CHAPTER 91

The video was released at 6:47 p.m. on a Friday, the dead zone when corporate PR teams were already halfway to their weekend homes and the news cycle was hungry for fresh meat

It first appeared on an obscure gossip site, then spread like wildfire across Twitter, Instagram, and every group chat in town. By 7:30, it was the lead story on two local news channels.

At 8:00, Matteo Rossi had traced its origin to a server he immediately recognized: one of Gabriel Thorne's phantom companies,