Chapter 53: Toxic Plan

A dark, ruthless grin spread across my face as the full strategy clicked into place.

"Let them take them down," I said, leaning back against the marble island. "In fact, let’s count on it."

Ruby blinked, looking at me with a mix of surprise and growing realization. "Wait... you want them to keep striking the videos?"

"Think about it," I explained, gesturing toward her phone. "If a random user posts a cover of a pop song, nobody cares if it gets muted. But if a brand-new, anonymous singer drops a cover that blows Hailey’s vocal performance out of the water, and it gets manually scrubbed within hours every single time? People aren’t stupid. They’re going to start asking questions."

The strategy was simple, toxic, and brilliant.

We had a entire vault of tracks that Ruby had ghost-written—songs that Hailey’s team had butchered with heavy autotune and lazy production. If we systematically released raw, soul-stirring acoustic versions of every single hit in Hailey’s catalog, Travis’s legal department would be forced to play endless whack-a-mole.

"The algorithm loves controversy," I continued, my voice steady and calculating. "Every manual takedown is just fuel on the fire. Her core listeners will notice. The music commentary channels will notice. People are going to start asking why Hailey Sterling’s label is so deathly terrified of a girl with a acoustic guitar. The curiosity will turn into a full-blown internet investigation."

Ruby’s eyes widened as the genius of the trap sank in. She wasn’t just defending herself anymore—we were turning Travis’s own corporate aggression into the ultimate viral campaign.

"By the time they realize they’re walking right into a trap," Ruby whispered, a sharp, confident smile finally breaking through her hesitation, "everyone will know those songs were mine to begin with."

"Exactly," I said, lifting my champagne glass once more. "We don’t need to fight their legal team in court yet. We let the internet do the heavy lifting. Get your guitar ready, Ruby. We drop the next one tonight."

"Tonight?" Ruby gasped, her eyes going wide as she looked from me to the clock on the wall. "Wait, right now? Shouldn’t we wait for things to settle down or talk to Joejay first?"

"We aren’t stopping at all," I replied, standing up straight with absolute authority. "If we pause now, we lose the spark. Full momentum, Ruby. We hit them while they think they’ve already won."

She stared at me for a split second, taking in my total lack of hesitation, before a defiant spark ignited in her eyes. The fear was completely gone, replaced by the thrilling rush of the game.

"Okay," she said, nodding sharply. "Sure. Let’s do it."

She marched straight over to her guitar case, unzipping it and pulling the acoustic instrument back into her arms. She sat back on the edge of the sofa, running her fingers over the fretboard to tune the strings with absolute focus, her posture entirely transformed from the timid girl who had walked into the estate days ago.

"Which one are we doing?" she asked, looking up at me as she adjusted her grip.

"The ballad," I said, leaning against the counter and pulling up the camera on my phone. "The one Hailey used as her secondary single last month. The one she tried to sing live and lip-synced through half of it."

Ruby let out a quiet, wicked laugh. "Oh, I know that one by heart. I wrote the bridge in my old bedroom while crying my eyes out."

"Perfect," I said, stepping into position and lining up the frame. "No filters, no warmups. Just raw emotion. I’m hitting record in three... two... one."

Ruby drew in a deep, steady breath, closed her eyes for a split second, and struck the opening chord.

The second clip went live, dropping directly onto her freshly made profile with no caption other than a simple, cryptic title: "Part 2."

We set the phone down on the glass table between us and waited.

For the first ten minutes, the analytics tick was slow—a few dozen views, a trickle of likes from the original twelve hundred followers who had hit notifications. But then the algorithm caught the exact same wave as before, picking up on the acoustic guitar resonance and the undeniable power of her voice.

The numbers didn’t just climb; they skyrocketed.

Within an hour, the view counter broke fifty thousand. The comment section exploded into pure chaos:

"WAIT IS THIS THE SAME GIRL FROM THIS MORNING?!"

"Why was her last video muted?! She literally sings this better than Hailey Sterling!"

"No way AMG is nuking her clips. Her voice is insane, who IS she?!"

"She’s re-doing Hailey’s whole album and completely washing her "

Ruby leaned over the table, her face illuminated by the bright blue glow of the screen, watching the follower counter spin past 5,000... then 10,000... then 25,000. Her hands were shaking, but this time, it wasn’t from fear or anxiety—it was pure, electric adrenaline.

"It’s working," she whispered, looking up at me, a dangerous, thrilling smile spreading across her lips. "They’re already asking why the first one got deleted. People are downloading this one before it gets taken down!"

"Let them watch," I said, leaning back with a cold, triumphant smirk. "Travis and his lawyers are about to realize they’re playing a game of whack-a-mole they can’t possibly win."

he fact that the second video stayed up through the night told me everything I needed to know about how Travis’s team operated.

They thought they had won. After manually wiping the first clip, Travis’s legal department likely clinked their glasses, assumed they had scared a timid maid back into the dark, and clocked out for the evening. They had no idea we were running a relentless, round-the-clock offensive, nor did they expect us to drop a second bomb before the ink on their first legal notice was even dry.

All through the night, while Travis slept and Hailey celebrated her temporary victory, Ruby’s second cover racked up hundreds of thousands of views, accumulating tens of thousands of new followers and spreading across secondary re-upload channels.

It wasn’t until late the next morning that the inevitable finally happened.

Ruby walked into the kitchen, holding her phone out to me with a calm, knowing look rather than panic. I looked down at the screen:

[ Content Removed / Audio Muted ]

"Took them long enough," Ruby said, a quiet, sharp laugh escaping her lips.