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I groan and sink back in my chair when I finish reading. It doesn’t matter whether any of it is true. People will believe it anyway.

And by evening, that one little article has landed in the hands of the one person who can do the most damage with it.

“One man could never satisfy her,” Reid says through the speaker as the four of us force ourselves to listen to his podcast.

It took only a few hours for the photo and the article to make their way to him. The last thing Reid needed was more ammunition.

Jarek’s face goes red. Zander’s fists clench on the table. Pascal’s eyes narrow, and he stares at his lap as he listens.

“It fits everything I’ve been saying all along,” Reid tells his followers. “Nina Adler needs three rich, powerful men to keep her from complaining. She’s a gold digger. She’s never satisfied. Give it time, and she’ll burn these guys too.”

“This guy needs a solid punch to the jaw,” Zander growls under his breath.

“He needs more than that.” Jarek scowls. “Something that knocks him out cold, so he wakes up having learned to keep his fucking mouth shut.”

“I’ve heard enough.” Pascal turns off the podcast. “As much as I agree with both of you, and as much as I’d enjoy beating this bastard to a pulp, it won’t help any of us. It’s out there now, and there’s going to be fallout. We need to figure out how to contain it.”

He’s right.

And the fallout starts immediately.

Before we’ve even gotten up from the table, everyone’s phone starts ringing. I sit between the guys, catching bits and pieces of one-sided conversations as they all scramble to do damage control.

“It’s not what you think,” Pascal says calmly.

I can’t tell if he’s talking to his mother or someone else from his company. Either way, his brow is deeply furrowed as he tries to reason with whoever’s on the other end.

“The photo was completely harmless. My friends and I went to the Christmas market, and we brought our assistant along as a holiday gesture.” It isn’t a denial, exactly. “Yes, of course we were all smiling. Why wouldn’t we be? It’s Christmas. We were at a Christmas market. You’re reading too much into this.”

Whoever it is isn’t buying it, and he has to keep defending himself. Even with only half the conversation, it’s obvious the photo has already caused him trouble with his family.

Jarek isn’t doing any better. I can hear more of his call, because his publicist is yelling.

“This is a disaster, Jarek. We had this all set up. We had a plan to get people excited about you and Joy. And instead, you blew it up and got caught in a scandal with some random woman and two other guys.”

“A scandal?” Jarek shoots back. “Are you fucking serious? We were standing around at a Christmas market. It’s not like I was fucking her in public with my two best friends. Get some perspective. Isn’t there a whole team at the studio whose entire job is to fix exactly this kind of thing?”

“Yes, there is. And that team was in the same town as you, all set to shoot you and Joy. And then you and Joy ditched them, and you stopped answering your phone. So forgive them if they’re not in a rush to bail you out.”

I cringe. This sounds bad.

Jarek catches my reaction and mutes his phone for a second. He sets a hand on my knee and gives me a smile that isn’t very convincing.

“Don’t worry about any of this,” he says. “He just likes to hear himself yell. Once he’s done, it’ll blow over.”

I give him a weak smile back, but I’m not sure he’s right. It sounds like a much bigger deal than he’s letting on. When he goes back to his call, I turn to Zander.

Zander’s voice is low and steady as he tells whoever’s on the line there’s nothing to worry about. Unlike the other two, he doesn’t defend the photo or brush it off. He simply tells them it has nothing to do with business. But as calm as he sounds, I can’t stop thinking that all three of them are going to pay for this, just for being seen with a woman whose scandal won’t go away.

I sit there for the next several minutes while their calls go on. Mostly, I get lost in my own head, going back and forth about what we’re doing and what happens next. My stomach twists, because I keep landing in the same place.

We can’t do this.

It’s awful timing. Just this morning, the four of us talked about staying together after the holidays. I was going to say yes. I’d been imagining what my life could look like with these three in it. And then this.

But the photo isn’t really the problem. Neither is the article. The problem is Reid.

He’s never going to stop. He’s never going to admit, to himself or his followers, that he’s the reason I left. The only way he can feel good about himself is to keep making me the villain. This is never going to end, and I can’t let it drag Zander, Jarek, and Pascal down with me. I care about them way too much to become their problem.