Eleanor swiped through Tristan Vance's file on her iPad.

The screen was covered in red notes detailing his emotional triggers and psychological weak points.

She picked up her black coffee and took a sip. The bitter liquid burned her tongue, helping her snap into the "soulmate" persona Tristan paid for.

The bell above the door chimed again.

A tall figure hunched his shoulders and moved quickly into the shop.

He wore a massive black hoodie. A baseball cap was pulled low over his sunglasses. His entire body screamed, Don't look at me.

Eleanor didn't even need to look up. His terrible attempt at a disguise gave him away instantly. It was Tristan, her highest-paying active client.

Tristan walked straight to her corner booth. He collapsed onto the leather bench across from her and let out a heavy, rattling sigh.

He ripped off his sunglasses. His blue eyes-the ones that covered magazines worldwide-were completely bloodshot. He looked exhausted to his bones.

Eleanor immediately closed his file. She opened the PDF of his upcoming HBO limited series script.

She didn't act overly excited to see him. She slid a napkin across the table.

"Paparazzi again?" she asked, her voice soft and steady.

Tristan aggressively ran his hands through his hair. He complained that his agent, Brenda, was forcing him to play this twisted, dark character.

He said his chest felt tight. He couldn't find the serial killer's psychological motive. He was terrified he was going to ruin his career.

Eleanor heard the deep self-doubt in his voice. This was exactly what she was hired for.

She didn't offer empty comfort. She scrolled to page 42 of the script. She pointed at a monologue.

She lowered her voice. She mimicked the exact sick, suppressed tone the character needed. The air around their table instantly felt heavier.

Tristan froze. The panic in his eyes vanished. He stared at her mouth, completely captivated.

Eleanor broke down the character's psychology. She explained that it wasn't pure evil, but a desperate, suffocating need for control born from a lack of love.

Her words sliced through his confusion like a scalpel. She hit the exact spot in his soul that craved validation.

Tristan's defensive posture melted. He leaned across the table. He pressed his palms flat against the wood. His eyes grew feverish and dependent.

"You're the only one who actually gets me," he breathed out. "Those Hollywood directors are blind."

Eleanor mentally calculated the bonus percentage this emotional breakthrough would earn her. On the outside, she gave him a warm, forgiving smile.

She reached out and lightly tapped the back of his hand. It was a split-second touch, but it visibly calmed his nerves.

Tristan flipped his hand over, trying to grab her fingers.

Eleanor smoothly pulled her hand back to grab her coffee cup. She dodged the boundary violation effortlessly.

A flash of disappointment crossed Tristan's face. But he quickly rationalized it. He thought she was just protecting the purity of their soul connection.

He leaned in closer. He demanded they go back to his SoHo apartment right now to rehearse. He felt the inspiration hitting him.

Eleanor checked her watch. This counted as overtime. She nodded.

They both started to stand up.

Suddenly, Eleanor looked out the front window.

A man in a tailored suit was walking past the glass. It was one of the Wall Street liquidators who had dismantled the Love Foundation. He knew what Eleanor really looked like.

Eleanor's heart slammed against her ribs. Her blood ran cold. If he saw her here, her entire hidden identity would be exposed.

She had to block his line of sight.

Without a second thought, she violently swept her hand across the table, intentionally knocking her hot coffee straight into Tristan's lap.

Tristan let out a shocked yelp, instinctively jumping up and leaning over the table as the dark liquid soaked his jeans. In the exact same fluid motion, Eleanor dropped out of her seat and ducked under the table, supposedly to grab napkins, but perfectly using the wooden partition and Tristan's standing body to completely shield herself from the window.

From the outside, Tristan's panicked, hunched posture and her sudden disappearance under the table created a chaotic, confusing scene that completely obscured her face.

Tristan stopped breathing.

The sudden, scalding heat on his jeans and the shock of Eleanor diving under the table hit him like a physical blow. He stood frozen, hunched over, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. His brain completely short-circuited at her uncharacteristic clumsiness.

Under the table, Eleanor kept her peripheral vision locked on the window through the gap in the chairs. She watched the liquidator's back until he disappeared around the street corner.

Slowly, she grabbed a handful of napkins and stood back up, her face a mask of perfect composure.

She stepped back into her safe zone and began dabbing at the spilled coffee on the wood. She smoothed down her hair.

"There was a massive spider on your cup," she said. Her voice was completely flat, offering a seamless lie for her sudden panic.

Tristan stood frozen. He stared at her pale cheeks. There was no blush. But deep inside him, a violent craving ignited.

He looked at this eternally calm woman, and his mind was dragged back to eight months ago. The darkest night of his life.

It was a rundown indie theater in Los Angeles. They were screening his failed arthouse movie.

The theater was empty except for a few sleeping bodies. The screen flashed with his forced, terrible acting.

Tristan had been sitting in the back row, wearing a mask and a hat. He felt like a ghost. He was drowning in self-hatred.

He watched himself cry on screen. His stomach churned with shame. He stood up so fast he kicked over his popcorn bucket. He bolted for the exit.

Outside, in the alleyway behind the theater, Tristan leaned against a brick wall covered in graffiti. He ripped off his mask. He gasped for air, his eyes burning red.

He clenched his right fist. He slammed it into the rough bricks.

His knuckles split open. Blood dripped down his fingers, but he couldn't feel the pain.

He pulled his arm back to punch the wall again.

A thin, strong hand shot out from the shadows. It grabbed his wrist perfectly.

Tristan snapped his head around. A woman in a trench coat was standing there. Her eyes were ice cold.

Eleanor didn't act like a screaming fan. She pulled a sterile wet wipe from her pocket and handed it to him.

"Self-harm won't fix the emotional disconnect in your third act," she said. Her voice had zero inflection.

Tristan bristled like a cornered animal. He yelled at her, asking what the hell she knew about acting.

Eleanor didn't flinch. She clinically dissected his performance. She listed three fatal physical mistakes he made in that scene.

She told him he cared too much about the camera angles and completely missed the character's core tragedy. Every word drew blood.

Tristan's rage evaporated. A violent shiver ran down his spine. He felt completely, terrifyingly seen.

He was used to Hollywood kissing his ass or tearing him down. He had never heard someone analyze his soul so coldly.

Eleanor saw his shoulders drop. She pulled a black business card from her coat and slid it between his bloody fingers.

She introduced herself as a private emotional stabilization consultant. She fixed broken actors.

Tristan stared at the card. He let out a bitter laugh. "Are you just a high-end scammer?"

"If you want to survive this industry, hiring me is the cheapest investment you'll ever make," she replied.

She didn't wait for an answer. She turned and walked away into the Los Angeles night.

Tristan blinked, snapping back to the present. He looked at Eleanor standing in the Brooklyn cafe.

His eyes were darker now. He was absolutely convinced that the cold woman in the alley had just panicked and spilled the coffee because her strict professional facade was cracking under the intense emotional weight of their connection.

He suddenly reached out and grabbed her wrist. He didn't care that she looked shocked. He pulled her toward the door.

"We're going to my apartment right now," he growled. "I'm going to show you how much I've changed."

The Porsche's engine roared as it pulled into the underground garage, then cut off into heavy silence.

Tristan kept his grip on Eleanor's wrist. He pulled her into his private elevator.

The metal doors slid open to his industrial SoHo penthouse. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in harsh light. Scripts were scattered everywhere across the hardwood floor.

Eleanor smoothly twisted her wrist, breaking his grip. She walked to the bar and poured two glasses of ice water to cool the suffocating tension in the room.

Tristan ripped off his hoodie and threw it on the couch. He took the water and downed it in three gulps. His Adam's apple bobbed. His eyes never left her face.

He dug through the mess on the coffee table and found the HBO script. He flipped to the climax of episode three-the captivity standoff.

Eleanor took the script. She read the female lead's character breakdown: New York old money, arrogant, controlling, slightly paranoid.

Her finger stopped on the page. This character was an exact replica of Julian's first love, Giselle.

She looked at the cover. The name printed next to the female lead was Giselle Dawson. It wasn't a coincidence. This indie script was notoriously written by one of Giselle's bitter ex-friends, directly capitalizing on the real Giselle Dawson's scandalous socialite life.

Eleanor laughed internally. The irony was sickening. She had just finished being Giselle's stand-in for Julian, and now she was rehearsing lines explicitly modeled after the real Giselle.

Her face remained blank. She instantly slipped into the arrogant, neurotic persona she had perfected over the last two years.

The rehearsal started. Tristan snapped into the serial killer's dark mindset. He backed Eleanor toward the massive windows.

Eleanor tilted her chin up. Her eyes dripped with old-money disgust. She channeled Giselle's soul perfectly.

Tristan fed off her intense pressure. He spat his lines with desperate madness.

The energy in the massive living room felt electric. Their words clashed like knives.

The scene demanded that the male lead use violence to break the woman. Tristan grabbed a crystal whiskey glass from the bar.

He hurled it at the floor near Eleanor's feet, trying to shatter her nerves with the noise.

But Tristan was too deep in the scene. His angle was slightly off.

The heavy crystal exploded against the hardwood. A sharp shard bounced up and sliced straight across Eleanor's exposed right forearm.

Blood instantly welled up. It soaked into the cuff of her white silk shirt. The bright red stain looked violent against the cold industrial room.

Tristan snapped out of character. He saw the blood. All the color drained from his face.

He lunged toward her, his voice cracking as he yelled about calling an ambulance. His hands shook violently.

Eleanor's stomach plummeted.

She knew her body's terrifying secret. Rapid cellular regeneration.

If Tristan saw her deep wound stitch itself together in seconds, he would think she was a monster. Worse, it would attract the medical syndicate hunting her.

Before Tristan could touch her, Eleanor spun around. She turned her back to him and pressed her bleeding arm hard against her stomach.

She clenched her jaw. The skin under her silk sleeve began to itch violently. The cells were splitting and fusing at a terrifying speed. It burned like acid being poured directly into her veins.

Tristan grabbed her shoulders from behind. He was practically crying, begging her to let him see the cut, cursing himself for being an idiot.

Thirty agonizing seconds passed.

Eleanor felt the deep gash finally fuse shut, though the newly knitted skin remained raw, raised, and aggressively red, throbbing with a dull ache. The perfect healing would take at least another hour.

She took a slow, shaky breath. She didn't have to force her voice to sound weak; the intense metabolic drain of the rapid regeneration left her genuinely exhausted.

She slowly pushed his hands away. She turned around, using her left hand to tightly grip her bloody right sleeve, desperately hiding the unnatural, rapid scarring process from his view.

"I'm fine," she smiled weakly. "It's just a scratch."

She looked him dead in the eye. "Your explosion just now was perfect. Do not lose that feeling. Don't let this ruin the scene."