Updated Oct 1, 2025 • ~12 min read
Sienna realized her journal was missing on a Thursday afternoon, twenty weeks pregnant and finally starting to feel like maybe, possibly, things were stabilizing.
The paternity test had been released. Lucas was maintaining cold but civil distance. The interview with the magazine was back on schedule. Damon had hired security that actually kept the paparazzi at bay.
For exactly eight days, life had been almost manageable.
Then she went looking for the leather-bound journal she kept hidden in her nightstand—the one she’d been using since the gala, the one that contained every raw, honest thought she’d had during the worst months of her life—and found nothing but empty drawer space.
“Damon?” She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “Have you seen my journal? The brown leather one?”
He appeared in the bedroom doorway, tie loosened, looking exhausted from another day of damage control meetings. “The one you write in at night? No, why?”
“It’s gone. It was in my nightstand, and now it’s not there.”
“You probably moved it. Check your bag, the bathroom—”
“I didn’t move it. I never move it. I write in it before bed and put it back in the same drawer every night.” Her hands were shaking now. “Damon, it’s gone. Someone took it.”
His expression shifted from dismissive to alert. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” She was tearing through the drawer now, as if she could make it materialize through sheer will. “I wrote in it two nights ago. It was right here.”
“Okay. Okay, let’s think.” Damon pulled out his phone. “I’ll call security, check the cameras, see if anyone unauthorized has been in the building—”
“What if it wasn’t unauthorized? What if it was—” She stopped, a horrible thought crystallizing. “The fake diary entries. What if someone stole my real journal to create fake ones?”
“That doesn’t make sense. They’d just publish the real entries if they had them—”
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. A text with an image attached.
She opened it with trembling fingers.
A photo of a journal page. Her handwriting, unmistakable and damning:
I’m pregnant with Damon’s baby and engaged to Lucas. I’m living the world’s worst rom-com except nothing is funny and I’m going to hell.
Below the image, a message: Interesting reading. Page 47 drops tomorrow. Unless you’d like to negotiate.
Sienna’s vision went white at the edges.
“They have it.” The words came out strangled. “Someone has my actual journal. With everything I’ve ever written about—about all of this.”
Damon grabbed her phone, read the message, and his face went murderous. “What else is in there? What did you write?”
“Everything. My thoughts about Lucas, about you, about the baby, the lies I was telling—” She pressed her hands to her face. “It’s all there. Every horrible, guilty, confused thought I had. And now someone’s going to publish it.”
“Not if we stop them.” He was already calling someone. “This is extortion. We can get law enforcement involved—”
“And how long will that take? Hours? Days?” She grabbed the phone back, stared at the text. “Page 47 drops tomorrow. That’s a deadline. They’re going to release it piece by piece unless we—” She stopped. “Unless we negotiate.”
“Absolutely not. We don’t negotiate with extortionists.”
“What choice do we have? That journal has months of entries. Things I wrote when I was confused, scared, angry. Things I wrote about Lucas that will destroy him all over again.” Her voice cracked. “I wrote about loving you before I admitted it out loud. I wrote about the pregnancy test, about lying to everyone, about—God, Damon, I wrote everything.”
Another text: 24 hours. $500k or page 47 goes live. And trust me—you don’t want page 47.
“Half a million dollars,” Damon said. “They want half a million to not publish your private thoughts.”
“Can we pay it?”
“That’s not the point—”
“Can we pay it?” She was borderline hysterical now. “Because I can’t—I can’t have my journal published. I can’t have Lucas read what I really thought about him, or your mother see what I wrote about her, or the world know every single mistake I made.”
“Sienna, paying them doesn’t guarantee they’ll give back the journal. They could take the money and publish it anyway.”
“Then what do I do?” Tears were streaming now. “Tell me, Damon. What do I do?”
He pulled her close, and she felt him thinking, calculating, planning.
“We find out who has it,” he said finally. “And we destroy them before they can publish another word.”
By midnight, they had a suspect list.
Damon’s security team had pulled every piece of footage from the building. Three people had accessed the penthouse in the last week aside from Damon and Sienna: a cleaning service employee, a maintenance worker checking the HVAC, and Lucas.
“Lucas wouldn’t,” Sienna said immediately.
“Are you sure? Because he’s hurt, angry, and has more access to my place than anyone else. He has a key from when we were still—” Damon stopped. “Before everything fell apart.”
“He wouldn’t steal my journal. That’s not—he’s not vindictive like that.”
“He hired a PI to follow you. He demanded a paternity test. He fired you out of spite.” Damon’s voice was gentle but firm. “He’s capable of this, Sienna.”
“No. I don’t believe it.”
But doubt was creeping in. Lucas had been so cold, so hurt. What if he’d decided to strike back? What if this was his revenge?
Her phone buzzed again. Another photo, another page:
Lucas proposed tonight. The ring is beautiful—three carats, platinum, exactly what I would have chosen if this were real. But it’s not real. None of this is real. I’m building a life on lies, and sooner or later, it’s all going to collapse.
I should tell him the truth. Should admit the baby isn’t his, that I don’t love him, that I’m in love with his brother. But every time I try to find the words, I think about losing everything—my job, my security, the future I’ve been clinging to. So I keep lying. And hating myself a little more each day.
The message below: Page 47 is even better. Tick tock.
“We need to call him,” Sienna said. “If it is Lucas, we need to stop this before—”
“Before what? Before he publishes your private thoughts to punish you?” Damon was already dialing. “Lucas, pick up. Now.”
He put it on speaker. Lucas answered on the third ring, sounding half-asleep.
“It’s midnight. What do you want?”
“Did you steal Sienna’s journal?”
Silence. Then: “What?”
“Her journal. The one she keeps in our nightstand. Did you take it when you were here last week?”
“Why the hell would I steal her journal?”
“To punish us. To have ammunition. To—” Damon stopped. “Did you or didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t steal her journal. Jesus Christ, Damon, I’m angry but I’m not a criminal.” Lucas’s voice sharpened. “Why? What happened?”
“Someone took it. They’re threatening to publish it unless we pay them.”
More silence. Then Lucas said something Sienna couldn’t quite hear, followed by, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
He hung up.
Sienna looked at Damon. “He’s coming here?”
“Apparently.”
“What if it is him? What if this is part of—”
“It’s not him.” Damon sounded certain now. “I heard it in his voice. He’s as shocked as we are.”
Lucas arrived in fifteen minutes, still in sweats, hair disheveled, looking more human than he had in weeks.
“Show me the messages,” he demanded.
Sienna handed over her phone. Watched him read the texts, study the photos of her journal pages, his expression darkening with each image.
“This is legitimate,” he said finally. “Your handwriting, your words. Someone actually has your journal.”
“Thank you, detective obvious,” Damon muttered.
Lucas ignored him. “Have you checked the cleaning service? Background checks, employment history?”
“Security’s on it.”
“What about the maintenance worker?”
“Him too.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t—” Lucas stopped, looked uncomfortable.
“Wasn’t what?” Sienna asked.
“Wasn’t Bianca. Your best friend. She’s been here, right? She has access, knows where you keep things—”
“Absolutely not. Bianca would never—”
“I’m just saying, she’s the only other person with that level of access and motive.”
“What motive?” Sienna’s voice rose. “She’s my best friend!”
“And you’ve been keeping secrets from her. Lying to her. Using her for support while building this mess.” Lucas held up a hand. “I’m not saying she did it. I’m saying we need to consider everyone.”
“He’s right,” Damon said quietly. “We can’t rule anyone out.”
Another text arrived. This time to all three of their phones simultaneously:
Cute meeting. All three of you together. Almost like old times.
Below it, a photo—taken through Damon’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The three of them visible in the living room, phones in hand.
Someone’s watching you. Want to guess who? Page 47 in 22 hours.
“They’re outside,” Lucas said, moving to the window. “Right now. Watching us.”
Damon hit a button on his phone. “Security, I need every camera angle on the street. Someone’s surveilling the building. Find them. Now.”
They stood in tense silence, waiting. Sienna’s phone buzzed again.
Another photo. This one older—from weeks ago. Sienna and Damon leaving a restaurant, his hand on her back, her looking up at him with obvious affection.
The message: Been watching for a while. Saw it all. Every lie, every betrayal. You should really invest in better curtains.
“They’ve been following her for weeks,” Lucas said. “Maybe months. The leaked photos from before, the doctored diary entries—this is organized. Professional.”
“Or personal,” Damon countered. “Someone with a grudge.”
Sienna’s mind was racing through possibilities. Who hated her enough to do this? Who had the resources, the access, the motivation to steal her most private thoughts and weaponize them?
Her phone rang. Bianca.
“Please tell me you’re seeing this,” Bianca said without preamble. “Because gossip sites are teasing something big dropping tomorrow—’Sienna Laurent’s secret diary reveals shocking truths.’ Please tell me you didn’t actually keep a diary.”
“Someone stole it. They’re threatening to publish it unless we pay them.”
“Jesus. Sienna, what’s in it?”
“Everything. Every thought I had during—during all of it.”
“Okay. Okay, we can handle this. I’m coming over. Don’t do anything until I get there.” Bianca paused. “Are you safe? Like physically safe?”
“I think so. Security’s here, and—” She glanced at Lucas, who was peering out the window. “Lucas is here too.”
“Lucas is there? Why?”
“Long story. Just get here.”
Bianca arrived thirty minutes later, and the sight of all four of them—Sienna, Damon, Lucas, and Bianca—gathered in the living room would have been funny if everything wasn’t so catastrophically wrong.
“Okay,” Bianca said, taking charge immediately. “We need a plan. Option one: pay the extortionist, hope they actually give back the journal and don’t publish.”
“Bad option,” Damon said. “No guarantee they won’t publish anyway.”
“Option two: ignore the threats, let them publish, deal with the fallout.”
“Worse option,” Sienna said. “That journal will destroy what’s left of my reputation.”
“Option three: find whoever has it and take it back by force.”
“Illegal option,” Lucas pointed out.
“But effective,” Bianca countered. “Does anyone have any actual ideas that aren’t terrible?”
Sienna’s phone buzzed. Another message, another photo.
This time, it was a picture of a page she remembered writing—weeks ago, right after the engagement party:
Lucas asked me today if I was happy. I said yes because that’s what you’re supposed to say to your fiancé. But the truth is, I don’t know what happy feels like anymore. I know what safe feels like. I know what convenient feels like. But happy?
I think I was happy for about six hours—from midnight to sunrise on that terrible, wonderful night with Damon. Everything after that has just been damage control.
Below it: Page 47 is my favorite. Your favorite too, probably. See you tomorrow, Sienna.
“Page 47,” Lucas said. “They keep mentioning it. What’s on page 47?”
Sienna’s face went white. Because she knew exactly what was on page 47.
She’d written it three weeks ago, in a moment of brutal honesty she’d immediately regretted.
“Sienna?” Damon’s hand on her shoulder. “What’s on page 47?”
“The truth,” she whispered. “About all of you. About what I really feel, what I really want. Everything I’ve been too afraid to say out loud.”
“And?” Lucas pressed.
“And it’s going to destroy everything we’ve been trying to build.”
A photo arrived of a page she’d been writing recently, from an unknown number:
Sometimes I look at Lucas and feel nothing but guilt. Then I look at Damon and feel everything—love, fear, hope, terror. How do you choose between someone who deserves better and someone who makes you better?
You don’t. You just keep surviving, keep lying to yourself, and hope that eventually, the right answer becomes obvious.
It hasn’t yet.
The room was silent as everyone processed her words—raw, honest, devastating.
“Well,” Lucas said finally, his voice carefully neutral. “At least you’re consistent.”
A photo of a page arrived from an unknown number, and Sienna’s stomach dropped.
Because this time, it wasn’t just a preview.
It was page 47.
Posted on every major gossip site, complete with annotations and commentary.
And there, in her own handwriting, the truth she’d been too afraid to face:
I’m in love with Damon Cross. I have been since the beginning. And choosing Lucas was never about love—it was about being too much of a coward to admit what I really wanted.
The world read her secret before Lucas did.
But seeing his face as he read it on his phone—that was worse than any tabloid headline could ever be.
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