You’d worked too hard to be here.

Tripp van der Bilt’s office wasn’t just another internship—it was a stepping stone. Power hummed through the marble halls, phones rang nonstop, and every decision felt like it mattered. Tripp himself was exactly what the headlines promised: charming, confident, full of speeches about integrity and change.

At first, you admired him.

“Politics should be about doing the right thing,” he told you one late evening, loosening his tie as you organized files. “Not about who shouts the loudest.”

You believed him. You wanted to.

But then you started noticing the edits.

A statistic quietly removed from a draft. A donor’s name missing from a disclosure. A “misunderstanding” smoothed over before it reached the press.

Small things. Easy to ignore.

Until they weren’t.

One afternoon, you overheard Tripp on the phone, his voice low and sharp. “No, we’ll deny it. By the time they prove anything, it won’t matter.”

When he hung up, he turned—and saw you standing there.

For a moment, something unreadable crossed his face.

“How much did you hear?” he asked.

“Enough,” you replied carefully.

He sighed, rubbing his temple. “This isn’t as simple as you think.”

“It usually isn’t,” you said. “That’s what scares me.”

From that point on, the secrets seemed to find you. Emails copied to you by mistake. Meetings you weren’t supposed to sit in on. Each one chipped away at the version of Tripp you’d admired.

Still, when it was just the two of you, he let the mask slip.

“I don’t want to be like them,” he admitted one night, staring out at the city lights. “But if I don’t play their game, I lose.”

“And if you win like this?” you asked. “What do you become?”

That question lingered between you—heavy, dangerous.

Gossip Girl caught wind soon enough.

Spotted: Van der Bilt’s golden image looking a little tarnished. Wonder who’s holding the polish?

Tripp confronted you the next morning, tension crackling in the air.

“You wouldn’t do that,” he said quietly. “You know what this costs me.”