Chapter 162: Shielding
Ryan’s POV
Ryan had always flaunted all of his many flings. He had never cared at all how many pictures of him with different women were taken. The numerous photos with all of those women had been a way of him trying to distance himself from Gwendolyn Stuart the fourth.
He had never wanted to be seen with the same woman more than a few times. Unconsciously wanting Gwendolyn to know that he was done being a one woman type of guy. That she should never think of reaching out to him again because he was having way too much fun to even think about her.
So the more pictures had been taken and shared by the press, the happier Ryan had become.
But when it came to Vivian Rose, things were different.
He had never wanted them to be out there like that. At first it had been because they were in a no strings attached arrangement, and she was from a world completely different from his own. A world where the paparazzi was not something common. Where privacy came easily without a person having to fight tooth and nail for it. But now things between them had changed. And Ryan still had not wanted to share her with the world.
He had wanted to keep her, to keep the wonderful thing that they had from the world. Not because he was ashamed of her, but because Vivian Rose was his treasure, his precious person. Someone that he wished to protect at all costs.
But now someone out there had challenged Ryan’s ability to protect his Vivian and they had done so in an awful, underhanded way. Gritting his teeth at the memory of the awful things written about her, Ryan forced himself to take deep breaths and calm down.
He held her close as the driver did a few laps around an upscale block of buildings just to be safe in case somebody had managed to track them. Ryan was furious, but not wanting to scare her. He was suppressing all of that.
"What is going on?" Vivian asked, her voice a little shaky. But Ryan was glad to see that she was already pulling herself together.
"Someone has leaked our relationship to the world," He finally told her.
Vivian nodded, "I could guess as much given that the paparazzi ambushed me at school, but who would do that?" She asked and Ryan did not have any answers for her.
"I do not know who it is yet, but have no doubt, my love. I will not rest until I find out who dared to do this," With him having admitted to not yet having the identity of the culprit, Ryan had hoped that Vivian would change the topic. That she would want to talk about more lighthearted issues in an effort to take their minds off things. But Vivian had no intention of doing that.
"This is not making any sense though. If it were just the news of the two of us getting out, the press would not have been so ravenous. They were genuinely mean, and they kept asking me the most invasive questions. Why would they do that?" Sighing, Ryan looked out the window at the passing traffic, and then back to her.
The hand that was over her own, tightening around hers briefly, before he went back to caressing her knuckles with his thumb.
"The person that exposed our relationship did so in a very malicious way,"
Ryan finally shared. Were it up to him, he would not have said anything to Vivian, but he knew her. If he did not tell her then she would go looking, and he knew that it would crush her to read all of the things that had been said about her without having had time to prepare herself for what was coming.
***
Having told her that some very unsavory things about her were now circulating the internet. Ryan had expected for Vivian to at least cry over the matter. Or for her to say that she did not wish to speak about it anymore.
But instead of doing that, Vivian turned her body towards him, only the seatbelt keeping her in place.
Her eyes alight with a righteous fury. She dug her blunt nails into the palms of her hands.
"Do you know who it was?" She asked, her voice full of so much anger that Ryan actually took a moment to be glad that it was not directed at him.
Vivian looked like if they had the person with them, she would already be choking them out. Unfortunately though, Ryan did not have that information, so he shook his head.
"I have people already working to narrow down the source. We will have a name in no time. Trust me," Deflating as she learned that Ryan did not know the name of the perpetrator, Vivian instead chose another point of attack.
"Let me see exactly what it is that they have said about me,"
Patting the back of her hand lightly, Ryan tried to protect her from herself.
"There is nothing good written there Vivian. Just take my word for it,"
But she would not do that.
"No Ryan, I need to know what is being said. They are talking about you and me after all. And from the sound of it, it seems like I got the shorter end of the stick. I need to see it with my own two eyes before I get people bombarding me with questions about things that I know nothing about,"
Realizing that she had a point, Ryan pushed against the part of him that was trying to protect her through silence and agreed.
"All right, I will show you what was being said. But let us wait until we get to the penthouse.
I want you to at least be somewhat comfortable when you read the things that they had to say," At least on that she did not fight him, and Ryan was glad for it.
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