Chapter 3

At the mention of Pamela's name, the young woman's eyes lit up.

"Pamela is amazing. That documentary she shot in Veyland was incredible!"

She pulled it up on her computer to show me. Pamela's name sat right there in the credits, under Executive Producer and Director.

"Look how good it is—we all cried watching it!"

The footage on the screen was painfully familiar. Every photograph, every interview, had cost me blood to get.

They'd cut out every shot of me on camera and dubbed Pamela's voice over the rest. From start to finish, my name didn't appear anywhere in the credits.

The Ellison Group sat at the top of the sponsor list.

Russell.

He was the only one who knew the password to my computer.

I closed the video and drove straight for the Ellison Group's offices. A truck behind me leaned on its horn, the blast deafening.

My head started pounding, and that same explosion sound roared to life in my ears. I clapped my hands over my ears, lost control of the wheel, and slammed into the guardrail.

By the time Russell got there, his face had gone ashen. He looked like he wanted to lay into me, but the second he saw how pale I was, he pulled me into his arms instead.

"It's all right, Harper. I'm here."

His arms were still just as warm as I remembered—warm enough to make me want to cry. I shoved him off, tears streaming down my face.

"Russell, why did you give my footage to Pamela? You know exactly how many times I nearly died getting that material. You know how much it means to me."

I'd started planning that documentary two years earlier. I'd carried a camera through gunfire and shelling to get the footage I needed.

I'd been shot. I'd been thrown by explosions. I'd brushed past death more times than I could count. Every piece of footage in that documentary had cost me something real.

Russell reached out and wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, one by one.

"Harper, after what happened to you, everyone thought you were dead. I handed your material over to Pamela so she could finish the project in your place. What's wrong with that?"

I knocked his hand away. "And the credit? Why isn't my name on it? Why is everyone saying Pamela made it?"

"Because you were already dead." His voice turned ice-cold. "But Pamela's different. She needs this to secure her place at the station. I invested in her project, and if it does well, that's good for the company too."

I looked at him and suddenly felt like I didn't know him at all. The old Russell would never have let me suffer even the smallest slight, never let me shed a single tear. And now, only days after coming home, I felt like I'd cried every tear I had left in me.

Russell forced me into his car and drove me back to the new house he'd set up for me. Before he left, he tossed a bank card onto the table.

"Harper, just behave and stay home and get better. I'll pay you back however much you need. Pamela's career matters. Don't get in her way—that's what your parents want too."

I sank onto the floor of the empty living room and started laughing. Between the three of them, they'd handed everything that was mine over to Pamela—all because I hadn't been obedient enough.

I opened my computer, logged into my cloud storage, and pulled up the original footage. My face. My voice, all of it. I edited the clips together, added a detailed write-up, and posted it online.

Then I went straight to bed.

By morning, the story had exploded. My phone was flooded with notifications—thousands of messages and comments, the video shared more than ten million times. Pamela's account was buried under an avalanche of backlash, and the Ellison Group's official page had been overrun too.

[So Pamela stole someone else's work?]

[That's disgusting. Stepping on her own best friend to get ahead.]

[Poor Harper...]