Page 94 of Once Upon A Second Chance

If you weren’t paying attention—or if you wanted to believe the worst—you might swallow it whole without a second thought.

But I know Richard.

I know the man who jumped into a river for a stranger’s kid without blinking.

The man who stood on my porch shaking with fear and still told his parents he loved me. The man who looks at me like I’m not something to endure, but something tochoose.

And whatever this video is, it’s not him.

Still, knowing that doesn’t stop the sick feeling from curling in my gut as I scroll through the comments.

Some people are skeptical, throwing around words like “deep fake” and “AI clone,” and a few are evendefending him outright.

But plenty of others—enough to matter—are nodding along, adding their own whispered accusations to the bonfire. I see phrases like"red flags"and"trust women"thrown around so casually it makes my blood boil.

The worst part is that some people don’t even seem to care whether it’s real or fake. They just like the drama. They just like having someone to tear down.

I toss my phone onto the couch beside me, pacing the room as if I can outrun the fury building in my chest. Bijou watches from her dog bed, her head tilted, sensing the storm brewing under my skin.

I can’t let her get away with this.

I won’t.

The phone buzzes again, a sharp jolt in the too-quiet room.

I snatch it up, hoping for something—anything—to ground me.

It’s Lena.

A text:Anything new onRebecca yet?

I don’t even hesitate before typing back: Take a look at this video. It has Rebecca’s name written all over it.

I spend the next five minutes pacing, heart hammering against my ribs, staring out the window even though there’s nothing out there but the same sleepy street, the same dandelions sprouting along the cracks in the sidewalk.

I half expect Richard’s truck to come barreling around the corner, for him to knock on my door and tell me he’ll handle it. That we’ll handle it.

But this isn’t a problem he can fix alone.

This one’s mine too.

By the time Lena storms through my front door, laptop bag slung over her shoulder and a look of pure bloodthirsty delight on her face, I’m half ready to drive to Rebecca Churchill’s house and burn it down myself.

"You found something?" I ask the second she’s inside.

Lena doesn’t answer right away. She just smirks like a woman holding four aces at a crooked poker table and flings herself into the armchair across from me.She flips open her laptop with a flourish and taps a few keys.

"Oh," she says, eyes glittering, "I didn’t just find something. I hit the mother lode."

She spins the laptop toward me, and I lean in, heart pounding.

Screenshots. Email chains. An anonymous tip sent to Lena’s burner email. A series of leaked DMs between Rebecca and a shady PR firm specializing in "reputation management"—aka, online smear campaigns.

Rebecca hadn’t just been passive-aggressively posting gossip.

It would appear that she’s paid someone to fabricate a deep fake audio clip.

There’s even a receipt: a wire transfer to a digital media company in New Jersey specializing in AI voice synthesis.