Silas Vane was reviewing shipping manifests when the alert hit his phone. Not a secure alert. Not the kind of signal that mattered. Just a news aggregator he kept running in the background, tracking mentions of the four names. A headline popped up:
*Inside Jason Dayo's Private World: The Singer, the Superstar, and the Secret That's Been Hiding in Plain Sight.*
Silas read it once. Then again. Then a third time, each pass slower than the last.
Luna. Dayo. A child.
He set the phone down on his mahogany desk. The movement was precise, controlled, the way he set down anything fragile. But inside, something cold was spreading through his chest.
The leverage was gone.
Not strategically deployed. Not used as a warning. Not bartered in a negotiation. Just gone. Published in a tabloid. Public. Available to anyone with an internet connection and a half-hour to spare.
