Chapter 54: Account Number Two

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

"They were sleeping," I chuckled, taking a sip of my morning coffee. "They thought one warning shot would make you fold. But look at your profile numbers before you get disappointed."

Despite the video being scrubbed, her profile was standing strong at over 45,000 followers. The comment sections on her remaining blank posts were overflowing with angry fans, internet sleuths, and music commentators demanding to know why Hailey Sterling’s team was systematically scrub-deleting a ghost account.

The trap had sprung. The internet was officially curious.

---

Inside the gilded master suite of her Bel-Air mansion, Hailey was systematically tearing her room apart.

A heavy crystal vase shattered against the wall, sending shards and water cascading over a pristine velvet armchair. Luxury perfume bottles, designer shoes, and custom stage outfits were hurled across the marble floor in a blind, hysterical frenzy.

"She’s doing it on purpose!" Hailey screamed at her empty reflection, her voice raw from shouting. "The little parasite is doing this on purpose!"

She wasn’t stupid. Looking at the second video before it was taken down—and seeing the tens of thousands of comments questioning her live vocals, dissecting her tracks, and praising Ruby—Hailey realized the exact game being played. Ruby wasn’t just posting covers; she was running a targeted campaign to humiliate her, stripping away the illusion of her talent piece by piece.

Her father’s legal team was taking hours to respond to each video, relying on official, slow-moving corporate copyright channels. But watching Ruby’s follower count surge past 45,000, Hailey knew that relying on slow legal notices was failing. The internet was waking up, and her pride was taking lethal hits every single minute.

Admitting that Ruby was the real talent was impossible. Apologizing was out of the question. Backing down meant letting a former servant destroy everything Hailey had built her delicate ego upon.

"You think you’re clever, Ruby?" Hailey hissed, wiping tears of pure malice from her flushed cheeks. "You think you can play the algorithm?"

Gripping her phone with trembling, rage-filled hands, she bypassed her father’s legal team entirely. She opened an encrypted messaging app and dialed a contact listed under a black-market social media broker—a high-end agency that managed bot farms, mass-reporting networks, and shadow-banning services for desperate influencers.

The call connected on the second ring.

"I need a target wiped," Hailey demanded, her tone dropping into a cold, ruthless whisper. "Not just one video—the entire account. I want thousands of automated accounts spam-reporting it for impersonation, copyright, TOS violations, whatever it takes. I want her profile shadow-banned and permanently banned by sunset."

"Mass-report campaigns at that scale aren’t cheap, Miss Sterling," the distorted voice on the other end replied smoothly. "A targeted burn package costs around twenty grand."

"I’ll send you fifty thousand right now," Hailey snapped, her eyes narrowing into slits as she transferred the wire directly from her personal account without a second thought. "Just burn her account to the ground. Erase her."

---

I was floating lazily in the infinity pool, letting the cool water wash away the tension as the midday sun reflected off the surface.

Ruby was lounging on the pool deck nearby, wearing a dark bikini that contrasted sharply with her fair skin, her legs crossed over the sunbed. She had been quietly scrolling through her phone, but the relaxed atmosphere shattered the moment her breathing hitched.

"What?" she muttered under her breath, her knuckles turning white around the casing. "No... no, no, no!"

I paused my gentle backstroke, treading water near the edge of the pool. "What happened?"

"My account... it’s gone!" Ruby said, sitting up fast, her face flushed with pure frustration. "Not just the videos, the entire profile! It says ’Account Suspended for Multiple Violation Reports.’ Over forty-five thousand followers, just completely wiped out!"

I rested my elbows on the tiled edge of the pool, wiping the water from my eyes with a calm, unbothered smirk. I had expected something like this. A manual copyright strike was corporate legal work, but nuking a whole profile within an hour was the desperate, sloppy work of a paid bot farm. Hailey had taken the bait and panicked.

"Good," I said smoothly, flicking a spray of water off my fingers.

Ruby blinked down at me in total disbelief. "Good?! They just deleted weeks of momentum in five seconds!"

"They didn’t delete momentum, Ruby. They just spent a fortune to prove how terrified they are," I replied, pulling myself out of the water and grabbing a towel from the lounge chair. "A copyright strike is legal. A mass-report ban? That’s pure personal panic. Hailey paid someone to scrub you because your voice is actively threatening her entire existence."

Ruby looked from her dead screen to me, the anger in her eyes slowly shifting into a sharp, realization-filled glare.

"So we aren’t backing down?" she asked, her voice steadying.

"Back down?" I wrapped the towel around my waist and looked her dead in the eye with a cold grin. "We’re just getting started. Go grab another outfit and your guitar. We’re opening Account Number Two."

While Ruby headed inside to open the new account and set up her guitar, I swam over to the shallow edge of the pool, climbed the steps, and grabbed my phone off the lounge table.

Something had been nagging at the back of my brain. Strategic takedowns were one thing, but paying fifty grand for a black-market bot burn within hours of a simple acoustic video going viral? That level of pure, unadulterated desperation didn’t just come from hurt pride—it came from a ticking clock.

I wiped the water off my screen and quickly pulled up Apex Music Group’s press releases and industry schedule.

My eyes narrowed as I scanned the headlines, and then a slow, wicked grin spread across my face.

Hailey Sterling’s Sophomore Album Dropping Worldwide This Friday.

"Of course," I muttered to myself, leaning back against the sunbed as the entire board cleared up.