Behind the Scoop

Behind the Scoop

Gertrude

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My investigative journalism career was at its zenith, poised to expose a sprawling human trafficking network that reached into the city' s highest offices. I had irrefutable proof, years of hard work culminating in this moment, ready to break a story that would shake the city to its core. But then, only days from publishing, my former intern, Jessica Evans, unveiled my investigation with eerie precision, claiming my unique angles and even confidential source details as her own "intuition." Overnight, I was branded incompetent and slow, my decade-long reputation imploded, while she soared as the city' s new journalistic darling. The fallout was brutal: my editor, once my strongest advocate, viewed me with suspicion, and the whispers of a "washed-up" journalist followed me everywhere. The pattern continued; lead after lead I was developing, cases I was quietly researching-like the chilling "Poetic Justice Killer"-Jessica miraculously scooped with impossible, intimate detail I hadn't even fully formed. Then came the deepest cut: Professor Marcus Thorne, my respected Columbia mentor, praised Jessica's "raw talent" while publicly dismissing me as "envious," twisting the knife of my isolation and despair. How could Jessica know my raw, unfettered thoughts, my most private investigative theories, ideas I hadn' t even fully committed to paper? The sheer scale of this inexplicable theft, coupled with my mentor's shocking public betrayal, left me utterly confounded, adrift in a sea of public accusations and professional ruin. But their words, their disbelief, ignited a fierce fire within me; this wasn't mere envy or decline, it was a profound, calculated betrayal, and I would expose how she truly saw into my mind, starting with my "retirement" from the public eye.

Introduction

My investigative journalism career was at its zenith, poised to expose a sprawling human trafficking network that reached into the city' s highest offices.

I had irrefutable proof, years of hard work culminating in this moment, ready to break a story that would shake the city to its core.

But then, only days from publishing, my former intern, Jessica Evans, unveiled my investigation with eerie precision, claiming my unique angles and even confidential source details as her own "intuition."

Overnight, I was branded incompetent and slow, my decade-long reputation imploded, while she soared as the city' s new journalistic darling.

The fallout was brutal: my editor, once my strongest advocate, viewed me with suspicion, and the whispers of a "washed-up" journalist followed me everywhere.

The pattern continued; lead after lead I was developing, cases I was quietly researching-like the chilling "Poetic Justice Killer"-Jessica miraculously scooped with impossible, intimate detail I hadn't even fully formed.

Then came the deepest cut: Professor Marcus Thorne, my respected Columbia mentor, praised Jessica's "raw talent" while publicly dismissing me as "envious," twisting the knife of my isolation and despair.

How could Jessica know my raw, unfettered thoughts, my most private investigative theories, ideas I hadn' t even fully committed to paper?

The sheer scale of this inexplicable theft, coupled with my mentor's shocking public betrayal, left me utterly confounded, adrift in a sea of public accusations and professional ruin.

But their words, their disbelief, ignited a fierce fire within me; this wasn't mere envy or decline, it was a profound, calculated betrayal, and I would expose how she truly saw into my mind, starting with my "retirement" from the public eye.

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The Alpha Signed Away His Fated Mate

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I stood center stage at my own art exhibition, surrounded by the Pack elite who looked at me with nothing but pity. My husband, the Alpha Prime, was missing. Then someone pointed at the TV. There was Dante, live on the news, shielding another woman—a leggy Beta named Isabella—from the rain with his own body. While I stood alone, treated like a defect because I couldn't shift, he was playing the perfect gentleman to his mistress. That night, I walked into his office with a stack of boring gallery logistics paperwork. Buried deep on page four was a Severance Bond—an archaic law declaring a mate unwanted property. Dante didn't even read it. He was too busy laughing with Isabella to notice he was legally signing away his wife. I took the folder, packed a bag, and vanished into the night, taking the secret of his unborn heir with me. When he finally tracked me down in the Swiss Alps during a blizzard, he expected a submissive wife ready to return. Instead, he found a woman who looked him in the eye and said, "You are not needed here." I thought I was free, until a year later, when our daughter’s blood began to burn her alive from the inside. Her powerful Alpha bloodline was at war with her body, and my magic wasn't enough to save her. Trembling, I dialed the number I swore I’d never call again. "Dante," I sobbed. "It's Luna. She’s dying." The man who once treated me like a resource tore through mountains to save us. But this time, the Alpha Prime didn't come to conquer. He came to kneel.

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The world was a symphony of agony, played on the strings of my own body. I was tied to a chair in a damp basement, the metallic tang of blood filling my mouth as my fingernails were ripped from their beds by a pair of rusty pliers. My best friend, Corrine, stepped into the flickering light wearing my favorite Chanel suit and the engagement ring that was supposed to be mine. Beside her, my fiancé Aldo held the pliers, his voice smooth and cultured as he demanded I sign over my entire inheritance to them. As I struggled, a news report flashed on an old TV in the corner: Hunter Gallagher, the man I had treated like dirt but who had always tried to protect me, was dead in a horrific car explosion. Corrine laughed, whispering in my ear that they had lured him to his death using a fake kidnapping tip. He died trying to save me from a trap set by the people I trusted most. They didn't just want my money; they wanted to erase me. They plunged a needle full of heroin into my neck, watching with cold, mocking eyes as my heart hammered against my ribs and finally seized into nothingness. I died in that basement, a blind, spoiled girl who had let her true protector be murdered. As the darkness closed in, my soul burned with a single, silent vow: If I ever get another life, I will drag you both to hell with me. Suddenly, I gasped for air, my lungs fighting against a weight that wasn't there. I wasn't in the basement; I was in my own bed, my fingernails intact and my skin unbroken. I checked my phone, and my heart stopped—it was May 20th, exactly one year before my death. Hunter was still alive, and this time, I wasn't the prey.

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I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

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