Becky's fingers flew across the keyboard, the incriminating photos and documents laid out before her. She had promised Tessa she would wait for concrete evidence, but the temptation was too great. This was the story of a lifetime - one that could catapult her career to new heights.
With a few clicks, she published the exposé on her blog, the headline blaring: "Rose Shelley: Ageless Billionaire or Immortal Fiend?" The photographs, grainy but unmistakable, showed Rose's face frozen in time over decades. The leaked Shelley Tech files hinted at the company's sordid history of experimentation on vampires.
Becky hit send, unleashing the digital torrent. Within minutes, the story exploded across social media. Shares, retweets, and comments flooded in, each one compounding the maelstrom. The court of public opinion had rendered its verdict on Rose before she could mount a defense.
Tessa's phone rang incessantly, the caller ID flashing Becky's name. With a sigh, she answered, her tone laced with disappointment. "You couldn't wait, could you? Not even for the evidence we needed."
"I had enough," Becky retorted. "People deserve to know the truth about that monster."
As if on cue, Tessa's television flickered to life with breaking news coverage. Hordes of protestors had gathered outside Shelley Technologies' headquarters, their anger palpable. Chants of "Shameless Liar!" and "Undead Witch!" echoed through the streets.
Rose stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of her penthouse, her features etched with a grim resolve as she watched the chaos unfold. Graffiti marred the pristine walls, and a hail of rocks pelted the reinforced glass.
"They know," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.
Blake slipped an arm around her waist, his touch reassuring. "We'll get through this together."
"They have no proof," Blake tried to console her.
"They don't need one anymore. There's too much on ground to tie the strings together," Rose retorted.
In the days that followed, the scandal consumed every facet of their lives. The media descended like vultures, prying into every nook and cranny. Paparazzi trailed their every move, the flashes of cameras blinding them at every turn.
Self-professed medical examiners picking apart her depleted mineral deficiencies as "markers" of an ancient plasmoid organism feeding on the life essence of others.
At first, these stories seemed more humorous than harmful - urban legend fodder catnip for the tinfoil hat set to gobble up with wild abandon. Rose and her advisors shared more than a few chuckles whenever a new breathlessly-hyped "revelation" about her secret vampire identity surfaced across a shady website or social media feed.
But then the publications taking an interest grew larger...and larger still. What began as a few scrappy bloggers and YouTubers desperately seeking relevance through shock value morphed into seasoned investigative journalists putting their reputations on the line by entertaining increasingly plausible-seeming theories.
Rose watched in worsening dismay as respected, mainstream newsrooms began leaning into the speculation, either as click-bait sensationalism or shameless publicity stunts. Prominent newspapers published esoteric photo editorials juxtaposing her pallid features against infamous Countess Bathory allusions.
Primetime cable news pundits hosted rambling sermons postulating potential links between Rose's childhood traumas and the generational "Blood Curse of the Shelley Clan."
What had once been a fringe parlor game for loons on the internet's lunatic fringe was now metastasizing into an unstoppable viral zeitgeist with horrifyingly real consequences.
Those were precisely the kinds of uneasy thoughts gnawing incessantly at Rose's subconscious as she watched the report package come to a close.
The handsome yet supremely punchable face of Baxter Millington - dashing media personality and host of Late Night's most popular satire news program - leered out from the flat screen mounted on her office wall.
—-
"So there you have it, folks," he said in that infuriatingly smarmy inflection that set Rose's teeth on edge. "Just when you thought the Rose Shelley saga couldn't get any more scandalous, it seems our beleaguered tech titan may just be a Daughter of the Night, doomed to walk amongst us mere mortals until the end of days!"
A sickly fake-laugh overlaid with phony clapping and a poorly photoshopped "spooky" graphic of Rose's face over-craniumed onto an old Bram Stoker poster. Millington raked his hair back in a self-satisfied flourish.
"Coming up next, we'll be joined by a panel of experts to unpack and speculate on just what twisted and ghastly fate befell this poor, tortured soul. Demonology? Hemoglobin addiction? Or could the terrifying tales of the Shelley dynasty's origins be true, dating back to the depths of the ancient world? Stay tuned to find out!"