Eve learned the cruelest rule of public life before she even brushed her teeth.
If you stayed silent, someone else would speak for you, and they wouldn’t be kind.
She woke to her phone vibrating like it was trying to crawl off the nightstand. The first buzz dragged her out of sleep. The second made her sit up. By the third, she was already reaching for it with a sick certainty in her chest, because nothing good ever arrived in floods.
The screen was a wall of notifications.
Tags. Mentions. Messages from numbers she didn’t recognise. Alerts from accounts she never followed. News push notifications stacked like knives.
Eve blinked hard, trying to clear the fog in her eyes, but the words stayed sharp.
RIGGED?
EVE TARGETS MATHEW
FAVOURITISM IN BEXLIN’S BIGGEST COOKING SHOW
Her throat
