Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 87

I hadn’t slept. The image wouldn’t leave me, not because it was so false, but because it could have easily been real. It almost was. The angles, the shadows, they hadn’t fabricated something out of nothing.

They’d taken a truth and twisted it. They had known exactly what they were dóing.

“This was internal,” Nathan said, placing a folder in front of me. The file metadata confirms it was accessed from within our server.

Campaign credentials were used to retrieve surveillance footage, and it looks like assets were manipulated after the fact to create a fabricated image. This wasn’t just a leak, it was a coordinated attempt to build something that looked real enough to destroy us.”

“Adam?” I asked, even though I already knew better. The rot went deeper than him.

Nathan shook his head. “No. He’s gone. This was someone who still had active clearance as of last week. Someone familiar with the system.”

Tomlin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It doesn’t matter how fake it is.

The damage is already done. It’s about optics now.”

“Is impeachment on the table?” I asked.

-The silence answered for them. Harris looked away.

“We can spin it,” Harris offered. “Claim it’s a smear job, planted by David: Leak it that the tabloid was manipulated.”

Nathan disagreed. “The tabloid’s already issued a vague denial. But this is just the distraction. The fire is coming from somewhere else.”

Three hours since the photo went live, and the council still had no official response. Every second we waited, the narrative cemented further. And the longer Amelia stayed silent, the more they painted her as guilty.”Where’s Amelia?” l asked.

“Here,” Emma said from the speaker. “She’s staying with me. She’s not coming in.”

“Good.” The last thing I needed was for her to walk into this storm. I wanted her as far from it as possible, even if I knew keeping her away would only make her feel more isolated.

One by one, the others trickled out, murmuring strategies and contingencies. When the room emptied, I sat with my hands folded on the table, staring at the place where the photo had been projected.

Nathan had said the image was fabricated, that it was built from manipulated footage and pieced-together assets, and I had gone along with it. Repeated it like a fact. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure. The details were too precise, the angle too familiar. I didn’t know if I was more furious at whoever had leaked it, or at myself for making it so believable in the first place. I’d been careful. But not careful enough.

Amelia

By late afternoon, the texts started.

Slut.

Whore.

Homewrecker.

Different numbers. Same venom. I blocked each one, but they multiplied. I turned off the ringer, tossed the phone aside, but I could still feel them crawling under my skin. I kept hearing the buzz in my head even after the phone was dark.

Then came the black SUV. It passed once, slow and deliberate. Circled back. Parked across the street for a full fifteen minutes. Then disappeared I closed every curtain, locked every latch. Made Emma double check the front door.

Emma handed me tea and sat beside me on the couch, her laptop open. “They’re willing to fake one thing, they’ll fake another. We need to go through every campaign file we have.”

I nodded, opening my own laptop. The glow of the screen felt like it was lighting me up from the inside, exposing every mistake I’d ever made. But I wouldn’t hide. Not anymore. If they were building a case, so were we. I wasn’t going to be their silent casualty.

Richard

Nathan returned with a grim expression and a thick packet of evidence. “It’s worse than we thought,” he said. “The credentials belonged to someone on the comms team. They accessed and downloaded media files beyond just the photo. This was methodical.”

“Can we track the destination?”

“We’re trying, but Richard, this was part of a broader plan. Someone’s laying the groundwork for something bigger.”

I stared down at the packet. “Then we build faster.”Elsa’s press conference was streamed live on every major platform, each broadcast framed with pulsing headlines and dramatic voiceovers, like the world had just uncovered a royal scandal instead of a personal vendetta. I watched the first thirty seconds on mute from the couch in my apartment, laptop balanced on my knees, trying not to let my fingers shake around the trackpad. The hum of the refrigerator and the clink of Emma stirring tea in the kitchen buzzed louder than any of the voices on screen, though I could still feel the weight of every word.

She raised a brow and shoved the bag into my hands. “Nope. No thoughts. Only carbs. Sit.”

We curled up under a blanket, legs tangled and shoulders bumping as a string of rom-coms looped on the TV. She let me ignore reality through one movie. Then another, It wasn’t until halfway through the

third that her hand brushed against mine, and her voice got quiet.

“So,” she said, not looking at me. “They said the photo was fabricated, that it was spliced together from manipulated footage and assets. But you thought it was real, didn’t you?”

I froze, staring at the screen. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Because we’ve been having sex. You already know, don’t you?”

Emma nodded once, eyes still on the TV. “I figured. Just didn’t want to be the first one to say it.”

J hesitated, my heart thudding.

“You really want to talk about this now?”

She gave a half-shrug, picking at her fry carton. “Only if you do.”

I paused the movie and took a deep breath.

“I’ve never told anyone everything,” I said. “But I need to say it. I need someone to know.”

Emma turned toward me, her expression softening.

“Then tell me.”

1 started with the mate ball. With how it felt to wake up in his bed and feel like the world tilted, even then. I told her how I’d wanted the internship, how it felt like fate when I got it, how he always hovered at the edge of everything, both too close and too far away. I told her about the almosts and the not-quites, the way our bond never fully clicked but still tangled us together in ways I didn’t understand. I told her about the first kiss, the hallway tension, the nights pressed against his desk, his bed, the way he made me feel like I belonged to him even when he barely acknowledged me in daylight.