The photo hit the feed like a slap.
It slid across Maya's phone with a headline in blunt type and a smear of tags: LIAM VOSS — LATE NIGHT. The image was the same from the first scandal, but sharper. Someone had retaken the frame, cropped it, sharpened it until the cuff on her wrist looked like a brand. Jonah's name popped up at the top of the thread — a simple text to a gossip column: Run this. She sold herself. Make it hurt.
Liam froze the second he saw the link. He hadn't been staring at social feeds; he'd been running numbers. Now his face went flat. For a flash, his control slipped and something—shock, anger, real surprise—crossed him. That small crack was enough.
Maya felt the room close. The gallery crowd, the hum of polite chatter, the gauzy lights of the charity brunch—everything narrowed to the phone in her hand and the photo burning under her thumb. Her world contracted to pixels and rumor and a man who used a smile like a scalpel.
She shoved the phone into her pocket because standing there staring made people talk too loudly. Tess grabbed her arm the way friends do when a person is about to wobble.
"You texted it?" Maya barked later, when she could say a name.
"I didn't send it," Jonah said, hands up, but he looked guilty in the guilty way some people do when they want to be forgiven quickly. "I forwarded a thread. I thought—"
"You thought what?" Maya demanded. "That propelling it to print would fix the thing you broke?"
Jonah wanted something—revenge, attention, cash—but his finger moved fast and clean for a rumor. He'd always been a small-handed man who made a lot of noise. Now his noise bit.
Tess moved before Maya could. "We can turn this around," she said. "We can say it's doctored. We leak that the photo's been manipulated—simple. We put it to bed."
Marcus, who had hovered at the edge of the room like a shadow with legal training, didn't look impressed. He kept his palms open like a surgeon. "No. Don't touch it. You'll escalate the liability. You open yourself to a lawsuit, to charges of tampering. You'll also give the tabloids a reason to dig."
Tess frowned. "If we wait, it grows."
"If you rush, you trap yourself," Marcus said. He was calm in a way that made people follow instructions. That calm was a problem.
Tess wanted noise to drown rumor; Marcus wanted a sealed, slow-case approach. Maya felt pulled. Her gut wanted Tess's fast hack—rip the bandage and spit the lie back out. Her head, sticky with terror and tired, knew Marcus might be right.
They argued like that in low tones while the brunch around them kept up its polite climb.
Then Petra Long arrived.
She moved through the room like a headline herself—press badge clipped to her belt, notebook in hand, eyes that scanned like cameras. Petra's presence was a cut of old history. She and Liam had traded flames once, years ago, when careless youth walked across more dangerous ground. This was the woman who could write a line that would cut to bone or stitch it back, depending on the favor she wanted.
Petra found Liam first. She gave him a look like she'd found an old map. He stiffened but then smiled, the controlled smile that fit him. Petra winked. That wink was a thing with teeth.
Maya felt it like a physical shove. Jealousy flared hot and stupid in her chest—not the quiet kind that sits in the ribs but the bright, electric kind that makes a person act before thinking. She forced herself to breathe. Watching Petra thread her way through donors, watching Liam accept the smile, watching quiet conversation fold between them—everything shifted.
Jealousy made her sharp, made her say things out of line. Petra's name trailed through the room like smoke. Tess noticed the way Maya watched, the way her jaw clenched.
"Don't," Tess mouthed. Not a warning about Petra. A warning about the cameras. "Eyes, Maya. We're on stage."
Maya tried to follow that order. She smiled when Liam caught her eyes, the smile they'd practiced—worn but purposeful. But Petra's laugh bounced in the air like a peal designed to unsettle. Liam turned to Petra and the room hummed like a wire about to snap.
Then the donor moved.
Hargrove—big money, slow smile, a man whose name on a check could rewrite programs—rose from his table with a paper in hand and walked straight to Eleanor. Wherever Hargrove went, quiet panic followed. He did not like small surprises.
Eleanor met him with a smile that felt like a mask. Hargrove leaned in and spoke low. A hush slipped across the room. Someone in the back whispered. Cameras at the edge of the terrace pivoted. Hargrove handed Eleanor an envelope. She opened it and read. Her face went white where it had been polite. She looked at Liam, then at Marcus, then back at the envelope.
"This is not good," she told them, though everyone could hear.
Maya's stomach fell like lead. Her hands tightened around her glass.
"What is it?" Tess asked.
Eleanor cleared her throat. "Hargrove is withdrawing his gift." Her words were small but the room felt like it fractured. "Effective immediately."
"Hargrove?" Liam said. The name came out like someone asking if a trap had been sprung.
Eleanor pushed the envelope toward Marcus. "He included a clause."
Marcus read it, one practiced line after another. "He's claiming association: an alleged child scandal linked to Mr. Voss." He looked up, eyes clinical. "He's asking for indemnity and withdrawing until proof of separation is given."
A small gasp went through the room. The clause was surgical. It didn't just say he was pulling funds. It tied the museum to Liam personally, to the scandal in a way that could bleed the institution dry—legal entanglement, press frenzy, reputational collapse.
This was worse than the photo. The photo was an igniting spark. The clause was someone choosing to douse flames with oil. This is what boards feared: not just gossip, but financial hemorrhage.
Hargrove's line meant programs died. People lost jobs. A kids' outreach program that ran on those donations would be cut. Eleanor's hands trembled as she folded the paper. Liam's face went hard. Marcus's posture tightened.
Petra watched the scene like a hunter deciding whether to strike. She pulled out her pen, scribbled, and then looked up at Maya with something inscrutable. A half-smile slid across her face. It looked crafted, casual, and not random.
Maya wanted to step forward, slap Hargrove's smugness off the table, shove the clause back in his face. But she was supposed to be married to this man now—to be the quiet, supportive fixture in his life. That image was supposed to keep donors' hearts warm. Instead, donors were walking.
"You can't just—" Tess started. She was held in place by her own fear.
"Send them a letter," Marcus said. "Demand retraction. We'll get the press legal if they publish claims linking the museum to personal allegations. We have timelines."
"By the time legal moves," Tess whispered, "the donors are gone."
Maya felt suddenly very small. The contract had bought them a breathing space — but breathing had become a fight for life and for programs. The postcard-perfect façade, the staged dinners and the rehearsed smiles, had not bought them safety. It had made the threat personal in a new way.
Petra folded her notepad, smiled with a thinness that suggested empathy or appetite. She left a card on the chair where Hargrove had sat.
Maya watched the card's placement like proof of a quiet plan. Someone was ready to make stories stick. Someone wanted the museum to be a place of spectacle and ruin.
"Call the board meeting early," she said at last, voice flat. "Shut the doors."
Eleanor nodded, already moving. The donors rose, leaving clusters of unease and empty champagne flutes. Liam's fingers were cold when he touched Maya's elbow.
"Stay with me," he said, low. Not a plea. A command half-turned careful. His thumb brushed the part of her that had been tender in other rooms. There was a claim in the touch, but it was also a promise, the smallest thing that might hold when everything else was tearing.
She kept her face steady. She nodded. They went into a small back room where the chairs were too stiff and the air was like paper. Behind the closed door she pulled the dossier out of her bag, thumbed through pages as if a single piece of paper would change what Hargrove had done.
On the top of the stack, Jonah's text glittered like an accusation. She looked up at Liam and for the first time wondered if he knew how to stop the burn at all.
Petra's laugh trailed like a promise. The donor's clause lay like a blade. The museum looked like something about to fall apar
t. And somewhere in that mess, someone had already started choosing which pieces would be saved.