She Left With One Suitcase And No Explanation—Then A Stranger’s Camera Caught Her Dining Beside A “Nobody”…Until The Internet Unmasked Him As A Hidden Billionaire

The elevator doors tried to close twice before Lina noticed she was still holding her breath.

A polite chime. A soft mechanical sigh. The doors hesitated, as if the building itself wanted to ask, Are you sure?

She didn’t answer. She simply stepped in, suitcase rolling behind her with the stubborn squeak of one damaged wheel—an annoying sound that felt too loud for a morning this fragile.

Floor 23 blinked. The highest floor she’d ever lived on. The only one she’d ever thought would mean something.

Lina pressed G and watched her own reflection in the brushed metal walls. She looked like the kind of woman who had practiced being calm: hair pinned, face neutral, lips set in a soft line that said I’m fine even when she wasn’t.

Her phone vibrated again.

MARCUS: Come back. We need to talk.

She did not open the message. She didn’t even swipe it away. She simply turned the phone face down, as if ignoring it could erase the last three years.

The elevator dropped.

On the way down, she remembered the sound of her suitcase being dragged across their hallway—how Marcus had stared at it like it was a threat.

“What is that?” he’d asked, like he didn’t know what a suitcase meant.

“It’s mine,” Lina had said.

And then she’d done the one thing that made Marcus genuinely nervous: she’d gone quiet.

No arguing. No pleading. No dramatic speech. Just a zipper pulled closed with a clean finality, and the steady click of the handle locking into place.

Silence, it turned out, was the loudest thing she’d ever brought into his life.

Outside, the city was damp with early winter drizzle, the kind that didn’t fall so much as float. Lina walked beneath a sky that looked undecided, dragging her suitcase over the sidewalk cracks, and tried not to flinch at the familiar things: the coffee shop Marcus liked, the kiosk where he bought his expensive magazines, the corner where he’d once said, Someday we’ll laugh about the hard parts.

They hadn’t laughed much lately.

Her friend Anya had offered a couch.

Come stay with me, Anya had written. No questions until you’re ready.

Lina loved her for that—especially today. Especially because Lina didn’t trust herself not to answer questions in a way that made her look pathetic. She could already hear herself saying, I left because I couldn’t breathe anymore, and then hating the way it sounded.

She turned a corner and stopped under the awning of a small restaurant she’d never noticed before, though it was only two blocks from her building.

A simple sign:

HARBOR & HEARTH
Lunch. Late lunch. Quiet dinner.

Quiet sounded like a luxury.

Lina stepped inside.

Warmth wrapped around her. The smell of citrus and roasted herbs. A low hum of conversation that didn’t require anything from her.

A hostess smiled. “Table for one?”

Lina nodded, then added, “Somewhere… not in the middle.”

The hostess seemed to understand the invisible things people asked for. She led Lina to a booth near the window, half-shielded by a tall plant that looked like it had survived every trend and outlived every owner.

“Can I put your suitcase somewhere safe?” the hostess asked.

Lina hesitated. She didn’t like letting go of it. The suitcase wasn’t just luggage—it was proof she’d meant it, proof she wasn’t going back.

But the hostess’s eyes were kind, and Lina was tired.

“Please,” Lina said, and watched the suitcase disappear behind the counter like a secret.

She sat down, hands folded, and stared at the menu without absorbing a word. Her thoughts kept trying to climb back to the apartment she’d left, like a tongue pressing a sore tooth.

She ordered soup and tea and told herself she wasn’t running, just pausing.

Then the man arrived.

Not at her table—just… in the room. A shift of attention, barely noticeable, like the air changed temperature.

He walked in alone, wearing a simple dark coat that didn’t look expensive, though it probably was. No flashy watch. No entourage. No eager laughter orbiting him. He didn’t scan the room like he expected to be recognized. He didn’t act like someone who needed anything.

The hostess greeted him with the same warmth she’d given Lina, but with an extra note of familiarity. “Back again?”

He nodded. “If you have that corner booth, I’ll take it.”

The hostess looked toward Lina’s side of the restaurant, to the booth directly beside hers—the one separated only by the tall plant.

“That one’s open,” she said. “Would you like it?”

He said yes.

He slid into the booth next to Lina’s without making the kind of noise people made when they wanted to be seen. She caught the edge of his profile through leaves: dark hair, calm posture, the sort of face that was handsome but not in a way that demanded applause.

Lina didn’t look longer than a second.

She didn’t want to be noticed by anyone today.

But then her tea arrived, and the waitress made a small mistake—setting Lina’s bowl down a little too close to the edge. It tilted. The soup began to slip.

Instinct made Lina reach for it, but the bowl moved faster than her hands.

A hand from the booth beside her shot out through the leaves, steadying the bowl before it could fall.

No splash. No crash. Just a quiet correction.

“Careful,” the man said, voice low.

Lina’s cheeks warmed—not from embarrassment, but from the strange intimacy of a stranger saving you from a mess you didn’t have the strength to clean up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

Then, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, he added, “Are you all right?”

The question was too precise. Not Are you okay? the way people said automatically. This was different. This was noticing.

Lina’s mouth opened. Closed. She almost laughed, because the truth was absurd: No, I’m not all right. I left my life in an elevator and I’m trying to pretend soup can fix it.

But she didn’t want to spill her insides onto a stranger’s table.

So she said, “I will be.”

A pause.

“I believe you,” the man said, like he was making a quiet bet.

Lina turned to look at him properly, just once.

His eyes met hers without hurry, without that hungry curiosity some men wore like a badge. His gaze was simply present.

He wasn’t trying to take anything from her.

He gave a small nod, then returned to his own table, as if that was that.

Lina exhaled slowly.

And for the first time all morning, her shoulders lowered a fraction.

It happened in minutes.

The restaurant filled a little more. Lunch crowd, coats dripping, umbrellas leaning against chairs. At a table near the front, two young women took selfies with their lattes, laughing at something on a phone.

Lina tried to focus on her soup.

The man beside her ate like he didn’t need to impress anyone—slow, thoughtful, occasionally pausing to watch the rain trail down the window.

Lina’s phone buzzed again. She ignored it.

Then she felt it: the electric shift when someone points a camera.

She glanced up.

One of the young women at the front had her phone angled—not at herself now, but toward Lina’s booth.

Toward the plant.

Toward the man.

Lina looked away quickly, uncomfortable, but not alarmed. People filmed everything these days: food, strangers, their own faces while they pretended not to care.

She took one sip of tea and told herself it didn’t matter.

The young woman whispered to her friend, eyes shining. Her friend covered her mouth, giggling.

Then they left.

Lina finished her soup, paid, asked for her suitcase back. The hostess returned it with a soft “Take care.”

Lina nodded, grateful she didn’t ask questions.

Outside, the drizzle had turned into a more committed rain.

Lina walked toward the subway.

Her phone buzzed again—this time, not Marcus.

It was Anya.

ANYA: Um. Are you at Harbor & Hearth right now?

Lina stopped under a streetlamp.

She typed: No. I just left.

Anya’s reply came instantly.

ANYA: Okay. Don’t panic. But you’re on the internet.

Lina stared, sure she’d read it wrong.

What do you mean I’m on the internet?

Anya sent a link.

Lina clicked.

A video opened—grainy, slightly zoomed, filmed from the front of Harbor & Hearth. It showed the plant. Her booth. The edge of Lina’s profile as she lifted her tea, hair pinned, face calm.

And then the camera shifted slightly, catching the man beside her in a clear angle.

Text over the video read:

“SHE LEFT WITH A SUITCASE AND THEN HAD LUNCH WITH HIM???”

The caption underneath screamed in all caps:

“WHO IS THIS MAN? I SWEAR I’VE SEEN HIM ON A BILLBOARD.”

The comments were a storm.

Is that—
No way, that looks like—
Wait. WAIT. That’s him. That’s literally him.
Why is he eating like a normal person???
And who’s the woman?? She looks like she just walked out of a breakup.

Lina’s stomach dropped.

She watched again, slower this time.

The clip caught the moment his hand saved her soup bowl. The moment he spoke. The moment she looked at him.

The video made it look like a scene from a movie.

A secret meeting. A hidden romance. A scandal in the making.

Lina’s face was visible enough to be recognized by anyone who knew her.

And people, Lina realized with a cold clarity, loved a story they could invent.

Her phone buzzed again.

And again.

Her name began appearing in messages from acquaintances she hadn’t heard from in years.

Girl??
Are you okay?
Who is that??
Is this why you left Marcus?

She didn’t answer any of them.

Instead, she looked up the man’s name the way the comments suggested.

Someone had already posted it.

ELIAS ROURKE.

The search results were immediate and endless.

Tech founder. Investor. Quiet billionaire. Known for avoiding cameras. Known for buying dying companies and turning them into something unstoppable. Known for being “impossible to reach.”

And yet, there he was in the video, in a small restaurant, with Lina—who was nobody and everyone at once.

Her throat tightened.

Why did this happen to me today?

It would’ve been easier if she’d been the kind of woman who wanted attention. But Lina had just left a life where she’d been forced to perform happiness. The last thing she wanted was an audience.

Her phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

She almost ignored it—but something in her told her not to.

She answered. “Hello?”

A calm voice. Familiar. Low.

“Lina.”

Her grip tightened. “Who is this?”

“It’s the man from the restaurant,” he said. “Elias.”

Her heart did something ridiculous, like it wanted to run.

“How did you get my number?”

“I asked the hostess if you’d paid with a card,” he said, then added quickly, “She didn’t give me your information. She gave you my message. You called it when you clicked the number.”

Lina blinked, realizing the “unknown number” had been the restaurant’s callback line. She’d picked up without thinking.

Elias continued, “I’m sorry. This is… inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient,” Lina repeated, stunned by the understatement.

A pause that felt like a careful step.

“I prefer to be left alone,” he said. “But you didn’t ask for any of this, and I don’t like collateral damage.”

Collateral damage.

As if her day wasn’t already in pieces.

“What do you want?” Lina asked, sharper than she meant to.

Elias didn’t react to the tone. “I want to fix what I can. The video is spreading fast. People will find you.”

Lina swallowed. “They already are.”

“I figured,” he said. “Do you have somewhere safe to go?”

Anya’s apartment flashed in Lina’s mind—small, cozy, full of plants and terrible reality TV.

“Yes,” Lina lied automatically, because trusting strangers was a habit she still had.

Elias exhaled softly. “Lina… I’m not calling to pull you into my life. I’m calling to keep my life from crushing yours.”

Her chest tightened. “You’re acting like I’m in danger.”

“I’m acting like the internet is a crowd,” he said. “Crowds can be careless.”

Lina didn’t know what to say.

Elias’s voice lowered, more personal. “If you want, my team can help scrub your information from the easy places. It won’t erase everything, but it can slow things down.”

“My information?” Lina whispered. “You mean like… my address?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

Lina looked over her shoulder at the street, suddenly aware of every passerby holding a phone.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, her voice breaking in a place she didn’t expect.

“I know,” Elias replied. “That’s why I’m calling.”

Another pause.

Then he added, “And Lina? Don’t answer the messages. Not yet. Don’t defend yourself to people who aren’t trying to understand. It will only feed them.”

It sounded like advice from someone who’d lived through a thousand headlines.

Lina pressed her free hand to her forehead. “This is insane.”

“It is,” he agreed. “But it’s real. And it’s happening whether we like it or not.”

She hated that he was right.

“Where are you?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“At my office,” he said. “Trying to keep this small.”

“You can’t keep anything small,” Lina muttered. “You’re a billionaire.”

His voice turned wry. “I’m learning that’s not a shield. It’s a spotlight.”

Lina shut her eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled like a warning.

Anya’s apartment smelled like garlic and lemon cleaner. When Lina arrived, Anya opened the door with her eyes wide, phone in hand, the video paused on the screen.

“Tell me you didn’t rob a bank and then casually eat soup with a billionaire,” Anya blurted.

Lina stepped inside and nearly collapsed on the couch. “I ordered soup. That’s the full extent of my crimes.”

Anya sat beside her. “The internet thinks you’re having a secret affair.”

Lina made a sound that was almost a laugh, almost a sob. “With a man I spoke to for maybe twelve seconds.”

Anya scrolled. “They’re calling you ‘Suitcase Girl.’”

Lina groaned into a pillow.

“And,” Anya added, voice grim, “someone posted your LinkedIn.”

Lina sat up fast. “What?”

Anya turned the screen toward her. There it was: Lina’s face, her name, her old job title at a mid-level consulting firm she’d just been quietly pushed out of last month.

The comments had already turned cruel in that casual way strangers could be.

She looks like she’s after money.
Marcus is probably crying somewhere.
Wait, is she the one who got fired from—

Lina’s stomach twisted. “How do they know about that?”

Anya’s mouth tightened. “Because people don’t want facts. They want ammunition.”

Lina stared at her hands. “I can’t do this.”

“You don’t have to,” Anya said firmly. “You just have to survive today.”

Lina’s phone buzzed again.

Marcus.

This time, Lina opened it.

MARCUS: So this is what you meant. You had someone lined up.

Lina’s fingers went numb.

She typed: I didn’t. Stop.

But before she could send it, another message arrived.

MARCUS: Everyone is sending me this. My mother has seen it. Do you know what you’ve done to me?

Lina’s throat tightened.

To you.

As if her leaving wasn’t about her lungs, her sanity, her sleep, her slow disappearance inside a relationship that demanded she shrink.

Anya watched her expression. “Don’t reply,” she said quietly. “Not while you’re shaking.”

Lina set the phone down.

She was still staring at it when her screen lit again—another unknown number.

She didn’t answer this time.

A voicemail appeared seconds later.

Elias’s voice, calm, controlled:

“Lina, it’s Elias. I can’t reach you. My team found your address listed publicly in a database linked to your old lease. We’re working on it. Please stay inside. Don’t go anywhere alone. Call me back when you can.”

Anya’s eyes widened. “Okay. I officially hate the internet.”

Lina swallowed hard. “He said my address is public.”

Anya stood abruptly. “Then you’re not leaving this apartment. I’m ordering food and turning on a movie and we’re pretending the world doesn’t exist.”

Lina stared at the rain streaking the window.

She thought about the way Elias had said collateral damage.

She thought about Marcus’s message—how fast he’d turned her into the villain, because it was easier than asking why she’d left.

And then Lina’s fear sharpened into something else.

Anger.

Not the explosive kind Marcus was used to—the kind he’d trained her to apologize for.

This was a colder anger. A quieter one.

The kind that packed a suitcase in silence.

By evening, #SuitcaseGirl was trending.

People zoomed in on her face, her hands, her ring finger (empty), her posture (tired), her eyes (too calm), and invented meaning from pixels.

News blogs posted articles with titles like:

“MYSTERY WOMAN SEEN WITH ELUSIVE TYCOON: WHO IS SHE?”
“DID A BREAKUP LEAD TO BILLIONAIRE LUNCH?”
“THE WOMAN WHO MADE ELIAS ROURKE SMILE.”

He hadn’t smiled.

But truth didn’t matter as much as a good narrative.

Anya made tea. Lina sat with her laptop open, watching her own life being rewritten by strangers.

“This is sick,” Lina whispered.

Anya leaned over. “There’s more.”

Lina looked up.

Anya’s face had gone pale.

“What?” Lina asked, dread rising.

Anya turned the screen.

A new post had appeared from an anonymous account, claiming to know Lina personally.

It alleged things Lina had never done. It painted her as manipulative, calculating, desperate. It used Marcus’s favorite weapon: plausible disappointment.

Lina’s chest tightened. “That’s not true.”

“I know,” Anya said, voice tight.

Lina’s phone rang again—this time, the call display showed a name.

Elias Rourke.

Lina hesitated, then answered. “Hello?”

Elias sounded different. Not panicked. Not rushed.

Focused.

“Lina,” he said. “I’m sorry to call again. Things are accelerating.”

“I noticed,” Lina said bitterly.

Elias paused. “An anonymous account posted a story about you.”

Lina’s breath caught. “You saw that?”

“Yes,” he said. “And my team traced it to someone close to you.”

Lina’s blood chilled. “Marcus.”

“I didn’t say his name,” Elias replied carefully.

Lina laughed once, harsh. “You didn’t have to.”

Elias continued, “Lina, this isn’t just gossip. Someone is trying to control the narrative for a reason.”

“What reason?” Lina snapped.

Another pause—this one heavier.

“Because Harbor & Hearth wasn’t random,” Elias said.

Lina froze. “What do you mean?”

“The restaurant,” he said. “I was meeting someone there. Quietly. I chose it because cameras don’t usually find me there.”

Lina’s skin prickled.

“And then you sat beside me,” Elias went on, voice even. “And suddenly there’s a viral video. It looks like a coincidence. But I don’t believe in clean coincidences anymore.”

Lina’s mouth went dry. “Are you saying I was… bait?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I’m saying someone may have used you as a door they couldn’t open on their own.”

Lina gripped the phone. “Who were you meeting?”

Elias exhaled. “A journalist.”

Lina’s pulse jumped. “About what?”

Elias’s voice dropped. “About a company I acquired last year. About financial irregularities my internal audits uncovered. About people who didn’t want those irregularities exposed.”

Lina stared at the wall, brain struggling to keep up.

“This has nothing to do with me,” she said, though it sounded like a plea.

“I hoped so,” Elias replied. “But now people are pulling you into it. And if Marcus is feeding the fire, he’s either reckless… or he’s being encouraged.”

Lina’s thoughts flashed to Marcus’s sudden obsession with appearances. His expensive new suits. The “networking dinners” he never invited her to. The way he’d started saying words like leverage and visibility as if they were oxygen.

Elias’s voice softened. “Lina. I can protect you from the worst of this. But I need you to tell me something, and I need you to be honest.”

Lina swallowed. “What?”

“When you left today,” Elias asked, “did you notice anyone following you?”

Lina’s stomach dropped.

She replayed her walk: the drizzle, the awning, the streetlamp, the feeling of being watched—

A man leaning against a pole, scrolling his phone, camera angled too casually.

Lina’s throat tightened. “I… I don’t know.”

Elias’s voice sharpened, the calm edged with steel. “If you’re not sure, assume yes.”

Anya mouthed, What is happening?

Lina whispered, “Elias, I’m just a person who wanted soup.”

“And that,” Elias said, “is exactly why this works. The internet believes stories more easily when the lead character looks ordinary.”

Lina’s anger flared again.

“So what now?” she demanded.

Elias didn’t hesitate. “Now you decide whether you want to stay silent while people rewrite you—or whether you want to tell the truth loudly enough that it can’t be drowned out.”

Lina’s laugh came out shaky. “The truth is boring.”

Elias replied, “The truth is rarely boring. It’s just rarely packaged.”

Anya leaned in, whispering, “Don’t let them bully you.”

Lina looked at her friend, then at her own trembling hands.

She’d left Marcus in silence because she was done explaining herself to someone committed to misunderstanding.

But this—this was different. This wasn’t one man twisting her into a villain. This was a whole crowd doing it for sport.

And for the first time, Lina felt something she hadn’t felt in months.

Resolve.

“Okay,” Lina said into the phone, voice steadier. “Tell me what to do.”

The next day, Lina didn’t go outside.

Anya set up a small command center: laptop, charger cords, snacks she pretended were “for energy” but were really for comfort.

Elias’s team—people Lina never met—sent instructions through secure emails:

Remove personal addresses from public databases where possible.
Lock down social accounts.
Document harassment.
Do not engage with anonymous accounts.
If you choose to speak, do it once, clearly, and then step away.

Lina hated that she needed any of this.

By noon, Marcus posted a carefully worded statement.

Not naming Lina directly, but everyone knew.

“Some people will do anything to climb. I wish her healing.”

It was poison dressed as politeness.

It worked. Comments flooded in praising him for being “mature,” calling Lina “cold” and “calculated.”

Lina watched it happen and felt the old impulse—the one she’d been trained into—rise in her chest:

Fix it. Explain. Apologize for existing too loudly.

She looked at Anya. “He’s making me look like a cartoon villain.”

Anya’s jaw tightened. “He’s making himself look like a saint.”

Lina’s phone rang.

Elias again.

She answered. “I saw his post.”

“So did I,” Elias said.

Lina’s voice sharpened. “You were right. He’s feeding it.”

Elias paused. “Lina, I won’t tell you what to do. But if you stay silent, he gets to keep writing your story.”

Lina stared at the blank notes app open on her laptop.

“What happens if I speak?” she asked.

Elias’s voice was honest. “People will still misunderstand you. Some will be louder. But others—quiet ones—will recognize themselves in you. And the loud ones won’t be the only audience.”

Lina swallowed. “I don’t want fame.”

“I know,” Elias said. “This isn’t fame. It’s control.”

Control.

A word Marcus adored.

A word Lina had been denied.

She began typing.

Not a rant. Not an emotional confession. Not a messy spiral that strangers could clip into pieces.

Just the truth.

She wrote:

She left with one suitcase because she needed space and safety.
She did not know Elias Rourke.
She sat down to eat lunch in peace.
The viral video is not a romance, not a scheme, not a storyline.
She will not be shamed into silence because strangers want entertainment.
And she will not respond to accusations that aren’t grounded in reality.

Anya read it, eyes glossy. “It’s… calm,” she said.

Lina nodded. “That’s the point.”

Then she added one more line—because it was the one thing no one expected, the one thing that would slice through the noise:

“If anyone wants to know why I left, ask the person who benefited from me staying quiet.”

She posted it.

Once.

Then she shut the laptop.

Her hands shook, but her spine felt straighter than it had in weeks.

The internet reacted the way it always did: violently, unpredictably, in waves.

Some people mocked her for being “cryptic.”

Some people apologized.

Some people changed the narrative instantly: Suitcase Girl Claps Back.

But then something shifted—slowly, like a tide turning.

People began noticing Marcus’s post for what it was: a performance. A vague smear. A man trying to look gentle while pushing someone off a cliff.

And then a new story broke—one that had nothing to do with lunch, and everything to do with why that lunch had been filmed.

A journalist published an investigation into one of Elias Rourke’s acquired companies—an investigation that hinted at missing funds, false reporting, and a chain of executives trying to bury evidence.

The article didn’t name Lina.

But the timing made the internet connect dots it had drawn incorrectly the day before.

Suddenly, “Suitcase Girl” wasn’t just a gossip character.

She was a possible witness.

A possible pawn.

A possible target.

Lina’s phone rang again.

Elias.

She answered, heart pounding.

“You saw it,” Elias said.

“Yes,” Lina whispered.

Elias’s voice was steady. “Now you understand why I called you collateral damage.”

Lina swallowed hard. “So what am I now?”

A pause.

Then Elias said, quietly, “You’re someone who walked away from a man who thought silence belonged to him.”

Lina’s eyes stung.

Elias continued, “And now you’re someone the wrong people are watching.”

Anya whispered, “Oh my God.”

Lina’s voice trembled. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know,” Elias said. “But here’s what I need you to hear: you’re not powerless in it.”

Lina stared at the rain on the window, the city blurring beyond it.

Powerless.

That’s what she’d felt with Marcus. That’s what she’d felt being pushed out of her job quietly, politely, with a severance package that felt like hush money.

She was tired of power being something other people held over her.

“What do you want from me?” Lina asked.

Elias didn’t dodge it. “The truth. When you’re ready. About Marcus. About whether he’s connected to any of the names in the investigation. About whether he suddenly came into money or contacts he can’t explain.”

Lina’s stomach twisted as memories rearranged themselves into something darker than heartbreak.

Marcus’s new suit.

The “networking.”

The way he’d asked, too casually, if Lina still had access to client files from her old firm.

She’d thought it was curiosity.

Now it felt like scouting.

“I don’t know,” Lina said, voice small. “But I can look.”

Elias replied, “Don’t look alone.”

Lina almost laughed at the absurdity: she’d left her boyfriend and stumbled into a billionaire’s war with shadows.

Yet some part of her felt steady knowing Elias existed on the other end of the line—calm, careful, unshowy.

“Okay,” Lina said. “What do we do?”

Elias’s answer was simple.

“We do it clean,” he said. “We do it quietly. And we don’t let the loudest people decide what’s real.”

That night, Lina opened the suitcase she’d packed in silence.

Inside were the things she’d chosen quickly: clothes, a notebook, her grandmother’s thin gold bracelet, and the folder Marcus had never known about—the one she’d kept from her job because it reminded her she was competent, valuable, real.

A folder labeled:

Integrity Review — Draft Notes

She’d been asked to delete it when she left. She hadn’t. Not because she wanted revenge, but because something in her had whispered: Keep the truth somewhere safe.

She hadn’t realized the truth might become currency.

Anya watched her flip through pages. “What is that?”

Lina swallowed. “It’s the reason I got pushed out. I questioned numbers no one wanted questioned.”

Anya’s eyes widened. “Lina…”

Lina stared at the notes, and for the first time, the viral video felt like what it truly was:

Not romance.

Not scandal.

A spark landing near dry grass.

And Lina—quiet, overlooked Lina—was standing at the exact place the fire wanted to start.

Her phone lit up with another message from Marcus.

MARCUS: You think you can embarrass me? You have no idea who you’re dealing with.

Lina stared at it for a long time.