Chapter 3
Three days later, the Los Angeles Grand Theater.
The premiere's red carpet was glittering with stars.
As the absolute female lead of the film, Vivienne wore an immaculate white haute-couture gown. Like a pure, holy lily, she stood firmly in the absolute center of the media's attention.
Meanwhile, as the CEO's wife-in-name-only, I was dressed in a lifeless, suffocating black gown, positioned by the PR staff in the shadows at the very edge of the red carpet.
I quietly counted down the time, waiting only for tonight's charade to end so I could finalize the divorce and walk away.
Just as the main cast prepared to take group interviews, a strange commotion erupted in the media section.
"Oh my god! What's with those photos that just leaked on Twitter?!"
"Vivienne! A hacker just dropped a set of explicit photos on the Dark Web of a woman being brutally violated in an abandoned auto repair shop! The background is the Eastside! There were rumors before that you were involved with an illegal loan shark ring—is the woman in these pictures you?!"
The crowd instantly exploded.
A sea of telephoto lenses and cameras violently changed direction, and countless blinding camera flashes turned toward the center of the red carpet like a frantic machine gun.
The blood in my veins instantly turned to ice.
I saw a reporter in the front row holding up a tablet. Displayed on the screen were highly explicit, horrific photos.
But the moment I saw the image clearly, I froze, my heartbeat nearly stopping.
The background of the photo was indeed that abandoned auto shop, but the woman in the picture—pressed down by gang members in revealing clothes, her posture a sickening mix of seduction and sheer terror—
That wasn't me at all!
It was Vivienne!
I trembled violently in shock.
It wasn't until this very moment that I realized the gang had already taken even more compromising photos of her before I traded places with her!
Vivienne's body instantly turned rigid, paralyzed in the face of the scene. But to the media, her silence looked like a tacit admission. They entered a frenzy, their cameras snapping relentlessly.
Just as the situation was about to spiral entirely out of control, Ryan snatched an MC's microphone and strode straight to the front of the cameras.
"Members of the press, look closely!"
Ryan's voice boomed through the speakers across the entire venue. Without hesitation, he raised his finger and pointed it with deadly precision directly at me, who was standing paralyzed in the corner.
"These vile photos have absolutely nothing to do with Vivienne! The woman in the pictures is her—Bella Hart!"
The entire venue fell dead silent for one second before erupting into an even more maddening storm of camera shutters.
All the lenses immediately turned toward me, striking my face like a dense volley of sharp arrows.
I felt like I had been struck by lightning.
The lighting in the auto shop was incredibly dim, and the woman's face was half-covered. Added to the fact that Vivienne and I shared slightly similar side profiles, it was nearly impossible for the public to tell us apart.
But Ryan, as my family member, could easily tell us apart at a single glance. Yet, his first instinct was to strip the stigma away from Vivienne and mercilessly pin it on me!
"Bella has always suffered from severe psychological issues! She is wildly jealous of everything Vivienne has. She colluded with the underground gangs for a loan, ended up shooting herself in the foot, and caused this disgusting, humiliating scandal!" Ryan stood righteously on the moral high ground, thoroughly nailing me to the pillar of public shame. "The Hart family will never allow her to use her own cheap, vulgar actions to tarnish Vivienne's innocence!"
I stared at the brother on stage who was so eagerly "sacrificing his own family for justice." I watched him, in front of all the media, forcibly pour the gang's filthy, unspeakable photos onto my head just to protect that fake heiress's halo.
"No... That's not me..." I took a trembling step forward, trying to force my voice out.
If they successfully pinned this on me, the rest of my life would be completely ruined!
I looked at Alex in utter desperation.
This was my husband. He had heard the entire truth at home days ago.
He knew full well that this was all Vivienne's fault!
Alex felt my gaze.
But he merely looked away coldly and tightened his arm around Vivienne's shoulder.
"Crowe Pictures will show absolutely zero tolerance toward any vicious attempts to harm Vivienne," Alex threw the icy statement at the media. He then turned his head, issuing a sharp command to the PR team behind him, "Get Bella back into the car. Has she not embarrassed us enough? Don't let her make a scene out here!"
Two burly security guards immediately rushed up, tightly clamping my arms from both sides, half-pushing and half-dragging me outward.
"Let go of me! Alex, look at me! You promised that as long as I stayed completely quiet, you would let me leave!" I struggled frantically, my high heels violently scraping against the hard steps.
But no one listened to me. The media's verbal abuse washed over me like a tsunami.
"The true heiress is actually this kind of trash?"
"Sleeping with gang members for money? No wonder Alex can't even bear to look at her!"
I was brutally shoved into the back seat of the VIP van. The heavy doors shut, locking out the noise, but they couldn't lock out the suffocating despair drowning me alive.
In the front seat, the PR manager coldly hung up his phone and turned to look at me:
"Mr. Crowe has given his orders. At the crisis press conference tomorrow morning, as long as you confess to being the woman in the photos in front of everyone—as long as you admit that it was all your own doing—you will still receive your agreed-upon screenwriting fees, and you can leave Los Angeles. But if you dare speak nonsense…"
The PR manager let out a cold sneer. "You should know that the Hart family has ten thousand ways to ensure you never get a single cent, and can easily throw you into prison."
Crouched in the dimly lit cabin, I burst into a violent, miserable laugh. My tears shattered against the silk of my dress.
They actually planned to suck me dry to my very last drop of blood at tomorrow's press conference, forcing me to personally sacrifice my lifelong purity to save that fake heiress.
Let me leave tomorrow?
No, they wanted me dead and buried beneath endless infamy!
