Marcus’s office always smells expensive.
Not in a cologne way—he hates anything heavy—but in the clean, citrus-and-paper way of places where other people schedule your chaos. Light from the late afternoon burns through the glass wall behind him, turning the Hollywood hills into a cutout line of shadow. Down below, the studio lot sprawls in white boxes and metal roofs, air conditioning units humming like distant bees.
I sit across from him at the glass conference table, fingers wrapped around a bottle of alkaline water I haven’t opened. The condensation dampens my palm. The script in my tote bag presses against my calf, a solid reminder that somebody else already wrote a version of this meeting.
Marcus taps his tablet and the big wall monitor behind him wakes up, filling with a spreadsheet.
“Okay,” he says, tone brisk, managerial. “You’re not going to like some of this, so I’m just going to go through the list and then you can yell at me.”
“I don’t yell,” I say.
He gives me a look over the rim of his glasses. “You pay me to yell so you don’t have to. Different skill sets.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. I don’t smile.
On the screen, columns of text line up in neat rows: Option / Cost / Exposure / Timeline. The words glow a soft blue on white, the way everything looks right before it becomes a headline.
“Option one,” he says, pointing with the back of his pen. “We beef up digital monitoring. We already have the reputation firm on retainer; we just increase their hours. Track every mention, every rumor, every forum where people are connecting dots they shouldn’t.”
“They’re already doing that,” I say. “I get the reports every Monday.”
“They’re doing the bare minimum,” he counters. “I want twenty-four-seven, real-time alerts. Not just for your name, but for the mill, the old show, Rhea, this script, whatever Quinn tweets after midnight with too much cold brew in her system.”
Hearing Quinn’s name here feels like a hand on the back of my neck. I twist the bottle cap until it squeaks.
“Fine,” I say. “Monitoring is fine.”
He clicks his stylus. A green check mark appears in the first row. The sound of the tap against glass is small but sharp.
“Option two,” he continues. “Legal. We let the studio’s attack dogs off leash a bit. Letters, reminders about NDAs, quiet outreach to some of these… overly enthusiastic sleuths.”
“You want to threaten fans?” I ask.
“Threaten? No.” He lifts his palms, mock innocence. “Educate. People take gossip more seriously when they realize it can cost them money. Jobs. Student loans. Whatever they care about.”
I picture the waitress in the Pennsylvania diner, the older man at the counter muttering about lawyers buying my innocence, the way the rumor mill clanged louder than the plates. People back home don’t get legal letters; they get church ladies and foreclosure notices.
“I don’t want to scare fans,” I say. “That blows back on me. I’ll look like I’m punching down.”
“Which is why we’re not talking lawsuits,” he says. “We’re talking reminders. Clarifications. Gentle pressure.”
The word lands between us with a faint metallic taste, like the rail at the mill.
He flips to the next line.
“Option three,” he says. “Private security and investigations. We bring in a team that specializes in entertainment risk. They look at the accidents, the anonymous messages, the script, see where the threads connect. They do background checks on anyone with access to you, anyone with a grudge, anyone who benefits from you burning down.”
I take a breath. The AC kicks in overhead, blowing a draft across the back of my neck. My skin pebbles under my blouse.
“Security on set?” I ask.
“Security everywhere you go,” he says. “Studio, home, the talk show circuit, your mountain yoga cult—”
“It’s a studio class, not a cult.”
“If they make you chant your intentions in a heated room, it’s at least cult-adjacent.” He waves that away. “Point is, they watch entrances, monitor communications, run sweeps. We make it harder for anyone to get to you, including creative screenwriters with a grudge.”
My mind flicks to Elle on the catwalk, to the PA who once heard a shove by the river, to whoever left that script in my trailer. The idea of outside eyes on all of them excites and repels me in equal measure. I squeeze the water bottle until the plastic crinkles.
“Investigating is fine,” I say. “I want to know who’s behind this.”
“Good.” He taps again. Another green check.
He doesn’t look at me when he scrolls.
“Option four,” he says. “We apply pressure.”
The way he says it this time is different. Less joke, more offer.
“You already said legal pressure,” I reply. “What else is there?”
He leans back in his chair, the leather creaking softly. The city outside reflects in the glass wall, overlaying his face with tiny squares of light.
“There are firms,” he says. “People I’ve used for other clients. They talk to folks off the record. They remind certain parties that going after you has consequences. They encourage vulnerable elements to relocate, rethink, shut up. Sometimes a… visit from a credible third party changes the temperature.”
Heat rises in my throat. “Visit,” I repeat.
“Conversation,” he says. “Maybe they sit outside somebody’s house in a car for a few nights so the message lands. Maybe they chat with a landlord about a tenant’s disruptive hobby of feeding gossip podcasts. Nothing illegal if we can help it. Just… weight applied in the right directions.”
My hand leaves a damp circle on the bottle; the plastic squeals when I set it down.
“You’re talking about stalking people for me,” I say.
“For you?” He shakes his head once. “For your safety. For your career, which—newsflash—pays the salaries of everyone who pretends to like kale juice on your behalf. Nobody’s breaking kneecaps. We’re not in a Scorsese film.”
The image of a kneecap snapping flashes across my mind anyway. Rhea’s body hitting the mat. Teenage Lila slamming into metal, disappearing from frame.
My fingers curl against my thigh, nails biting into fabric.
“No violence,” I say.
Marcus studies me for a heartbeat. His eyes soften in that way he uses when he scoops red carpets and crying mothers into the same management category.
“Nora,” he says quietly, “whoever wrote that script in your trailer knows things they shouldn’t. Whoever cut that rope, taped that emergency stop, scheduled Rhea’s stunt on a day we were already overloaded—”
“You don’t know that’s the same person,” I cut in.
“I don’t,” he admits. “Which is why we need to find out. And while we’re doing that, I am not going to sit here and wait for another ‘accident’ because you’re squeamish about upsetting some anonymous thirty-year-old in their mom’s basement.”
My chest tightens. I think of the podcast loft, not a basement at all, brick and laptops and wires snaking across the floor. I think of Quinn’s careful voice on the mic, the way she said blood on the railing.
“Upsetting is one thing,” I say. “Hurting is another. I am not authorizing anything physical. No threats, no ‘visits’ that turn into mysteries for someone else’s true-crime show.”
“You think I’d hire idiots?” he asks. “These people work for studios, not cartels. They do soft power. They buy up domains before trolls can use them. They pay a guy’s old DUI fines so he shuts up. This is, frankly, delicate.”
He lets that word sit there, delicate, like a glass ornament between us.
“Then say that,” I reply. “If we’re hiring anyone, they’re for information and soft power only. No violence. No ‘accidents.’ No… creative safety failures.”
His jaw ticks at that last bit. I know he’s thinking of the sandbag, the fire drill, the harness.
“You’re my client,” he says. “You call the line. I stay behind it.”
I should relax at that. I don’t.
Instead, I reach down and unzip my tote bag. The paper rustles as I pull out The Actress Who Pushed and slide it across the glass.
“Add this to your homework,” I say.
He looks at the title page and goes still.
“Where did you get this?” he asks.
“My trailer,” I say. “No return address. No writer. Just that.”
He flips through a few pages without really reading, his mouth flattening.
“They’ve put effort into this,” he says. “Structure, coverage-ready formatting, all the brand-adjacent details. Okay. This jumps to the top of the pile.”
“And?” I press.
“And we find out who wrote it.” He taps the script with his pen. “This is either a warning or a pitch. Either way, I want to talk to the person who thinks they understand you this well.”
The line about the actress always choosing the version of herself she can live with on camera vibrates in the back of my skull.
“No violence,” I repeat.
“I heard you,” he says. “Jesus, Nora. Do you really think I’m out here hiring hitmen in between brand calls?”
“I think you believe in results,” I say. “And I think you’re very good at not asking questions about how those results arrive.”
For a second, he drops the manager smile. Something more tired shows through.
“You pay me to keep you out of riverside mills and depositions,” he says. “The world doesn’t get less ugly because you refuse to look at its teeth.”
I swallow. The air in the office tastes like lemon polish and the faint metallic tang of my own fear.
“Then write it down,” I say. “Whatever you want to do, put it in a budget. Label it. No winks. No ‘take care of it.’ If I approve something, I want to see the words I’m agreeing to.”
His eyebrows lift, then drop.
“Fine,” he says. “You want transparency, I’ll give you transparency.”
He swivels back to the tablet, stylus moving in quick, practiced strokes. On the wall screen, a new line appears under the list of options.
Line Item: Discretionary Risk Management – Amount: TBD – Approved By: ______
The cursor blinks in the empty line.
“That’s vague,” I say.
“That’s Hollywood,” he replies. “But if you want me to spell out every coffee date and phone call, we can do that too. Just understand, the more detailed the paper trail, the more interesting it looks to anyone sniffing around later.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, letting the subtext hang: Do you want to fight a saboteur with one hand tied and a spotlight on every move, or do you want this handled?
I stand and walk around the table, needing to see the screen up close. The glass under my hand is cool. I can see my reflection faintly over the spreadsheet—washed-out face, hair pulled back in an efficient knot, eyes ringed from too many late nights.
“Change ‘risk management’ to ‘security and investigation,’” I say.
“Already have a line for that,” he says. “This is for the gray areas. The stuff that doesn’t fit into a neat invoice.”
I taste sugar and grease at the back of my throat, leftover from a craft-service donut I ate on set because it was easier than dealing with catering small talk. The sticky sweetness turns sour.
“What does discretionary mean here, exactly?” I ask.
“It means I use my judgment,” he says. “Within the boundaries you set. You just spent ten minutes telling me those. I heard you. No violence. No threats. Information, leverage, and making it inconvenient for people to come at you. That’s it.”
I study his face. The city lights creep higher on the glass wall as the sun drops, tiny squares blinking on like camera flashes.
I think of the line in the script: She chooses the version of herself she can live with on camera over the one other people can live with in real life.
Maybe the writer got that wrong. Maybe I choose the version I can live with on paper.
“Fine,” I say. “Send it to me.”
He taps twice. My phone buzzes in my pocket a second later.
I pull it out. An email from his office system waits on the lockscreen: Budget Addendum – Confidential. I open it. The line item sits there in digital black and white: Discretionary Risk Management – Security & Investigative Support – Scope to be defined as needed.
At the bottom, a blank signature field flashes, ready for my fingertip.
“One condition,” I say.
“Name it.”
“You update me,” I say. “Regularly. No surprises. If anything gets close to my line, you stop and we talk. I don’t want to wake up and read about some ‘unrelated incident’ involving a person who once liked a tweet about me.”
“You’ll be looped in,” he says. “On anything that touches that line. I promise.”
I know how his promises work. They stretch, they flex, they survive.
The stylus rests near my hand. I pick it up. The rubber tip drags a fraction against the glass of my phone as I scrawl my name in the box. The system pings, a cheerful ding that does not match the weight dropping into my stomach.
“There,” I say. “You have a budget.”
Marcus exhales, a sound somewhere between satisfaction and relief.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll start calls tonight. We’re not going to let whoever’s writing your life beat us to the ending.”
“Maybe we should read their script first,” I mutter.
“I’ll have someone give me coverage.” He pats the pages beside him. “In the meantime, go home. Sleep in your glass castle. Let me do my job.”
I bristle at the phrase, glass castle, but I let it pass.
He stands and walks me to the door. His hand rests between my shoulder blades for a second, warm through the fabric.
“We’re going to get ahead of this, Nora,” he says. “I’m not losing the story we built because some bitter ghost from a river town wants a sequel.”
The mention of the river town tightens something low in my chest. The mill flashes behind my eyes, the rusted skeleton rising out of the fog. I nod anyway, because that’s the version of me people recognize: cooperative, coachable, on board.
The hallway outside his office is cooler, the hum of building air and distant printers competing with the dull roar from the street. I walk toward the elevator, heels clicking on polished concrete.
At the end of the corridor, a floor-to-ceiling window frames the city. I stop in front of it and catch my reflection floating over the LA lights—a faint outline of a woman who just told her manager no violence while signing off on something that has no real name.
Down on the lot, Stage 14’s roof sits like a closed box among the others. For a second, I imagine the mill built inside it, wet stairs and cold rails waiting under artificial rain.
On my phone, Marcus’s email sits in my inbox, marked as completed.
Whoever wrote The Actress Who Pushed thinks they know which corridor I’ll pick when the set catches fire. I just handed Marcus permission to start building the hallway.
I press my fingers to the glass until my skin leaves a blurred print and try to convince myself that a signature with conditions is still a line in the sand, not the first footprint crossing it.