Three hours later, and I still can’t catch my breath. When Diablo called, I knew it was bad. I knew it was Hollis. I’d expected a video. I even braced myself for it. Braced myself for sitting across from Diablo and pretending it didn’t make me violently ill that he’d seen something that belonged to Luna and no one else.
But it wasn’t a video. It was somehow worse.
Private photos. Four of them. Naked. Posed. Touching herself. Enjoying her own body in a way that was never intended for public consumption. The anonymous email claimed they were screenshots from an online account. Claimed the sender was a former subscriber.
A fucking lie.
In the images, she looks confident. Seductive, but not for an audience. She looks like she feels entirely safe. And that’s what kills me the most. This is the Luna she’s grown into. The Luna I know. Not the woman she was with Hollis. She neverfelt open with him. Certainly never safe. She talked to me about emotionally surviving him, about learning to trust herself again after him. Looking at these photos, I can’t reconcile the two timelines. But whatever the truth is behind how they were taken, Luna did not give her consent for these pictures to be shared.
“Did you find anything?” Diablo asks, stepping into the boardroom where I’ve been drilling down into the data, determined to prove Luna never had a subscriber page.
“There’s nothing, Gabriel.” It twists something vicious in my gut just knowing he saw those photos. Knowing he can never unsee those beautiful, private moments stolen from her. “However they got these, it wasn’t the way they’re claiming.”
“So what does that mean?” He folds his arms across his chest, leaning his hip against the edge of the conference table, but he’s far from relaxed. This would mark the biggest political scandal Bayside has probably ever seen.
“It means we do the right thing. Trash them and tell Rayne.”
“Maybe you need to look harder,” he says. “Get tech involved.”
The very idea of showing these photos to a tech team sends a wave of bile up my throat.
“If Rayne had an adult account, that’s public domain, Dakarai,” Diablo pushes. “Voters have the right to know and decide from there.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t. There’s not one shred of digital evidence. How did this so-called subscriber, who claims he’s not from Bayside, find out she was running for mayor? Why wasn’t the name of her account included in the alleged tip? Because it doesn’t exist. They were hoping we’d run with the headline. It’s salacious fodder deliberately timed to drop days before the next debate.”
He eyes me closely, his dark gaze narrowed to slits. “It sounds like you don’t want the claim to be true.”
“Why would I want it to be true, Gabriel?” I keep the sharpness out of my voice. “Why would I ever want to use private photos of a woman to elevate my candidate? Is that the kind of campaign you want to run?”
“Of course not. But if they’re not private?—”
“There’s no evidence to the contrary. It looks like revenge porn. That’s a Class 4 felony in this state. You don’t want your name anywhere near that.”
“Revenge porn?” He blinks. “You don’t have any proof of that.”
“No. But I have enough to treat it like the strongest possibility. The subscription page is fabricated. The photos are real, not AI-generated, not photoshopped. Those facts don’t exist separately.”
“Shit.” He drags a hand over his face. “Hollis Brown? That’s the most recent ex I know of.”
“I can’t name him without evidence, but the math adds up.”
He shakes his head. “I know him, Dakarai. He’s not that kind of guy. He did some contract IT work for me at the bank. He’s smart, a tech whiz, he wouldn’t risk his career… hell, his life just to get back at Rayne. I know his family. They’re good people.”
“You don’t know what he’s like behind closed doors,” I counter. “Good parents can have bad sons. You said he’s a tech whiz. He might think he’s too clever to get caught, or he’s too consumed with vengeance to let the consequences stop him. Either way, you are not in the business of accusing or defending him. This is about your campaign. I will have no part in using these photos.” I look him dead in the eye. “Where do you stand?”
He uncrosses his arms and rests his palms on the lip of the table, hanging his head as if he’s contemplating his run and his integrity. He finally releases a long breath and looks back up. “Before I’m a politician, I’m a husband and a father. I have three daughters. I want them to respect and admire the man Iam. I want to win, but I’m not going to unfairly damage Rayne to secure my reelection. If you’re certain there’s nothing public here, then I agree—we let it go, and we tell her.
I try to keep the relief off my face. It’s marginal, though, because the photos are still out there, and Luna still needs to know.
“That’s not a conversation I’d be comfortable having,” he adds. “Maybe Jacquie should do it. Another woman… she handles our communications anyway.”
“Let’s keep it contained. No one else needs to know. I’ll tell her.”
His eyes widen. “You want to tell her?”
“No. But I will.”
Gabriel places a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I don’t envy you that task. It’s going to be brutal.”
