She Didn’t Fix Her Reputation. She Threw It Away. Chapter 01

She Didn’t Fix Her Reputation. She Threw It Away. Chapter 01

To impress a model, my fiancé, Beckett, personally destroyed me.

He and his friends got me drunk, snapped photos of me disheveled and exposed, and leaked them to TMZ.

Overnight, I was a national headline: “Political Sweetheart’s Night of Shame.”

The photos were instantly memed and plastered next to my mother’s Senate campaign posters. All of America was laughing at me.

When I confronted Beckett, he just said, “This is what crisis PR is for. Are you really going to be this dramatic about it?”

I stared at him, and my heart turned to ice.

So that was it. My life, my name, my family’s reputation—they were all just currency he could spend to entertain someone else.

I didn’t say another word to him.

I shed the Wells name and disappeared.

And Beckett went insane.

…

My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. The screen was a blur of notifications—a mix of concern, speculation, and mockery. I didn’t read a single one.

My gaze landed on a private Instagram account.

It belonged to one of Beckett’s friends and had fewer than a hundred followers.

In the latest photo, Beckett, his friends, and the European model, Anya, were all on the deck of a yacht, raising champagne glasses. They were grinning, celebrating a successful conquest.

Anya wore a red bikini, her legs crossed, flashing a V-for-victory sign at the camera.

The caption read: “Some porcelain dolls are more fun when they’re broken.”

A chill shot up my spine.

I opened the comments.

Beckett had left one.

“Anything for you.”

The words were a knife in my gut.

I’d never heard that tone from him before. Beckett Blake was always confident, arrogant even. He carried an air of judgment with everyone, including my mother. But here, he sounded like a puppy, desperate for praise.

So my dignity, my family’s reputation… that was his offering to his new favorite.

The screen went dark, then lit up again.

Incoming call: Beckett.

I answered.

His end was a wall of noise: music, laughter, the clinking of glasses. My room was deathly quiet.

“Hey, Daphne?” he said, his voice thick with laughter. “Congratulations. You’re more famous than I am now.”

I said nothing.

I just listened, hearing the voice I knew so well say the most alien things.

“Don’t be like this,” he said when I didn’t respond, his voice losing its humor. “I’ve already got the team on it. It’s a minor PR issue. Your family’s lawyers can handle it.”

“A minor issue?” I finally managed, my voice raw. “Beckett, my photo is on the Fox News homepage, right next to my mother’s campaign poster. You call that a *minor issue*?”

“What else would you call it?” he snapped. “What good does it do to assign blame now? You should be thinking about repairing your image, not interrogating me. Daphne, grow up.”

My heart sank.

He couldn’t even be bothered to pretend.

In his world, the fact that I’d been set up and humiliated wasn’t the problem. The problem was me. I wasn’t mature enough.

“You’re too sensitive,” he went on. “Our circle needs a little excitement. You’re always so boring, like a pretty little doll. Anya just wanted you to loosen up. Who knew you couldn’t take a joke?”

He added, “Besides, it’s not like you lost anything real.”

I almost laughed.

Nothing to lose?

I was a national joke. My mother’s campaign was about to be collateral damage. And that was *nothing*?

Someone on his end of the line jeered.

“Exactly, Daphne. Don’t be a buzzkill.”

“If it weren’t for Beckett, who would’ve brought you out to see how the real world works?”

One voice after another.

It was clear.

I was never one of them.

I was just a prop. A plaything. Something to be used and discarded.

Then a saccharine female voice commandeered the phone.

It was Anya.