"Surprise, baby."

I pushed the apartment door open with my hip, still smiling.

The chocolate cake in my arms was from Ethan's favorite bakery on Melrose. Thirty candles stuck out of the frosting like tiny soldiers. I had wrapped my New York shoot two days early. I hadn't told my manager. I hadn't told my assistant. I hadn't even posted a photo from the airport.

Nobody knew Ava Morales, the actress whose face was on half the billboards on Sunset, was back in Los Angeles.

That was the whole point.

"Ethan?"

No answer. His keys sat in the dish by the door. His jacket hung over a barstool.

I kicked off my sneakers and padded down the hallway. The bedroom door was half-closed.

Then I heard it.

A woman's laugh. Low. Lazy. Familiar.

My feet stopped moving.

I knew that laugh. I had heard it at the Golden Globes, two tables over, when she told a reporter I "photographed older than I looked." I had heard it at a casting office in Burbank, right after she walked out with a role my agent swore was mine.

Sienna Blake.

My biggest rival in the industry. The woman who had spent three years trying to take everything I worked for.

"Stop," she giggled behind the door. "She's not back until Friday, right?"

"Friday," Ethan said. "Relax."

I shoved the door open.

Ethan stood by the dresser, shirtless, his belt hanging loose. And Sienna lay stretched across my bed. My sheets. My pillows. The cream silk robe I'd bought in Paris was tied around her waist.

The cake slipped out of my hands.

It hit the hardwood with a wet slap. Frosting splattered across my bare feet and up the white baseboards.

"What are you doing?"

My voice came out thin. Like it belonged to someone else.

Ethan's face went pale. His hands jerked toward his chest, like he could cover himself. For a few seconds, he looked like the man I loved. Scared. Caught.

Then something in his eyes shut off.

He straightened. He picked up a T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head, slow, like he had all the time in the world.

"Why are you home early?"

I stared at him.

Not *I'm sorry.* Not *Ava, it's not what it looks like.*

A question. Like I was the one who'd done something wrong.

"Why am I—" A laugh tore out of me. Ugly and sharp. "It's your birthday, Ethan. I flew across the country to surprise you."

Sienna sat up and fluffed her blond hair. She tugged the robe so it slid off one shoulder.

"Well," she said, smiling at the mess on the floor. "Looks like your surprise worked."

"Get out of my robe."

"This?" She pinched the silk between two fingers. "It's a little big on me, honestly. But it's soft."

My fists curled so tight my nails bit my palms. I turned back to Ethan.

"How long?"

He didn't answer.

"How long, Ethan?"

He leaned against the dresser and crossed his arms. His jaw worked once, twice.

"Since you found out anyway," he said, "I don't need to keep pretending."

The words landed like a slap.

"Pretending," I repeated.

"Eight months."

Eight months. Thanksgiving with my mom. Christmas in Aspen. The night he held me on the bathroom floor after I lost the Netflix lead and told me I was the most talented woman he'd ever met.

All of it. Eight months of it.

"You told me you loved me last Tuesday," I whispered. "On FaceTime. You told me you were counting the days."

"I was." He shrugged. "Just not for the reason you thought."

Sienna laughed again. This time it made my skin crawl.

"Oh, honey," she said. "You really don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

She swung her legs off the bed and stood. She stepped right over the smashed cake, careful not to get frosting on her painted toes.

"This isn't some little fling." She tilted her head. "Ethan and I have been planning something. For a while now."

My stomach dropped.

"Planning what?"

Ethan picked up his phone from the nightstand. He scrolled for a second, then turned the screen toward me.

It was a schedule. *Crimson Hour* premiere. Press junket. Red carpet. Next Thursday.

My movie. The one I'd fought for. The one Sienna had a supporting role in.

"Everyone's going to be there," Ethan said. "Every outlet. Every camera."

"So?"

"So that's when people find out who you really are." He said it calmly, like he was reading a grocery list. "The diva who steals roles. The one who screams at assistants. The one who throws tantrums on set."

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

"That's not me," I finally managed. "That's not true. None of that is true."

"Doesn't have to be true," Sienna said sweetly. "It just has to look true."

She reached past him, grabbed her own phone from the bed, and tapped the screen. A video played. Me, on set in Vancouver last spring, red-faced, yelling.

"That was a rehearsal," I said. "That was a *scene*. I was in character—"

"Without the script pages, who's going to know?" She swiped. A photo of me walking out of a director's office in tears. Swiped again. A screenshot of a text thread I had never seen in my life, with my name at the top.

*Tell Sienna's people if she takes that role, I'll make sure she never works again.*

"I never sent that."

"Your old number," Ethan said. "I still had access to your cloud. You never changed the password."

The room tilted.

He'd held my phone a thousand times. Ordered our takeout. Booked our flights. Read my messages over my shoulder while I laughed and told him he was nosy.

"Why?" My voice cracked down the middle. "What did I ever do to you?"

For the first time, Ethan looked almost bored.

"You got big, Ava," he said. "Everybody started calling me *Ava Morales's boyfriend.* Like I didn't have my own name." He tossed the phone onto the bed. "Sienna's agency is signing me. Producer credit on her next three films. She actually wants me to have something."

"I *gave* you everything."

"You gave me your leftovers."

I stared at him. The man I'd introduced to every producer I knew. The man whose rent I'd paid for two years while he "figured things out."

And I didn't cry.

That was the strangest part. I'd thought I would fall apart. Instead, a cold, flat calm spread through my chest.

"Okay," I said quietly.

Ethan blinked. Sienna's smile slipped a little.

I turned around. Frosting squished under my heel as I walked toward the hallway. My purse was still by the front door. My keys. My car.

I just had to get out of this room before the calm broke.

"Ava."

I didn't stop.

"Ava, wait." Ethan's voice followed me, and there was a smile in it now. A real one. "Where do you think you're going?"

My hand found the doorframe.

"Away from you."

He laughed. Actually laughed.

"You think breaking up with me is the end of it?" he called. "You think after next Thursday, you'll still have a career in this town?"

My fingers froze on the wood.

Slowly, I turned my head.

Ethan stood in the bedroom doorway, Sienna draped against his shoulder in my robe, both of them watching me like I was already finished.

"Go ahead and leave, babe," he said softly. "But by the time we're done with you, nobody in Hollywood is going to remember you as anything but crazy."

My phone woke me at 6:12 a.m.

Not one buzz. Forty. Fifty. The screen lit up so many times it looked like a strobe light on the nightstand of the hotel room I'd checked into at midnight.

I squinted at the first notification.

*Rising Star Ava Morales Accused of Abusing Crew Members.*

I sat up so fast the sheets twisted around my legs.

The article was already trending number one. Under the headline sat the video from Vancouver, the one Sienna had shown me last night. Someone had cut it down to eleven seconds. No director yelling "action." No other actor in the frame. Just me, screaming at empty air.

Below it came the text thread I never sent. The photo of me crying outside a director's office. And three "anonymous crew members."

*She made a PA cry for wearing the wrong perfume.*

*Everyone on set was scared of her.*

*She threw a coffee at a makeup artist. We all saw it.*

I scrolled faster. My thumb shook so hard I kept hitting the wrong links.

Every single clip came from my last four months of work. Every set. Every city.

Somebody had been collecting.

The phone rang. *Dana — Manager.*

I picked up. "Dana, none of it is—"

"Don't." Her voice was tight, like she hadn't slept either. "I know, okay? I know. But I need you to listen, because I have about four minutes before my next call."

"Okay."

"Lumière paused your campaign. So did Vela Water. So did the watch people."

"All three?"

"All three. Before seven a.m." She exhaled hard. "And it gets worse. *Crimson Hour*'s producers called an emergency meeting. They're talking about recasting."

"Recasting." I laughed. I didn't mean to. It just came out, small and strange. "We wrapped principal photography, Dana. They'd have to reshoot the whole movie."

"They're saying it might be cheaper than releasing a film with your face on the poster."

I pressed my fist against my mouth.

"Ava? You there?"

"I'm here."

"Have you seen the interview yet?"

My stomach went cold. "What interview?"

She was quiet for a second. "Turn on *Hollywood Tonight.* Their morning segment. Then call me back. And Ava?" Her tone softened, just barely. "Don't post anything. Not a word."

She hung up.

I found the clip in seconds. It already had two million views.

Ethan sat on a gray couch in a soft blue sweater I had bought him. His hair was messy in that careful way. His eyes looked red, like he'd been crying.

The host leaned toward him. "This must be so hard for you."

"It is." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I loved her. I still love who she used to be. But living with Ava… you never knew which version you'd get."

"Did she ever hurt you?"

He paused. Looked down at his hands. Let the silence do the work.

"I'd rather not answer that," he said quietly. "I just always hoped she'd get help."

I stopped the video.

My hand hovered over the comment section. I knew better. I opened it anyway.

*Poor guy. Look at his face.*

*I ALWAYS knew she was fake.*

*Someone check on Ethan. Men are victims too.*

*Sienna Blake has been nothing but kind to everyone. Make her the lead!*

That last one had forty thousand likes.

I set the phone face down on the bed. I stared at the wall for a long time.

I expected the tears to come. They didn't.

Instead, I pulled my laptop out of my carry-on and opened it.

---

By noon, the hotel desk was covered in sticky notes.

I called Mia, my old assistant from the Vancouver shoot. She picked up on the first ring.

"Ava, oh my God. I've been trying to text you."

"Mia, I need one thing. That rehearsal footage. Who had access to the raw files?"

"Raw files?" She hesitated. "Just the production company. And the outside publicity team. They came in for behind-the-scenes content."

"What team?"

"Uh…" Papers rustled. "Brightline Communications. They did the EPK."

I wrote it down. *Brightline.*

Then I called a sound tech from the Atlanta set. Then a camera assistant from New Orleans. Different cities. Different crews.

Same answer.

"Brightline handled our behind-the-scenes."

"Brightline sent a girl to film the cast all week."

"Brightline? Yeah. Why?"

I hung up and typed the name into a search bar.

Brightline Communications. Boutique PR firm. Discreet. Very expensive.

Their biggest client sat right there on the second page of results, in a trade article from last year.

*Halcyon Pictures Group renews exclusive partnership with Brightline.*

Halcyon. The studio that owned Sienna's contract. The studio that had just signed Ethan to a producer deal.

I leaned back in the chair. My pulse thudded in my ears.

Not a breakup. Not a scandal.

A job. Planned, budgeted, and filed under a PR invoice.

They didn't want me humiliated. They wanted me gone.

I grabbed my phone to call Dana back. Before I could dial, a text slid onto the screen.

Unknown number.

*If you want to know who really wants to ruin you, tonight at 10. Hotel Royale. Top floor.*

I read it three times.

I typed: *Who is this?*

The reply came in under ten seconds.

*Someone who isn't on Halcyon's payroll.*

My skin prickled. I hadn't said Halcyon to anyone. Not Dana. Not Mia. Nobody.

I typed again. *How do I know this isn't another setup?*

This time, the answer took longer.

*You don't. Come anyway.*

---

At 9:58, I stood in the private elevator of the Hotel Royale with a baseball cap pulled low and my heart beating against my ribs.

The doors opened onto a quiet hallway. One door at the end. Already cracked open.

I could still turn around. Go back to the room. Wait for Dana. Do what everyone told me to do and stay silent while my name burned.

I pushed the door open.

The suite was dim, lit only by the city spread out behind floor-to-ceiling glass. A man stood by the window with a glass of something amber in his hand. Tall. Dark suit, no tie. He didn't turn around right away.

"You're on time," he said. His voice was low and even. "Most people in this town aren't."

"Who are you?"

He turned.

I knew that face. Everyone in Hollywood knew it, even though almost no one had seen it in person. He didn't do red carpets. He didn't do interviews. His films won Oscars, and he never once walked up to accept them.

Adrian Cole.

"You," I breathed. "Why would *you* care what happens to me?"

He set the glass down on the windowsill and studied me, like he was deciding something.

"Because, Ms. Morales," he said, "the people who planned your downfall made one mistake."

He slid a thin black folder across the table toward me.

"They used my money to do it."

I didn't touch the folder.

"Your money," I said.

"Sit down, Ms. Morales."

"I'd rather stand."

"You've been standing all day. It shows." He pulled out a chair for me, then took the one across from it. "Sit."

I sat.

People in this town talked about Adrian Cole the way sailors talk about weather. He produced the films that swept awards season. He quietly bankrolled half the studios that pretended to compete with each other. He had ended careers with a single phone call, and in fifteen years he had never lifted a finger for an actor in trouble.

"Why are you helping me?"

He didn't answer. He nudged the folder another inch toward me.

I opened it.

Texts filled the first page. Ethan and Sienna, going back six months.

*She leaves for Atlanta on the 9th. I'll get into her cloud tonight.*

*Good boy. Brightline wants the Vancouver footage by Friday.*

A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

Adrian's eyes narrowed. "Something funny?"

"She calls him 'good boy.'" I turned the page. "He told me he left me so he could finally be his own man."

Behind the texts came the money. Wire transfers from Brightline to three gossip outlets. A line item for the *Hollywood Tonight* segment. And one entry that made my fingers go still on the paper.

*Crew testimony — $5,000 x 3.*

"The anonymous crew members," I said.

"Two of them never set foot on your sets."

"And the third?"

"Fired from one. For stealing lenses."

Every page was colder than the last. Dates. Amounts. Ethan's email forwarding my shooting schedule. Sienna approving the headline before it ran.

"They want to destroy you," Adrian said.

"I know."

At the bottom of the last invoice sat a funding source. Halcyon Marketing Reserve. And beneath it, in small print, the investor of record.

*Cole Capital.*

"You own Halcyon."

"Thirty percent. Silently." He lifted his glass but didn't drink. "Someone billed your execution to a fund I pay into and assumed I'd never read the receipts."

"Then fire them. You don't need me for that." I pushed the folder flat. "So why give me these?"

"Because I don't like people playing cheap games in my industry."

"Yours?"

"Somebody has to own it."

He said it without a trace of a smile. Then he reached down beside his chair and placed a script on the table. Plain white cover. Two words.

*Salt Year.*

"My next film," he said. "I want you for the lead."

I waited for the rest. He let me wait.

"What's the catch?"

"Several. Four-million-dollar budget. First-time director. Five months in Montana, in winter, at scale pay." He ticked them off like weather conditions. "Three financiers have walked. Two actresses passed. Nobody in this city thinks it will make a dime."

"You're really selling it."

"I don't sell. I'm telling you what it is."

"And what do I get?"

"I release the full Vancouver footage. The slate, the director calling action, the other actor in frame. And the payments to the fake crew." He tapped the folder once. "That clears part of it."

"Part."

"The rest is yours to earn. I won't buy your reputation back, Ms. Morales. If the audience forgives you, it will be because of what you do on screen. Not because of what I leak."

My throat tightened. "And *Crimson Hour*?"

"You walk away from it. Tonight. Along with every studio offer your manager is still praying for."

"That movie took me two years to get."

"I know."

"You're asking me to start over."

"I'm asking whether you can act without a billboard behind you."

It stung because it was the right question.

I pulled the script closer and opened it. He didn't push. He didn't check his watch. He just sat there while I read, the ice in his glass melting down to nothing.

Page one. A woman buries her husband and tells no one. Page ten. She lies to a sheriff with a smile on her face. By page thirty, my hands had stopped trembling, and I hadn't noticed when.

It was the best thing I had read in years. It was also a cliff.

If the film failed, there would be no Lumière. No Sunset Boulevard. Just a disgraced actress in a movie nobody saw.

If I said no, I'd spend a year begging the same people who'd paused my contracts before breakfast.

I shut the script. Opened it again. Read the last page.

Somewhere far below us, a siren wailed and faded.

"Do you have a pen?"

It was already on the table, next to a contract I hadn't seen him set down.

"You were that sure?"

"No," he said. "I was prepared. It's different."

I signed. My name looked small on the line. Smaller than it did on posters.

He countersigned without a word and handed me my copy, along with the black folder.

"Keep it. It's yours."

I tucked both under my arm and stood. I was halfway to the door when his voice stopped me.

"You really don't hate them?"

I laughed. A real one this time.

"Of course I hate them."

His eyebrow lifted. "You're carrying enough to bury them both by morning. So why not take revenge?"

I glanced down at the folder. Eight months of lies, itemized and stamped. One email to the right reporter and Ethan would never sit on a gray couch again.

I closed the cover.

"Because buried people don't have to watch," I said. "I want them to see me stand back up. With their own eyes."

He said nothing.

I walked to the door. The dark window beside it threw the whole room back at me, and in the glass I caught him watching me go. The corner of his mouth turned up.

It was the first time all night.

---

Dana called at 9:03 the next morning.

"Tell me you're sitting down."

"I'm sitting."

"Open Instagram. Sienna's page." Her voice shook with fury. "I'm so sorry, Ava. They didn't even call me first."

I opened it.

Sienna stood in front of the *Crimson Hour* poster in a white dress, one hand pressed to her heart. My face had already been scrubbed off the print behind her.

*Beyond honored to step into the lead role of Crimson Hour. Reshoots begin Monday. Sometimes the universe puts things right.* 🤍

Nine hundred thousand likes in forty minutes.

"Ava? Say something."

I scrolled to the video pinned beneath it. Sienna, glowing, leaned toward a reporter's microphone.

"Do you have a message for Ava Morales?"

She gazed straight into the lens and smiled like we were old friends.

"Just one," she said. "Thanks for keeping my seat warm."