The Promotional Link That Warned Me She Would Kill Titus...

By the time I reached Titus’s office, the building had emptied into the wet shine of the parking lot. The hallway lights were still on, but most of the doors were dark. I stood outside his office with my hand wrapped around the promotional link on my phone, watching the little blue circle turn and turn.

I almost left.

Then Titus opened the door from inside.

“You don’t have to come in,” he said.

“I know.”

He stepped aside without touching me. That had become his way of making room—not just in doorways, but in conversations. I walked in because I wanted to, though my stomach tightened as soon as I saw the desk.

He had printed everything.

The original promotional frame lay beside a copy of the later public post. Between them were pages of redirect logs, timestamps, and notes in Titus’s narrow handwriting. The office smelled like burnt coffee and printer toner. A desk lamp threw a warm circle over the papers while the windows reflected nothing but the room behind us.

“You heard from the reporter?” I asked.

“Not yet. They’re checking the files with someone who understands campaign tracking.” He pulled out the chair across from him. “No pressure to stay.”

I sat.

We started with the video. The first link had appeared beneath the static frame, the same call to action that had sent people toward the drama series. Titus wrote down the time it had first been shared, then the time the link changed destinations. The difference was less than an hour.

“Here,” I said.

He looked up.

I pointed to the public post. “The warning language was already there before anyone accused me of interfering with the campaign.”

The words were almost buried under the argument that followed. A sentence about going alone. A sentence about a trap. They had been presented as part of the drama’s promotion, vague enough for strangers to call them suspense.

But they had been aimed at me before the dispute became public.

Titus leaned back, his jaw tightening. “So the public fight didn’t create the threat.”

“No.” I kept my eyes on the paper. “It gave the threat a cleaner explanation.”

For several minutes, neither of us spoke. Rain ticked against the glass. Titus moved the pages into chronological order, careful not to disturb the original screenshots. I watched his hands instead of his face. He never reached across the desk without asking. Even now, with the evidence arranged between us like a warning, he waited.

“I should have told you sooner,” I said.

“You told me what you could.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

The answer hurt because it didn’t let me hide behind gratitude. I looked toward the window.

“There are parts of it I still can’t explain.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know why.”

“I don’t need to know tonight.”

His voice stayed even, but something underneath it had changed. Not suspicion. Patience with a limit.

He gathered the pages into one stack. “Sophia, if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

My throat closed.

He continued before I could mistake the offer for a punishment. “I mean it. I won’t stand here and make you prove that you trust me. If you need to do this alone, tell me, and I’ll go.”

The office seemed suddenly too quiet. I could hear the refrigerator unit clicking on somewhere down the hall.

I looked at the door. Leaving would have been easier to explain. I could tell myself I was protecting him, protecting the evidence, protecting the part of my past that still felt like it belonged only to me.

Instead, I said, “Don’t go.”

Titus nodded once. He didn’t smile. He didn’t turn the moment into something larger than I could bear.

“I’ll stay,” he said.

We returned to the timeline. The original video came first. Then the redirect that sent some viewers to the series page and others to a nearly identical page with different language. Then the public post, which quoted the warning without showing where it had begun. Titus marked each change in pencil.

At the bottom of the last page, I wrote: planned before reaction.

I stared at the words.

“We still don’t know who planned it,” Titus said.

“I know.”

“And we can’t prove every change came from the same person.”

“I know that too.”

He rested his forearms on the desk. “But someone expected you to respond.”

The thought settled between us. The trap had not been built after I spoke. My fear had not created it. Someone had prepared a path and waited for me to step onto it.

Titus reached for the coffee, found it cold, and made a face.

Despite myself, I laughed quietly.

His expression softened. “There. That’s the first honest reaction I’ve gotten from you all night.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“I won’t.”

We stayed until the rain thinned. He sat beside me rather than across the desk, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his sleeve without being trapped by it. When his hand rested on the table, palm up, I placed mine near it—not in his hand, not yet.

He left the space between us untouched.

That mattered more than contact would have.

The reporter still hadn’t verified the evidence. The planner remained unknown. The threat was still active, shaped into advertisements and public explanations.