Fake Date, Real Fate-Chapter 83: Protect. Defend. Destroy.

ADRIEN’S POV

I hit the down button on the elevator with more force than necessary. The doors slid open instantly as if sensing my urgency. I stepped inside, pulling out my phone again.

First call was to Cameron. He’d be expecting it.

"Adrien? You’re on your way?"

"On the way. Have you pulled them all down?"

"Working on it. We’ve sent cease and desist to the main sites, but they’re like hydras. You cut one head off, two more pop up. The comments sections are a cesspool. It’s gone viral."

Viral. The word tasted like ash.

"Who leaked them?" My voice was low, dangerous.

A hesitation on Cameron’s end. "We’re trying to trace the origin. It looks like it came from a burner account, but the photos... they look professional. High quality."

Professional. Not some random bystander with a phone. Someone meant for this to happen. Someone wanted to expose her. Someone wanted to hurt me.

"Find them," I ordered, my grip tightening on the phone. "Find out who took the pictures and who sent them. And find out why."

"Already on it. gray is digging." Gray was my head of security and private investigations. If anyone could crack this, it was him.

"Good. While he does that, start drafting a statement. Keep it simple, definitive. Zero room for interpretation. We need to get ahead of this now."

"What about Isabella? Does she know?"

I glanced at the elevator doors, picturing her still in the office, probably cleaning up. "No. Don’t contact her. I’ll handle that."

How was I going to handle that? Walk up to her and say, "Hey, remember that night you were distraught because of me and your kind friend helped you? Well, the entire world now thinks you’re a cheating harlot and I’m the world’s biggest idiot"?

No.

"Okay," Cameron said, sounding wary. "The statement... how much detail?"

"No detail," I said instantly.. "Just confirmation. That the lady in the picture is my girlfriend, that the situation is being misrepresented and that legal action will be taken against anyone publishing defamatory content."

"Okay. That’s... blunt."

"It needs to be. No apologies, no explanations. Just the facts that matter to us."

"Got it. I’ll circulate the draft to legal. They’ll want to tweak the wording."

"Fine. But fast. And one more thing, Cameron."

"Yeah?"

"Anything, and I mean anything, that links Isabella to this company more than her being my girlfriend needs to be scrubbed. No pictures of her here, no casual mention of her working for me, nothing that makes it easy for them to connect her professional life to this mess."

"Make it happen," I said. "Minimize the collateral damage."

The elevator doors chimed and opened to the ground floor lobby. My driver was waiting just outside the glass doors.

Stepping out into the cool evening air, I ignored the brief nod from the security guard. My mind was already racing. The car door opened just as I reached it. I slid into the back seat.

As soon as the car door shut, I barked into my phone, "Send me Aria’s number."

Cameron didn’t ask why. "Isabella’s friend?"

"Yes."

"You sure you want to—"

"Now, Cameron."

Why Aria?

The answer was simple, yet complex.

I couldn’t tell Isabella about this, not with the potential for her to be blindsided alone in the office or on her way home. Isabella was resilient, yes, but this kind of public humiliation, this gross misrepresentation of her character... it could break her.

My phone buzzed in my hand. A notification. A new contact added: Aria [phone number].

I tapped the contact and called.

The line rang twice.

Then she picked up with suspicion already in her tone. "Hello?"

"Miss. Aria Smith. This is Adrien Walton. I’m Isabella’s boss."

Pause. "How did you get my number?"

"That’s not important right now," I said, cutting off any further questions about privacy or methods. "Something has happened. Something bad. It involves Isabella."

Aria’s suspicion sharpened.

"What about Isabella? Is she okay?"

"Physically, yes. As far as I know. But someth— some pictures have been leaked online. Pictures of her, although her face is blurred a little. They’re being misrepresented in a way that’s... it’s highly damaging. Defamatory." I chose my words carefully.

A sharp intake of breath on her end. "What kind of pictures? Where?"

"They were taken out in public recently. They show her with someone who was helping her when she was clearly distressed. The context is being completely twisted. The internet is... running with a very false, very ugly narrative." I paused, letting the gravity sink in.

Silence.

Then: ""Oh my God... Are you serious?"

"I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t."

Aria sucked in a breath. "Wait, Is she okay?"

"She doesn’t know yet." My tone sharpened. "She’s still at the office."

Another pause. "What do you want me to do?"

"She can’t be alone when she finds out. She needs someone she trusts. I need you to go get her. Take her to your place. Keep her offline. Keep her grounded."

Aria hesitated. "You want me to just show up at you guys workplace and drag her out?"

"Yes."

"She’s going to think I’ve lost my mind."

"Better that than letting her walk straight into a media storm."

A beat of silence.

"You’re serious about this," she finally said.

"I am."

Another pause. "You care about her?"

I didn’t answer that absurd question.

"Okay," she said finally. "I’m on my way. Don’t let her name burn or I’ll make you regret it."

"I won’t."

I hung up and leaned back, briefly closing my eyes.

Step one: protect her.

Step two: make the world regret touching her name. I guess?

As the car pulled away from the curb, I stared out the window at the blurring city lights.

A professional photographer. Someone who knew where Isabella would be. Someone who wanted to hurt her, or me.

Who? The list of people who might resent my success was long. The list of people I might have crossed was even longer. But who would go after Isabella? Who would target her with such a malicious, personal attack?

Unless... unless it wasn’t about her. Unless she was just the collateral damage in an attack on me. Using her, twisting her moment of vulnerability, to publicly humiliate me, to drag my name through the mud.

Someone had just declared war. And they had no idea who they were up against.

By the time I arrived at the private ICT facility, Cameron was already waiting.

The security scans buzzed me in, the reinforced doors sealing behind me like a vault.

Cameron, looking harried but focused, met me at the heavy door, leading me down a short corridor into a large dimly lit room filled with monitors displaying complex graphs, scrolling code and maps of global networks.

"Adrien," Cameron said, his voice lower here, almost reverent of the technology surrounding us. "They’re here."

I nodded, my gaze sweeping across the room, taking in the dozen or so analysts working intently at their stations.

Gray sat at a central console, his face illuminated by the screens, his fingers flying across a keyboard.

Cameron looked up, tense. "It’s worse than we thought. shotex’s on fire. Blogs picked it up. iSwap edits are rolling in."

"Shut it down," I said, brushing past him.

"Target every original source. Trace the IPs. Identify the paparazzi agency and start sending legal threats."

He moved quickly, sliding into the console next to me. "Already contacted two outlets. Paid one off. The others are bargaining."

"Pay them."

"Even the shady ones?"

"If they’re useful."

"Copy."

I scanned through the worst headlines. Tycoon’s Secret Lover Cracks Under Pressure. The CEO Who Didn’t See It Coming.

My jaw clenched. "Get in touch with the hotel where the other photos were taken. I want access to their lobby security footage. Every second."

Cameron lowered his voice. "Adrien, you’re making this personal."

"It is personal."

Gray turned, his expression unreadable as always. "Adrien. We’ve confirmed the initial leak point. It originated from a secure offshore server, routed through multiple proxies. Very professional, very deliberate."

"Can you trace the source beyond the proxies?" I asked, walking towards him.

"Working on peeling back the layers," Gray said. "It’s like chasing a ghost through a hall of mirrors, but we’re good at finding the real reflection."

"The photos," I pressed. "Cameron said they were professional. What does that mean?"

"High resolution, expert framing, lighting corrected," Gray explained. "Not a snapshot from a phone. Someone took the time to capture these deliberately. And they weren’t taken with a standard DSLR with readily identifiable EXIF data. The metadata has been stripped or altered."

"Someone knew what they were doing," I stated, a cold certainty settling in my gut.

"Precisely," Gray confirmed. "They also knew where she would be"

My jaw tightened. "So, targeted. Against her, or through her?"

"Hard to say definitively from the technical side," Gray said. "The narrative built around the photos online focuses heavily on your relationship, painting her as the ’mistress’ and you as the ’cuckolded CEO’. It’s designed to cause maximum public humiliation and damage to your reputation, leveraging the perceived infidelity."

"So, through her," I concluded. Gray’s analysis confirmed my suspicion. Isabella wasn’t the primary target; she was the weapon used against me.

"We’re cross-referencing the style of the photos with known freelance photographers and agencies who’ve done work for or against any of our competitors, or anyone who might have a grudge," Gray continued.

"It’s a long shot, given the lack of metadata, but we’re running facial recognition on peripheral details in the background, geolocation analysis based on architectural cues... throwing everything at it."

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