn dress and pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen, her thumb swiping across the glass. A red recording icon appeared in the corner of the massive monitors behind me. She was broadcasting live to her millions of followers.
Instantly, her posture changed.
The manic, jagged energy vanished. Her shoulders slumped. Her lower lip began to tremble. Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over her lashes in perfect, tragic tracks down her cheeks.
"Minerva, please," Celeste begged, her voice transforming into a fragile, terrified whisper. She held the phone up, framing the two of us in the shot. "I know you hate me. I know you wanted the Johnston money. But you do not have to do this. You fabricated the evidence against my father. You ruined my family just to take Tristan from me."
I stared at her, genuine revulsion twisting my stomach. The performance was flawless. To the millions of people watching on their screens, she looked like a terrified victim cornered by a ruthless usurper.
"Put the phone down, Celeste," I said. My voice was level, refusing to give her the aggressive reaction she wanted.
"You locked us in here," Celeste cried, taking a step backward and holding her free hand up in a defensive gesture. "You bought the board. You paid the auditors to frame Benedict and my father. You just want to erase anyone who remembers what you really are. A stray from the industrial district who used a pregnancy to steal a crown."
She wanted me to snap. She wanted me to lunge at her, to strike her, to give the cameras the image of the violent, unhinged woman the tabloids had always claimed I was.
"Please don't hurt me," Celeste sobbed, dropping to her knees. She pointed the camera up at me, maximizing the angle of her own vulnerability. "I will sign whatever you want. Just let me leave."
The anger in my chest was a cold, solid block of ice. I remembered the nights I spent in Port Sterling, shivering under a thin blanket, wondering if I would have enough food for Elias. I remembered the absolute terror of real poverty. Watching this woman manufacture trauma for a social media feed felt like a desecration of every real tear I had ever shed.
I opened my mouth to dismantle her lie, but a hand gripped my shoulder.
Tristan stepped in front of me.
He moved between Celeste and the lens of her camera. He did not look angry. He looked tired. He looked like a man staring at a reflection he could no longer tolerate.
"Stop the act, Celeste," Tristan said. His voice was low, but it carried a weight that cut through her manufactured sobs.
Celeste flinched, but she kept the camera steady. "Tristan, tell them. Tell them how she manipulated you. Tell them she forced you to dissolve our engagement."
"I am the one who broke the engagement," Tristan told the camera. He looked directly into the lens. "And you know why. Because it was never a relationship. It was a ransom."
He turned his attention back to the woman on the floor.
"You want to talk about manipulation?" Tristan asked. "Let us talk about the charity ballroom. Three years ago. The night the world found out Minerva existed."
Celeste’s fake tears hitched. The phone in her hand wavered. "I was humiliated that night. She showed up and ruined everything."
"She showed up because she thought she was meeting me," Tristan corrected her. "But I never sent the car. You did."
I felt the breath leave my lungs. I stared at Tristan’s back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"You found the encrypted messages on my server," Tristan continued, his voice relentless and calm. "You knew I was trying to find a safe house for her. So you hired the driver. You brought her to the service entrance of the hotel. And you paid the waitstaff ten thousand dollars to spill the red wine on her dress the second she walked into the lobby."
The silence on the stage was absolute. The only sound was the faint hum of the servers recording the broadcast.
"You orchestrated the entire humiliation," Tristan said. "You tipped off the tabloids. You made sure the photographers were waiting by the side door. You branded her a mistress because you knew Thomas Whitmore needed a public scandal to force my hand on the merger. You did not just play the victim today, Celeste. You have been playing it for three years."
Celeste lowered the phone an inch. Her face hardened, the tragic mask slipping to reveal the cold, calculating panic underneath. "You have no proof. You are just trying to protect her reputation."