Chapter 599
Chapter 598:
Richard saw the exchange. He clocked the violence flickering in Gaston’s eyes and the restraint in Jocelyn’s, and it was exactly the fuel he needed. He threw his head back and cried out, his voice pitched for maximum sympathy, aimed directly at the hidden lens in the bookshelf.
“You see! You see how they are! The rich man wants to throw the poor relative out! He wants to use force to silence the truth p>
The live chat detonated. The hashtag JocelynTheIceQueen ignited on Twitter in seconds, a wildfire of righteous indignation spreading faster than it could be tracked.
The apartment’s private line rang — sharp and urgent, cutting through the noise. It was Bella.
“Jossie, the PR team is in meltdown.” Bella’s voice was frantic, stretched thin with panic. “Every major network is calling. Page Six, the Times, everyone. We have to issue a response. Now p>
Jocelyn drew a deep, shuddering breath, forcing air into her constricted lungs. She looked at Richard’s face — a grotesque mask of manufactured sorrow — and understood the trap with absolute clarity. Any denial, any explanation, would be gasoline on the fire. They would call her a liar on top of everything else.
“Say nothing,” she told Bella, her own voice sounding distant and foreign. “Wait p>
𝘞е𝖾𝗄𝘭𝘺 𝗋𝗲𝘭e𝖺𝗌е𝗌 𝗼n
She hung up.
Miles away, in a cheap, antiseptic room in a Queens hospice facility, Elouise Stein stared at a nurse’s smartphone. Her face was a gaunt, emotionless mask as she watched her brother’s pathetic, groveling performance play out on the screen.
The room smelled of bleach and despair. On the bedside table beside her, untouched, was the burner phone Richard had used to threaten her.
Elouise reached for it. Her fingers — thin and trembling with a weakness that had nothing to do with fear — fumbled with the keypad. She composed a short text message, her thumb hovering over the send button. The recipient was a number she had never used: a private line she had acquired long ago for emergencies. Penelope, the show’s producer.
In the control room, Penelope was on the verge of a panic attack, watching her carefully crafted show spiral into a PR catastrophe. Her personal phone buzzed. She glanced at it, annoyed — then froze.
The message was from an unknown number, but the content was unmistakable.
“This is Elouise Stein. My brother is lying. Post the following statement on the show’s official account. Immediately p>
Attached was a block of text and a photograph. The photo showed Elouise — her face ravaged by illness — holding up that day’s copy of the New York Post. Proof of life. Proof of time.
Penelope’s heart slammed against her ribs. She turned to her assistant. “Trace this number. Cross-reference it with the medical release forms she signed. Check the cell tower pings against the contact location on file. And call the hospice facility’s main line — find a nurse on duty and confirm Elouise Stein is a patient there with access to her phone p>
A technician’s fingers flew across a keyboard. A few agonizing seconds passed before two assistants shouted simultaneously.
“It’s a match, Penny! The number is a burner, but the initial contact traces back to the same cell tower in Queens p>