Chapter 6: Smear Campaign

The screen of my tablet glowed with Sabrina’s face, perfectly framed against a backdrop of twinkling studio lights. She was live-streaming, co-hosting a podcast episode titled “Living with a Parasite.” The view count in the corner of the display clicked rapidly upwards. Four million. Overnight.

“And here we have Exhibit A,” Sabrina said, her voice dripping with mock concern. She held up a laminated sheet of paper to the camera. It was a fake medical receipt, complete with a doctored hospital logo. “Helena’s supposed ‘career-ending injury.’ Notice the exorbitant physical therapy costs. All paid for by Julian, of course.”

She clicked to the next slide, a blurry image of me supposedly struggling to open a jar. “This poor woman, so debilitatingly injured, yet she never once saw a specialist that wasn’t on our family payroll. Coincidence? I think not.”

My stomach churned. She was painting a picture of calculated deceit, transforming my genuine sacrifice into a manipulative scam. The comments section beneath the stream scrolled by, a river of vitriol. “Ungrateful!” “Gold digger!” “Hollywood’s Most Ungrateful Mother-in-Law.” The hashtag was already trending.

I pressed my fingers against my temples, the incessant drone of Sabrina’s voice a physical assault. She was a master of perception, twisting every detail into her desired narrative.

Just then, Leo walked in, his face lit by the screen of his own laptop. He looked exhausted, but his eyes held a triumphant spark.

“Mom, ignore her,” he said, nodding toward the tablet. “This is just noise.”

“Four million people think I’m a parasite, Leo,” I replied, gesturing at the screen. “That’s not noise. That’s a judgment.”

“I found it,” he announced, ignoring my despair. “The contract. I know where it is.”

My head snapped up. “What? Where?”

He pulled his laptop closer, rotating it so I could see the screen. It displayed a detailed schematic of a large, nondescript building.

“This is the studio’s off-site archiving and storage vault,” Leo explained, tapping at a section of the diagram. “Burbank. It’s heavily secured, temperature-controlled, lead-lined walls for sensitive documents.”

He pointed to a specific grid on the map. “I cross-referenced Dad’s old inventory logs with the Aegis payment dates. There was a specific file marked ‘Stunt Liability Agreement – Titan Flames (2008).’ It was moved here for long-term storage shortly after the explosion.”

“You mean the original, physical contract?” I asked, a sliver of hope piercing through the dark cloud of Sabrina’s broadcast.

“Yes. The one we found in Dad’s binder was just a heavily redacted copy for his personal records,” Leo confirmed. “The master agreement, the one signed by Aegis Group, my father, and even Sabrina’s production firm, is in a specific, lead-lined lockbox within that vault.”

He zoomed in on the diagram, highlighting a red square. “Box 713. Bottom shelf, Section C. That’s where it’s been sitting for twelve years.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked, marveling at his detective work.

“Dad had his own ‘system’,” Leo shrugged. “He logged everything. I just needed to decode it. He must have had a feeling someone would eventually need to find it.”

He closed his laptop, a determined glint in his eye. “Sabrina is throwing her big charity gala tomorrow night, right? The one she’s calling her ‘CEO Inauguration’ event?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, “the Beverly Hills Charity Gala. A thousand dollars a plate.”

“Perfect,” Leo said, standing up. “She’ll be preoccupied. And I know just how to get into that vault.”

The screen flickered, Sabrina’s manicured hand now holding up another fake document, smirking at her audience. But her performance felt less potent now. Leo had given me a new kind of defiance.