Page 133 of Pretend To Be Mine

She was right. Blackwell Couture employed hundreds of people. Designers, seamstresses, marketing staff, retail workers. If we went down, we’d take all of them with us.

“The stock price is going to tank,” Dash said, checking his phone. “Social media sentiment has turned completely negative.”

“How bad?” I asked.

“Bad.”

“Fuck.” I sank into a chair, the weight of it all crushing down on me.

Everything we’d built this week had evaporated in a matter of hours. We were right back where we’d started. No, we were worse off than we’d started. Because now we had active hostility instead of just skepticism.

“We’ll get through this,” Mom said, but even she sounded less certain than usual. “We’ve survived scandals before. We’ll survive this one.”

“This is different,” I said. “This isn’t just one brother’s mistake that we can spin or contain. This is all of us. And it’s tied directly to the company’s reputation.”

“Then we fight harder.” Sebastian’s jaw was set. “We don’t give up. We don’t let them destroy what Dad built.”

“Sebastian’s right.” Briggs was back on his phone, already mobilizing. “We have two days to get our legal ducks in a row, prepare statements, coordinate with PR. It’s not much time, but it’s something.”

“What about the New York show?” Dash asked. “Do we cancel?”

“No.” I said. “We don’t cancel. That’s exactly what they want—for us to fold, to prove we can’t handle the pressure. We finish Fashion of Love Week. We end on our terms, not theirs.”

“Adrian, no,” Briggs started.

“No, I mean it. Canceling the finale would be admitting defeat. It would validate every negative thing being said about us.” I stood up, feeling some of my fight returning. “We finish what we started. We put on the best damn show New York has ever seen. And we prove that Blackwell Couture isn’t going anywhere.”

My brothers looked at each other, then back at me.

“He’s right,” Briggs said finally. “Canceling would be worse than the scandal itself. We push forward.”

“Agreed,” Sebastian said.

“All in,” Dash added.

Mom nodded. “Your father would be proud. He never backed down from a fight either.”

“Then it’s settled.” Briggs was already making notes. “We continue with the New York show. In the meantime, we prepare for the Vogue piece. Legal will draft response statements. PR will work on damage control. And we all need to sit down individually and disclose anything—and I mean anything—that might come out in this article.”

“Great,” Sebastian muttered. “Confession time with Briggs. My favorite.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Briggs snapped. “If there’s something in your past that Vogue might dig up, I need to know about it now. Not when it’s already in print. Every relationship that ended badly, every questionable business decision, every moment of stupidity you’d rather forget—I need to know.”

“That’s going to be a long list,” Dash said.

“What if we can’t remember?” Sebastion asked.

Mom groaned. “This is not a conversation I want to be a part of.”

“Yeah, Mom, I don’t want you to know even a fraction of the shit I’ve been involved in,” Sebastian said with a laugh. “All totally legal. Just not all totally respectable.”

I wasn’t sure if my past was nearly as debauched as Sebastian but I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell her who I’d been with and what we had done in the bedroom. We were all pretty open, but not that much.

“What about Elizabeth?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she be part of this planning?”

“She should,” Mom agreed. “But right now, she needs time. Tomorrow, once she’s had some rest, you can bring her into the loop. Explain what’s coming, what we’re planning to do about it.”

“She’s going to hate all of this,” I said quietly.