The morning Logan Designs opened its doors to the biggest launch in its history, Los Angeles didn’t feel like a city celebrating fashion.
It felt like a city holding its breath.
Outside the glass façade of the House of Logan headquarters, paparazzi were already packed three rows deep. Cameras clicked in uneven bursts, flashes stuttering against the polished exterior like artificial lightning. Inside, the atmosphere was supposed to be triumph.
Instead, it turned into something else entirely.
Silence broke first in the design corridor.
Then came the shouting.
Then the running.
Then the flashing red and blue lights that no luxury brand ever wants to see reflected in its marble floors.
By the time security locked down the building, Logan Designs was no longer a fashion house.
It was a crime scene.
And at the center of it all… was a door that should have stayed closed.
Deek Sharp’s private design studio.
The first officer who entered stopped before he even stepped fully inside.
Because the room didn’t look like an office anymore.
It looked like something had happened here that refused to be contained by explanation.
Sketchboards had been ripped from the walls and torn across the floor like discarded skin. Fabric samples were scattered in chaotic patterns, some soaked slightly darker at the edges. A glass drafting table lay overturned, its surface fractured into a spiderweb of cracks.
And in the middle of it all, beneath the cold, clinical light of the ceiling fixture—
Remy Price was lying still.
Too still.
No one spoke at first. Not because they didn’t know what to say, but because the body itself seemed to interrupt language. Even the air felt wrong, compressed, like the room was refusing to accept what had happened inside it.
A detective stepped forward slowly, crouching near the body.
One look was enough.
“This is a homicide,” he said quietly.
And just like that, everything changed.
Within minutes, the building was sealed.
Yellow tape stretched across the entrance of Logan Designs like a scar being stitched into place. Employees were pulled into conference rooms, separated, questioned, re-questioned. The launch event that was supposed to define a new era for the brand was erased in real time.
Phones vibrated endlessly.
News broke before the police even finished their preliminary sweep.
“BODY FOUND INSIDE LOGAN DESIGNS HEADQUARTERS.”
“FASHION EMPIRE TIED TO POSSIBLE MURDER SCANDAL.”
And at the center of every headline was one name:
Deek Sharp.
Deek didn’t understand the moment it shifted.
One second, he was reviewing final sketches for a luxury editorial showcase.
The next, two officers were standing in his doorway.
Not asking.
Not requesting.
Directing.
“Step away from the table, sir.”
He froze.
“What’s going on?”
“You need to come with us.”
That sentence has a strange effect when it arrives without context. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a mistake in wording. A misunderstanding that will be corrected if you simply wait long enough.
But no correction came.
Just handcuffs.
Just silence.
Just the slow collapse of everything he had built.
Inside the main conference room, Katie Logan stood frozen behind a glass wall as she watched the chaos unfold.
Bill Spencer arrived twenty minutes later, already on the phone, already issuing orders, already trying to control something that refused to be controlled.
“This is contained,” he said sharply. “You understand me? Contained.”
But his voice didn’t match his eyes.
Because nothing about this was contained.
Not anymore.
Not with a body in Deek Sharp’s studio.
Not with cameras already outside.
Not with a dead man tied to every rumor the fashion world loved to destroy people with.
Katie finally turned away from the window.
“This isn’t just a legal issue,” she said quietly.
Bill lowered his phone. “No. It’s worse.”
It was the first time he sounded uncertain.
Because Bill Spencer understood leverage.
But he also understood collapse.
And this… was leaning dangerously toward collapse.
Deek was brought into questioning within the hour.
The room was too bright.
Too white.
Too clean for something that felt so deeply contaminated.
Detective Reynolds placed a folder on the table between them.
“Remy Price,” he said. “You knew him.”
Deek didn’t hesitate.
“Yes. But we weren’t close.”
Reynolds flipped a page.
“Witnesses say you had multiple conflicts in the past week.”
“That doesn’t make me his killer.”
“No,” Reynolds agreed. “But it puts you in the room where he died.”
Deek leaned forward slightly, frustration breaking through exhaustion.
“That room is mine. I was there for less than ten minutes this morning. And when I left, he wasn’t there.”
A pause.
“That’s not what the evidence suggests,” Reynolds said.
And that was the moment Deek felt it.
Not fear.
Not panic.
Something colder.
Realization.
He wasn’t being questioned to find truth.
He was being positioned inside a story already written.
Back at Logan Designs, Katie was moving faster now.
Too fast.
Because she understood something the police hadn’t fully processed yet.
If Deek fell, the entire creative foundation of their new brand collapsed with him.
But Bill wasn’t thinking about Deek anymore.
He was thinking about damage control.
“Get ahead of this,” he said into his phone. “We own the narrative before the narrative owns us.”
Katie turned sharply. “Bill, someone is dead.”
“And that’s exactly why we control the story,” he replied.
There was no emotion in it.
Just survival logic.
But even Bill could feel it slipping.
Because you cannot PR your way out of a murder investigation.
Not cleanly.
Not completely.
Not when the body is already inside your building.
What no one noticed at first was that Remy Price’s name carried weight beyond Logan Designs.
It carried history.
And that history began to surface almost immediately.
Detectives digging into his past found patterns that didn’t align with a simple workplace conflict.
There were restraining orders that had been quietly withdrawn.
Messages that had been deleted but partially recovered.
Connections to individuals within both Forrester Creations and smaller, unstable fashion circles.
And one name kept appearing in fragmented records:
Electra Forrester.
Electra was brought in for questioning by afternoon.
She didn’t look like someone accused of anything.
But innocence and suspicion often share the same expression until pressure reveals which one breaks first.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said immediately.
No hesitation.
No drama.
Just clarity.
Detective Reynolds watched her carefully.
“Did you have a relationship with Remy Price?”
A pause.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t what you think.”
“Then explain it.”
And as she did, a darker picture formed.
Obsession.
Control.
Emotional escalation.
Fear disguised as affection.
Remy Price wasn’t just a victim in a workplace dispute.
He was a man who had crossed boundaries before.
More than once.
Which meant the question of who killed him became significantly more complicated.
And significantly more dangerous.
By evening, the case had expanded beyond Logan Designs entirely.
Forrester Creations was now officially within the perimeter of suspicion.
Not as suspects.
Not yet.
But as connected entities.
And in a war between fashion empires, connection is often enough to ignite destruction.
Brooke Logan arrived at Katie’s office unannounced.
“This is what happens when you try to build something outside control,” she said sharply.
Katie didn’t look up from the files. “Someone died, Brooke.”
“And now your entire company is under investigation.”
Katie finally raised her eyes.
“So is yours, if we’re being honest.”
That stopped her.
Because it was true.
Steffy Forrester, upon hearing the news, had already begun positioning statements to protect Forrester’s reputation.
Ridge had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
And silence, in families like theirs, usually meant calculation.
Deek, meanwhile, sat in a holding room that felt increasingly smaller with every passing minute.
He replayed the morning in his mind.
Every detail.
Every movement.
Every second.
And then something didn’t align.
He remembered leaving his studio.
Locking the door.
Walking away.
But he did not remember seeing Remy enter.
In fact, he was certain of it now.
Remy had not been there when he left.
Which meant—
He wasn’t killed in that room.
He was placed there.
The realization hit him so sharply he stood up abruptly, earning an immediate warning from the guard outside.
“Sit down.”
Deek shook his head slowly.
“No… no, this isn’t right.”
But by the time he spoke, no one was listening.
Because outside the interrogation room, the machine had already started turning.
And once a machine like this starts turning, it rarely stops for truth.
Only for conclusion.
That night, a breakthrough came.
Not from witness testimony.
Not from interrogation.
From the building itself.
Security logs.
Or what remained of them.
A partial system override had been detected during the estimated time of death.
Not external hacking.
Internal access.
Authorized credentials.
Katie Logan’s system signature.
The room went cold when the report was read aloud.
“That’s impossible,” she said immediately.
But impossibility is not a defense in investigations.
Only evidence is.
Bill looked at her slowly.
“Was anyone else using your credentials?”
Katie shook her head.
“No.”
But her voice was no longer as certain.
Because she understood what this meant.
Someone inside Logan Designs had not just witnessed a murder investigation.
They may have been involved in its construction.
And somewhere in the city, unseen, unanswered, a truth began to form its outline.
Remy Price had not simply walked into Deek Sharp’s studio and died in a fit of conflict.
He had been moved.
Positioned.
Arranged.
Like a piece in a design no one fully understood yet.
A design meant to destroy reputations, collapse alliances, and ignite war between families already standing at the edge of ruin.
By midnight, Deek was no longer just a suspect.
He was a symbol.
Of instability.
Of scandal.
Of everything Logan Designs was now fighting to survive.
But in the quiet spaces between headlines and handcuffs, one fact remained unresolved.
If Deek didn’t kill Remy…
Then someone else did.
And they were still out there.
Watching the chaos unfold exactly as planned.
Because in Los Angeles, in the world of fashion empires and family wars, murder is rarely just an act of violence.
Sometimes, it is the most effective form of design.
And the final draft had not yet been revealed.
