Chapter 4 - The Weather Girl's Forecast
The day of the meeting, I dressed in the same colors I wore on air—electric blues, sharp whites. I looked like a woman who was ready to deliver a storm.
I didn't go to the news station. I went to the live broadcast studio, but I had bypassed the HR department and gone straight to the executive producer, a woman named Sarah who was as tired of the Harlan influence as I was.
"I’m ready," I said.
"If you go on air with this, you know you’ll never work in this market again," Sarah said.
"I don’t want to work in this market," I replied. "I want to report the truth for once."
The studio was cold. As the lights hit me, I felt a familiar surge of adrenaline. It was the same feeling I got when I tracked a hurricane, but this time, the hurricane was my own family.
"Good evening," I said, my voice steady, looking directly into the camera. "Before we get to the local forecast, I have a personal announcement. Tonight, I am reporting on a system of extreme pressure that has been building in my own home for nearly three decades."
The producer’s hands were shaking as she signaled for the clips to roll. The footage wasn't the staged interviews my mother had provided. It was raw—the audio of the 'get rid of it' command, the bank statements detailing the IVF corruption, the medical records showing how Elena had tried to force-feed me medication to 'stabilize' my emotions during my pregnancy.
The phone lines at the station lit up. The social media world exploded.
In the middle of the broadcast, my mother’s face appeared on a rival channel. She was weeping, trying to speak, but the comments below her feed were scrolling too fast for her to keep up with. The public had turned. The 'Golden Girl' narrative had been shattered by the raw, unedited footage of a mother attacking her own pregnant daughter.
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I walked off the set as the credits rolled. Luke was waiting in the wings. He didn't say a word; he just held me as the reality of what I had done sank in.
I had destroyed the Harlan legacy in twenty minutes.
