Page 143 of Babies for the Big Shot

I glance at the clock. It’s just past six-thirty. I’ll have a full inbox by eight.

“I’ll handle them.”

Somehow.

Jonah pauses, then says, “You sure you want to absorb this whole thing yourself?”

“No one else has the context. And no one else has the incentive to bury it as deeply as I do.”

He hesitates. “This might pull things to the surface, Nick. Things you’ve kept buried for a long time.”

“I know.”

“She’s not just coming for the story. She’s coming for your legacy.”

I look back toward the bedroom.

“She can take mine,” I say. “She doesn’t get to touch theirs.”

I end the call with Jonah and stare at my phone, then the espresso, now half-cold in my hand. I drain it anyway.

The day is already decided.

Not by her. By me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to put out a fire before breakfast. But it’s the first time the collateral could touch the only part of my life I’m not willing to compromise.

I walk down the hall, basically on my tiptoes, past the bedroom door. I don’t stop. I don’t open it. If I do, I’ll wake her. And if I wake her, I’ll have to lie.

It’s not that I’ve never lied before. It’s that I don’t want to lie toher.

Instead, I grab my laptop from the den, bring it to the small study, and lock the door behind me. I log in, pull up the internal comms directory, and start drafting a list.

Every vendor, every assistant, every freelance contractor who’s touched anything under NDAs in the last six months. I include the digital service teams, those who’ve scheduled press releases, scrubbed metadata, handled inbox triage.

Someone talked.

I don’t believe for a second that Isla Vale found her way here by accident. Someone handed her the map.

I create a secure task thread and loop Jonah in, marking it priority one. He’ll know what to do with the list once it’s complete.

Then I open a new document. This one isn’t for Jonah. It’s for me.

A full inventory of leverage.

Everyone Vale has burned before. Every reputation she’s sliced open for clicks and ad revenue.

I start making calls. Quiet ones. Discreet. I don’t ask for favors. I offer insulation. A future buffer.

Because if Vale wants to wield narrative as a weapon, then she should know she’s not the only one who understands how stories can be shaped, or dismantled, or buried.

But even as I plan, my mind drifts—once, and without permission—to the last time someone I loved ended up in the headlines.

It had started with a photograph. A grainy image, taken outside a courthouse. She wasn’t the subject, not really. Just background noise to someone else’s scandal.

But that didn’t matter. They made their mids up.

She’d made one mistake, one, and they devoured her for it.