After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law

The doors of Conference Room B were shoved open.

Aria stumbled across the threshold, her chest heaving as she desperately gasped for air. She had sprinted the rest of the way down the Manhattan avenues, completely barefoot, weaving through the apocalyptic standstill of honking yellow cabs and furious pedestrians.

The cream cashmere sweater she wore was clinging uncomfortably to her sweat-dampened skin. Her hair, which she had tried so hard to fix in the car, was a bird’s nest of rose-gold tangles.

She looked up at the digital clock mounted above the exit sign.

2:57 PM.

The conference room was completely stripped of its energy. The emergency strobe lights from the fire alarm had finally been shut off, leaving the room bathed in dim, depressing shadows. Overturned metal folding chairs littered the carpet like a graveyard of a battle that had already been lost.

The media was gone.

”Zoe?” Aria called out, her voice cracking as she stepped further into the wreckage.

”Back here.”

The voice was tiny, muffled, and incredibly bleak.

Aria navigated through the maze of knocked-over chairs, making her way toward the elevated wooden stage at the front of the room.

Zoe was sitting flat on the carpet behind the main podium. She had her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her back resting against the dark wood. She was staring blankly at the glowing screen of her iPhone resting in her lap.

The screen displayed a wall of red notifications.

[Missed Call: Aria (42)][Aria: I’M STUCK IN TRAFFIC][Aria: ZOE STALL THEM][Aria: I AM RUNNING, PLEASE HOLD THE ROOM]

Zoe had her AirPods jammed into her ears. Aria could faintly hear the melancholic, tragic chords of a Billie Eilish song leaking from the tiny white speakers.

Aria’s heart sank into her stomach.

She slowly dropped to the floor, crossing her legs on the carpet right beside her best friend.

She gently reached out and pulled the right AirPod out of Zoe’s ear. The sad, breathy vocals of Happier Than Ever cut off instantly.

Zoe didn’t even look up from her phone screen.

”I am a failure,” Zoe whispered, her voice hollow. ”My career is dead. I am going to have to move back into my parents’ basement and learn how to code. Or maybe I’ll just become a goat farmer in Vermont.”

”Zoe, don’t say that,” Aria said gently, bumping her shoulder against Zoe’s. ”You aren’t a failure. The traffic was insane. It’s my fault I didn’t get here in time.”

”No,” Zoe sighed, finally lifting her bloodshot eyes to look at Aria. ”I lost the narrative, Aria. And as if things weren’t bad enough, I attacked Bella in a room full of cameras.”

Zoe turned the phone screen toward Aria, swiping away from her text messages and pulling up Twitter.

”Look at the timeline,” Zoe started. ”It’s a mess.”

Aria leaned in. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, doomscrolling through the wreckage of her reputation.

The legitimate, verified news outlets—The New York Times, CNN, Reuters—were broadcasting the truth. They were running the official, redacted medical PDFs. They were showing the harrowing, high-definition CCTV footage of Damien performing frantic chest compressions on Aria’s lifeless body in the mud of the East River.

But the actual truth wasn’t getting any engagement.

The timeline was entirely dominated by the tabloids, the pop-culture blogs, and the feral influencer accounts. They were circulating the leaked audio of Aria complaining about the coma ruse.

”Both of these things are facts,” Zoe muttered, swiping past a PopCrave post. ”The medical records are real. But the audio of you confessing to faking it is also undeniably your voice.”

Aria read the comments rolling in under the trending hashtags.

@GossipGoblin:The medical records are 100% ChatGPT fakes! The elites think we’re stupid! That audio is the ONLY real proof!

@FilmNerd99:Damien Sinclair is rich enough to buy a hospital board. Elias Thorne is his best friend. Wake up, sheeple! Aria Sinclair is a fraud!

@ConspiracyKing:Honestly? Aria Sinclair is definitely locked up in a mental asylum right now. The girl in the drone video was a body double they hired to cover up the abuse.

Aria stared at the screen, her chest tightening with a suffocating sense of claustrophobia.

”They think I’m a clone?!” Aria whispered, genuinely horrified.

”The brain rot is terminal,” Zoe confirmed, resting her forehead on her knees. ”It doesn’t matter that Elias dropped literal, undeniable science on them. They want the drama. They want you to be the villain. You are officially canceled.”

”So we go live,” Aria suggested desperately, grabbing her phone from her pocket. ”Right now. I’ll go on Instagram Live. I’ll show them my face. I’ll tell them the truth about the audio—that it was out of context.”

”You can’t,” Zoe shot the idea down instantly. ”Going live without an independent, verified press pool to confirm your physical presence will just throw gasoline on the dumpster fire.”

Aria slowly lowered her phone.

The crushing reality set in. She was totally trapped. She had the truth sitting right on her tongue, but her microphone had been severed. She didn’t show up today, so she couldn’t call a second press conference. No journalist would take the bait twice after a massive no-show.

The premiere was in a week, and she was going to have to walk the red carpet as the most hated, disgraced woman in Hollywood.

Aria dropped her head into her hands, dragging her fingers through her messy hair.

”There has to be a way,” Aria whispered, her voice laced with desperate frustration. ”There must be a way to force them to sit down and actually listen to the truth.”

”Getting people to hear your side of the story is easy.” The voice was deep, smooth, and laced with confidence.

Aria and Zoe both gasped, their heads whipping around simultaneously.

Standing in the shadows near the doors, looking as perfect as ever, was Damien Sinclair. He had his hands casually shoved into the pockets of his tailored trousers, his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His golden eyes were sharp, bright, and fixed entirely on his wife sitting on the floor.

”Damien?” Aria breathed, scrambling to her feet.