I don’t find out right away that Marcus goes through my phone.
At the time, I just know I’m tired. My head throbs with the ghost of Lila’s voice and Quinn’s questions. When I finally stumble back into my Laurel Canyon glass house after the loft meeting, the place looks like a showroom version of myself: neutral throws folded just so, awards glinting in the dim light, the city smeared in the windows like a second, shinier Los Angeles.
My phone vibrates on the marble island. A new message from Lila pops up over Quinn’s earlier thread.
Lila: We need to confirm timing before call sheet locks. Don’t put details in writing. Just yes/no.
Quinn: Episode structure depends on when your confession hits. Evidence window needs to match.
I stare at the words timing and evidence until they double. My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
Me: Yes on timing. Evidence aligned. We talk voice only next time.
Typing those five words feels like leaning over the river rail back home, knowing the current could eat whatever I drop. I hit send anyway, face prickling with heat. Then I flip the phone screen-down, like that can stop the three red dots from pulsing on the other end.
Marcus has a key, but he still knocks. Three sharp raps, knuckles on glass.
“Door’s open,” I call, already sorry.
He lets himself in, bringing the smell of expensive cologne and street dust with him. He’s still in the suit from whatever backchannel meeting he’s crawled out of, tie loosened just enough to signal casual, not enough to admit defeat.
“You look wrecked,” he says instead of hello. “You should be horizontal with cucumber slices on your face, not… whatever this is.”
His gaze sweeps the island, the turned-over phone, the glass of untouched green juice sweating a ring onto the countertop. His attention catches on the phone the way a cat locks onto a twitching string.
I grab the juice first, the bottle cold and sticky in my hand. “Just tired,” I say. “We had a table read run-through. I’m fine.”
“You’re lying worse than usual,” he says lightly. “But I don’t have the energy to psychoanalyze you tonight.”
He kisses the top of my head, his lips cool. “Sleep. Big day tomorrow, bigger week after that.”
When I finally do go upstairs, I leave the phone on the island, like a small, black coffin in all that white marble. I tell myself it’s healthy to detach from screens. I don’t imagine Marcus watching my reflection disappear up the glass staircase, jaw tightening, the old crisis-manager circuits firing back to life.
I only piece together the next part later, from the fragments that slip.
An invoice flagged by my business manager for “device security audit.” An offhand remark from Marcus’s assistant about “the IT guy you had over.” The look on Marcus’s face when I mention “end-to-end encryption” like I’ve just told him I’m getting married without inviting him.
I reconstruct it the way Quinn reconstructs timelines: out of receipts and tone.
He waits until my footsteps fade into the thick hush of the bedroom, the city hum muffled by insulated glass. Downstairs, the air conditioning whispers over the kitchen, a cool, invisible waterfall. Marcus slides my phone toward him with one manicured finger.
“Let’s not make this a habit,” I hear him later describe to someone on a call, voice edged with false regret. “But she’s vulnerable right now. I’m not letting some vulture podcast drag her into another mess.”
He guesses my passcode in three tries. He’s the one who watched me set it, years ago, hunched over a still-cracked screen after the first wave of bad headlines. He opens my messages and scrolls.
Lila under her new name. Quinn. Screenshots of call sheets, redacted emails, half-written notes about “the mill” that I never meant to send.
His eyes snag on the most recent exchange.
We need to confirm timing before call sheet locks.
Evidence window needs to match.
Yes on timing. Evidence aligned.
In his mind, those words crystallize into a very neat narrative: unstable ex-co-star; manipulative journalist; fragile client cornered between them. A revenge plot, maybe, or a blackmail scheme. Another accident planned for Stage 14.
He doesn’t read “tell the truth” anywhere, so he fills the blank with the one thing he understands better than anything else: an attack on the brand he built.
He sets the phone back down exactly where it was, screen-dark, angle unchanged. No sign of intrusion but the oily ghost of his fingerprint.
By the time I come downstairs in the morning, the phone looks untouched. I pour coffee, bitter and hot enough to bite my tongue, and I tell myself the sour twist in my gut is just nerves.
I don’t know yet that the story Marcus is writing in his head will collide head-on with mine.
I only find out about the security meeting because a guard talks too much in the smoking alcove.
At first, it’s just a rumor drifting through the refrigerated air of Stage 14. I’m in the fake mill, the wet stair rails slick under my palm, smelling like cold metal and the tang of the chemical spray they use to fake damp concrete. Background actors whisper at the edge of the set, eyes flicking toward the catwalks, where Rhea fell through air that used to feel safe.
“They’re bringing in extra security for the finale,” one grip says, voice pitched just low enough to pretend I can’t hear. “Apparently someone flagged a threat.”
“What threat?” another asks around a donut, glaze shining on his fingers. The sweetness hangs too thick in the air, fighting with the smoke machine fog.
The first grip shrugs. “Some safety consultant who pissed off the suits. They don’t want any more ‘incidents’ for the blogs.”
The AC hums harder, like the stage itself is nervous.
Later, much later, I will see the email chain in a forwarded screenshot Lila shoves at me on her cracked phone screen. The subject line reads: CONFIDENTIAL – Stage 14 Security Plan (Finale Week). Marcus’s name sits neatly between the head of production and the head of security.
In my head, I replay the meeting that email grew out of.
They use one of the lot’s glass conference rooms overlooking a sunlit courtyard, where a couple of influencers pose near a fake graffiti wall between takes. Inside, everything smells like burnt coffee and fresh printer toner.
Marcus stands at the head of the table, suit a darker gray than the Silverline logo etched into the glass. The security chief, a thick-set man with a shaved head and a badge clipped to his belt, flips through a slim folder.
“You understand, we can’t profile an employee just because she has a history with your client,” the chief says. His voice carries the flat patience of someone who has heard worse.
“I’m not asking you to profile her,” Marcus replies. I’ve heard that reasonable tone my whole career; it’s how he says the most unreasonable things. “I’m asking you to protect my client and your entire investment in this show from a person who has already demonstrated a capacity for… creative sabotage.”
He slides a printout across the table. In my imagination, it’s a still from the parking garage confrontation: Lila’s face in grainy grayscale, jaw set, eyes reflecting the harsh overhead light.
“She gained access to equipment logs she shouldn’t have seen,” Marcus continues. “She interfered with stunts, confronted me off property, and has a clear vendetta tied to an old incident the studio has already handled.”
“Handled,” the chief repeats.
“Legally,” Marcus says. “Which is the only way that word matters in this town.”
The security chief taps the folder. “You’re asking for surveillance on an employee of a vendor the network hired,” he says. “And for authorization to remove her from set at our discretion.”
“Quietly,” Marcus adds. “No drama. No spectacle. If she starts anything—if she goes near Nora in a way that concerns you—you escort her to a holding room. I’ll take it from there.”
The chief’s eyes narrow. “Take it how?”
Marcus smiles, that easy, teeth-baring thing he uses on talk-show hosts and judges. “Lawyers,” he says. “What did you think, I was going to throw her in the river?”
Somewhere in the back of his head, the Pennsylvania mill flickers. He locks the image away with all the other things he’s spent a career refusing to see.
“We’re not in the business of roughing people up for managers,” the chief says slowly. “But we are in the business of keeping sets safe. You give me a list of behaviors that concern you, I’ll have extra eyes on her. If she crosses a line, we’ll move her. You don’t get to direct my guys. Clear?”
Marcus nods, unbothered by the rebuke. “Perfectly,” he says. “You’ll be doing the right thing. For everyone.”
Righteousness rolls off him like another layer of cologne. In his head, he’s the one preventing the next Rhea.
The email goes out later that afternoon. Her name appears in bold in the bullet points: Elle Park – stunt/intimacy coordinator. The note beneath it reads: Heightened monitoring recommended due to prior confrontations with lead talent and management. If behavior escalates, discreetly escort off Stage 14 and hold in security office for debrief.
When I finally read those words, days later, my skin crawls.
Lila hears before I do. Of course she does.
I’m in my trailer between blocking rehearsals, the AC buzzing lukewarm, a haze of fake smoke clinging to my hair. Someone left a plate of donuts on the little table, and the glaze has congealed into a crust that cracks when I poke it. My phone buzzes. Lila – PRIVATE flashes on the screen.
I answer on the first ring. “Hey. I was just thinking—”
“Who did you tell?” she cuts in.
Her voice snaps down the line, sharp enough to sting my ear.
“Tell what?” I ask, spine stiffening. “Lila, slow down.”
“Security had my name on a list they weren’t supposed to have,” she says. I hear movement behind her: footsteps on concrete, the hollow echo of some back corridor, a distant clank of metal. “A guy from grip owes me a favor. He saw the email on a supervisor’s tablet. Elle Park – heightened monitoring, possible removal from set. Sound familiar?”
My heartbeat stutters. The trailer suddenly feels too small, the air thick with stale sugar. “No,” I say. “I mean—yes, it sounds like something Marcus would do, but I didn’t tell him specifics. He doesn’t know about the evidence drop, or the podcast episode. He just…”
“He just knows I exist and that you’ve been acting weird since the podcast gutted your brand,” she says. “He knows there’s a ‘problem’ to solve, and his idea of solving problems usually involves getting rid of whoever makes you look less-than perfect.”
“He thinks he’s protecting me,” I say weakly.
“He’s protecting the machine,” she says. “You’re just the glass casing it runs in.”
The words hit harder than I want them to. I picture my house on the hill, a terrarium of curated light, everyone peering in. I picture Stage 14, walls that move, windows that open onto nothing but green screens.
“We can work around this,” I say. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll tell him to back off. We still have time before the finale.”
There’s a brief, bitter laugh on her end. “You think he’ll respect that?” she asks. “He watched you sign your life away at sixteen. You think he’s going to stop because you ask nicely now?”
“He’s not a monster,” I say. Even to my own ears, it sounds rehearsed, an old PR line wearing out. “He’s just… scared.”
“Scared people with power are monsters,” she says quietly. “You of all people should know that.”
Silence stretches between us, tight as a rigging cable.
I force myself to swallow. “Okay,” I say. “Then we adapt.”
“We?” she repeats.
“Yes, we,” I say. “He doesn’t know the trigger phrase for your dead-man switch. He doesn’t know the order of my confession. We can change entrances, timing, everything. I still want to do this. I still plan to say what I said I’d say.”
I wait for that to land, for it to stitch us back onto the same team.
Instead, I hear her exhale slowly, a careful release.
“I believe you want to,” she says. “I don’t believe you can control him. Or the studio. Or however many security guys are now incentivized to treat me like a bomb to be defused.”
“So what, you’re out?” I ask. My hand tightens around the phone, plastic digging into my palm.
“No,” she says. “I’m not out.”
I don’t know whether the tremor in her voice is anger or something more fragile.
“I’m changing my side of the plan,” she continues. “Redundancies. Alternate triggers. People you don’t know about yet. That way, if Marcus manages to get me dragged into some security office before you talk, the story doesn’t die in a soundproof room.”
“But that means I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I say. “I’ll be standing there on live camera, and I won’t know which fuse you’ve actually lit.”
“Welcome to my teenage years,” she says. “I walked onto that mill staircase with half-truths and bad faith swirling around me. You knew more than I did then. This time I’m keeping some cards.”
I press my thumb into the ridge of my coffee cup until the cardboard buckles. “This only works if we trust each other,” I say.
“Trust would’ve been nice ten years ago,” she says. “Right now I’ll settle for overlapping interests.”
“Lila,” I say, “listen to me. I am going to stand in front of those cameras and tell them that I shoved you. I’m going to name the fixer who came to your hospital bed. I’m going to name the executives who signed off on burying you. I’m not pulling out.”
“Good,” she says. There’s a rough edge to the word. “Then we’re still pointed in the same direction. Just don’t ask me to walk the same path as you while a bunch of guys with earpieces debate whether I’m allowed to breathe on set.”
“Quinn needs to know what’s changing,” I say. “Her episode hinges on the timing.”
“Tell her whatever you want,” Lila replies. “But understand this: the more you say out loud, the more they have to intercept. I’m drawing my own map now.”
Before I can answer, a knock rattles my trailer door. The AD’s voice filters through. “Nora? Five minutes to blocking!”
I cover the phone’s mic with my hand. “Yeah, got it!” I shout, then lower my voice again. “I have to go,” I whisper. “Can we—”
“Later,” she says. “Or not. You’ll know everything when everyone else does.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at my reflection in the black screen, features warped around the tiny camera lens. The AC hums, rattling faintly like an old fan in my mom’s Pennsylvania kitchen. For a second I smell diner coffee and wet metal, the river town’s fog seeping into the fake mill on Stage 14.
On the wall, the call sheet flutters in the vent’s weak breeze. FINAL SHOOT – STAGE 14 sits in bold at the top, a neat circle of ink where Quinn once traced the date on a printed copy at the loft.
Now there are at least three different plans converging on that circle: mine, Lila’s, Marcus’s. Some overlapping, some secretly diverging, all heading for the same burning set.
I tuck my phone into my pocket, suddenly aware of its weight like a stone.
For the first time since saying yes in the loft, I realize I’m walking toward a finale where I don’t know whose hand will reach for the match—or whose will try to slap it away.