How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 46
Cross released the photograph before police cleared the rehabilitation center. By the time Harper confirmed that Mark and Chris were alive, campus accounts had already paired the kiss with headlines accusing her of manipulating her father’s business partner.
The story required no evidence beyond a private moment taken out of context. Comments reduced Harper to a reckless student and Chris to a predator, while strangers debated which of them had exploited the other.
Chris wanted his attorneys to remove every post. Harper knew deletion would make the image look more shameful and allow Cross to replace facts with rumor.
“We tell the truth,” she said. “Not every detail of the case, but enough that nobody else gets to define what happened.”
Mark arrived under medical supervision, bruised from the chapel explosion. The photograph hurt him, yet he understood Cross’s strategy. Public anger could separate Harper from the people protecting her.
“If I condemn you both, he wins,” Mark admitted. “If I support you, the board will say I approved the relationship to hide financial crimes.”
Harper refused to make the decision about the board. “Say what is true as my father. Let the company handle itself.”
Maria arranged a live campus interview before edited clips could dominate the story. Christina agreed to appear and disclose that her father’s network had used student gossip to intimidate Harper.
Chris offered to stay away from the interview. Harper asked him to sit beside her instead.
Under the studio lights, the host asked whether Chris used his power over a vulnerable student. Harper answered without rehearsed language. He had crossed boundaries when he arrived, she said, and she had confronted him until he changed.
“He did not make my choices for me,” she continued. “The people attacking us are angry because I learned to make them myself.”
Chris acknowledged the age difference, his friendship with Mark, and the reasons for public concern. He did not romanticize the imbalance or hide behind good intentions.
Mark joined remotely. After a long pause, he confirmed that Harper had never been involved in his business decisions and that Chris had repeatedly placed her safety above his own interests.
The interview did not silence every critic, but it broke Cross’s version of the story. Viewers could disagree with the relationship without accepting a manufactured crime.
As the broadcast ended, Maria received a message from Cross using a university server. He congratulated Harper for surviving the scandal and invited her to finish the conversation where Caroline began it.
The attached image showed Caroline’s original foundation office, preserved as part of an unused campus building. Cross stood beside her old desk holding a detonator.
Chris recognized the trap. Harper recognized something else: the clock behind Cross displayed a time twelve minutes behind the current hour.
The image was prerecorded. Cross wanted them racing toward an empty building while he escaped elsewhere.
Christina examined the detonator and identified the receiver used at her family’s private airfield. Cross was preparing to leave the country on Sebastian’s plane.
Harper looked at Chris. “He expects us to chase my mother’s ghost.” She closed the image. “Let’s chase the living man instead.”