Chapter 1

The champagne glass felt cold in my hand, a stark contrast to the warmth spreading through the ballroom.

It was my engagement day.

Everything was perfect, just like a scene from a movie. My fiancé, Daniel Vance, stood beside me, his hand resting on the small of my back.

My mother, Dr. Evelyn Miller, a leading tech ethicist, was beaming from the front row. My father, David Miller, a giant in the cybersecurity world, gave me a proud, teary-eyed smile.

Our family firm, Miller Security, was at the top of its game, a respected name built on integrity.

Daniel raised his glass. "To my beautiful Chloe," he began.

Then the world shattered.

The massive screens behind us, meant to display a slideshow of our happy memories, flickered to life with something else entirely.

It was my face.

But it wasn't my body.

A deepfake video, slick and horrifyingly realistic, showed me in a series of graphic, compromising acts with a dozen different men. The audio was a twisted mix of moans and my own voice, stolen and manipulated, begging for more.

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the room.

The music died.

Whispers erupted, sharp and cruel. "Is that... Chloe Miller?" "Oh my god, I can't believe it."

Daniel snatched his hand away from me as if I'd burned him. His face was a mask of shock and disgust.

My mother rushed towards the stage, her professional composure intact despite the horror in her eyes. "This is a malicious attack! A deepfake! Someone shut it down!"

But before anyone could move, a new message flashed across the screens, overlaying the vile video.

DATA BREACH ALERT: MILLER SECURITY COMPROMISED. CLIENT DATA LEAKED BY DR. EVELYN MILLER.

A torrent of data-financial records, private emails, sensitive corporate secrets belonging to our clients-began streaming across the screens.

It was a death sentence for our company. And they were pinning it all on my mother.

"No," my mother whispered, her face draining of all color. The reporters in the room, initially here for a society wedding, swarmed her like sharks, their cameras flashing, their questions like blows.

"Dr. Miller, did you leak this data?"

"Is it true your company's ethics are a sham?"

"How could you do this to your clients?"

She was a renowned tech ethicist, and they had just branded her a hypocrite and a criminal in front of the entire world. Her life's work evaporated in a blaze of public shame.

I looked desperately for my father.

He was clutching his chest, his face a terrifying shade of gray. He saw my mother being mobbed, saw the ruin of everything he had built, saw the humiliation of his only daughter.

He collapsed.

A single, choked sound escaped his lips before he hit the floor.

People screamed. Paramedics pushed through the chaos, but it was too late. He died right there, on the floor of the ballroom, his heart giving out from the sheer shock and horror of it all.

Daniel' s father, the patriarch of the Vance family, strode over to me, his face cold as stone. He didn't even glance at my father's body.

"The engagement is off," he said, his voice loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "The Vance family will not be associated with this disgrace."

The Vances turned and walked out, leaving me standing alone on the stage, the deepfake video still playing on a hellish loop behind me.

In the span of ten minutes, I had lost everything.

My reputation. My mother's career. My father's life. My family's company. My future husband.

The video and the news of my family' s downfall went viral. We became a meme, a punchline. Dr. Evelyn Miller, the fraudulent ethicist. Chloe Miller, the shameless whore whose scandal killed her own father.

I became a ghost in my own city, a social pariah whispered about in cafes and office corridors. The shame was a physical weight, a shroud I couldn't cast off. I was alone, adrift in the wreckage of my life.