Chapter 3 - THE DIGITAL INFERNO
By midnight, the internet had ceased to function as a tool of entertainment and had become a digital colosseum cheering for blood.
Inside my temporary suite at the Chateau Marmont—secured under an alias by Arthur’s firm—the six television monitors mounted against the mahogany wall glowed with round-the-clock chaos.
On CNN, a legal analyst was dissecting the concept of posthumous intellectual property theft. On TMZ, Harvey Levin was practically hyperventilating as he replayed the thirty-second clip of Celeste’s face curdling into malice, over and over, zooming in on the exact microsecond her four-inch Christian Louboutin spike crushed the hem of my dress.
On TikTok, the hashtag #CelesteVaneIsOver had reached four hundred and eighty million views in four hours.
Teenagers across five continents were recreating the scene, lip-syncing my father's name, slowing down the footage to expose what every stylist in Los Angeles already knew: that Celeste had deliberately shifted her weight to step on my dress, smiled at her publicist, and waited for the cameras to lock in before ripping the fabric.
"The PR counter-offensive was stillborn," Arthur said, entering the living room with a fresh pot of black coffee and a stack of printed legal notices. He set the tray down on the marble coffee table with an uncharacteristic clatter. "Harold tried to plant a piece with *Page Six* claiming you had a history of psychiatric episodes following your father's death. But before the editor could run it, our digital team dropped a twenty-second preview of the audio recording onto an anonymous Reddit thread in r/Entertainment."
I didn't turn away from the window. Outside, down on Sunset Boulevard, the red and blue flashing lights of paparazzi vehicles circled the perimeter like vultures tracking a dying elephant.
"How bad is the damage?" I asked.
"For Vanguard? Catastrophic," Arthur replied, a thin, wolfish smile touching his mouth. "The New York Stock Exchange opens in six hours. Vanguard’s institutional shareholders—the big pension funds, Vanguard Group, BlackRock—have already called for an emergency board meeting at nine a.m. Harold’s personal shares are leveraged against studio debt. If the stock drops more than fifteen percent at the opening bell, his lenders will issue a margin call. He will be forced to liquidate his assets within forty-eight hours or face personal bankruptcy."
I took a sip of the black coffee. It was bitter, scalding, and perfect. "And Celeste?"
"Her publicist resigned forty minutes ago," Arthur said, checking his tablet. "Brenda issued a statement saying she was ‘stepping back from personal representation to spend more time with her family.’ Translation: the ship is underwater, and she’s taking the only lifeboat available. Furthermore, Maison Valois has entered the chat."
I turned around, raising an eyebrow. "Valois?"
"The fashion house that loaned Celeste her gown for the evening," Arthur explained. "And, more importantly, the house that custom-made *your* gown."
A knock sounded at the suite’s interior door. Arthur’s junior associate opened it to reveal a tall, impossibly chic Frenchwoman dressed in a structured black wool coat, her silver hair cut into a precision bob that could have sliced glass.
It was Madame Helene Laurent, the creative director and majority owner of Maison Valois.
"Madame Laurent," I said, inclining my head. "I apologize for the condition in which your dress ended the evening."
Helene Laurent walked into the room, her dark eyes scanning me with the surgical precision of an artist evaluating a canvas. She didn't look angry; she looked incandescent with a fierce, terrifying amusement.
"Do not apologize, *mon petit*," Helene said, her French accent thick as dark molasses. "You gave my gown something no fashion designer can buy with twenty million dollars of advertising."
"And what is that?"
"Revenge," Helene said smoothly. "Do you know how many years Celeste Vane has treated my atelier like her personal servants? She returned a one-of-a-kind silk organza cape last season with red wine stains on the collar and blamed my seamstress. She demanded twenty thousand dollars in cash payments beneath the table to wear my autumn line in Venice. She is a monster of the first order."
Helene gestured to an assistant who had waited in the hallway. The assistant carried a massive, garment-bag-sized trunk of reinforced black leather.
"Tomorrow morning, at ten o'clock," Helene said, resting her leather-gloved hands on the trunk, "Maison Valois will issue a global press statement. We are filing an eight-million-dollar civil lawsuit against Celeste Vane for the intentional, malicious destruction of an haute couture archival piece on live international television."
I stared at her. "Eight million dollars? For a satin gown?"
"The fabric was woven with pure silver filaments by eighty-year-old lacemakers in Lyon," Helene lied without flinching, a dazzling, wicked spark in her eye. "It was priceless. It was an irreplaceable museum piece. And Celeste Vane stomped on it like a drunken peasant in a vineyard."
Helene clicked the latches of the black trunk. The lid swung back.
Inside lay an emerald-green gown of such breathtaking, incandescent beauty that the breath caught in my throat. It looked less like cloth and more like liquid moonlight cascading over emerald velvet, shimmering with a dark, regal fire.
"This," Helene murmured, "was the gown I intended for you tomorrow night at the Academy gala. The silver was for the opening gambit, Mara. The green... the green is for the coronation."
I touched the velvet. It was cool against my fingertips, smooth as stone beneath a waterfall.
"We aren't done yet, Helene," I warned softly. "Harold Vance still holds the corporate proxy for forty-eight percent of the board. He has the private security, the political connections, and forty years of industry alliances. He won't go into the dark quietly."
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"Good," Helene Laurent said, turning toward the window where the flashing cameras lit up the palm trees like artificial lightning. "I despise quiet men. They make such boring corpses."
***
