Chapter 288: Chapter 290: Damien Has Arrived
"How confident are you."
"The licence is clean. The work history at this hospital is exceptional. Morrison is already on record supporting you." She paused. "The article asked questions. It didn’t provide grounds for disciplinary action because there aren’t any." She held Aria’s gaze. "What it did do is create noise. And noise is harder to fight than evidence."
"I know," Aria said. "Which is why I need to control the narrative before Victoria does it for me."
Catherine looked at her.
"Victoria Ashford," Aria said. "She’s behind the article. We know it, we can’t prove it yet, but she’s behind it." She paused. "She’s not done. This is the first move not the whole game. She’s going to keep building until there’s enough noise that the board has to act regardless of what the evidence says."
"What are you proposing."
"I go public myself," Aria said. "Before she releases anything else. My story, my terms, my voice." She looked at Catherine. "Not a response to the article. Not a defence. A full account. Who I was, why I made those choices, what it cost me, what I’ve built since." She paused. "You can’t fight accurate information with denial. You fight it with context."
Catherine was quiet for a moment.
"That’s a significant risk," she said.
"So is waiting," Aria said.
The room was quiet.
Then the door opened.
Damien came in first.
She’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected was the person who came in behind him.
Alexander.
He was in his jacket, no tie, which for Alexander Wei meant he’d left wherever he’d been without taking the time to finish dressing properly. He looked at Aria across the room and something moved through his face that she didn’t have a name for yet.....complicated and layered and very, very still in the way of a man who was containing something large.
"How," she said.
"I read it at six this morning," he said. "Hong Kong contact sent it." He came to the table and sat down without being invited, which was the most Alexander thing she’d ever seen him do. "I’ve been on the phone since six thirty."
She looked at Damien.
Damien looked back at her with the expression of a man who had not organised this and was not going to pretend otherwise.
"Alexander," Catherine Walsh said. With the tone of someone who recognised him and was recalibrating the room accordingly.
"Catherine." He looked at her. "What do we have."
"We were just discussing options," Catherine said carefully.
"I heard the last part," he said. "From the door." He looked at Aria. "You want to go public yourself."
"Yes."
"Good," he said.
Everyone at the table looked at him.
"It’s the right call," he said. Simply. Like it was obvious. "You can’t fight this quietly. Quiet looks like hiding and hiding looks like guilt." He looked at Catherine. "What publication. What format."
"We haven’t gotten that far," Catherine said.
"Then let’s get there." He put his phone on the table. "I have three contacts in major media. People who understand the difference between public interest journalism and a hit piece. People who will give her the space to tell this properly." He looked at Aria. "If you’re doing this you do it with someone who is going to let you speak. Not someone who is going to cut it to the three most damaging sentences and put those in the headline."
The room was quiet.
Aria looked at her father.
He was sitting at a legal table in a hospital conference room with his phone in front of him and his jacket slightly wrong and the focused energy of a man who had arrived at a problem and was not leaving without solving it.
She thought about what he’d said in the hospital. When I feel helpless I look for leverage. It’s a reflex.
He wasn’t helpless right now.
Neither was she.
"Who are the three contacts," she said.
He picked up his phone.
****
DAMIEN’S POV
He sat at the end of the table and watched.
That was the right thing to do and he knew it. This wasn’t his room to lead. He’d brought the legal team, he’d be here every moment she needed him here, but the decision about how to fight this belonged to Aria and he was not going to take it from her by becoming the most powerful person at the table.
He watched her work.
She went through Catherine’s legal assessment with the focused attention of someone who was listening for the specific information she needed and discarding the rest. She asked the right questions....not the emotional ones, not the ones about what this meant or how bad it was. The operational ones. Timeline, options, risk assessment, what they could move on and what they couldn’t.
He watched her look at Alexander’s contacts list.
She picked one of the three inside forty seconds.
"Her," she said. "Eleanor Park. I’ve read her work. She’s fair and she’s not looking for blood." She looked at Alexander. "Does she owe you a favour or do you owe her one."
Alexander looked at her. "Why does that matter."
"Because if she’s doing this as a favour to you it’ll read differently than if she genuinely wants the story."
Alexander held her gaze. "She’ll genuinely want the story."
"You’re certain."
"I’ve known Eleanor Park for fifteen years," he said. "She’s been trying to profile me for twelve of them and I’ve said no every time. She’ll take the call because the story is interesting." He paused. "Your story is genuinely interesting, Aria. Not because of the scandal. Because of who you became."
Aria looked at her notebook.
Damien watched her take that in.
Not perform taking it in. Actually absorb it. The slight shift in her shoulders, the breath she let out slowly.
She looked at Catherine. "Can we have the room for ten minutes."
Catherine looked at Damien.
He stood up. "Ten minutes," he said.
