The first time I ruin Dante Riker’s life, I’m barefoot in my living room, wearing pajama shorts with a hole in the waistband and a T‑shirt that says CUT ON ACTION.
The irony doesn’t hit until later.
Right now, all I see is the livestream feed on my laptop, a neat little multi‑cam grid of Hollywood perfection. Dante’s charity special: “RIKER LIVE: ONE NIGHT ONLY.” Millions of people watching. Sponsors. Hashtags. A scrolling cascade of heart emojis and crying faces and things like WE DON’T DESERVE HIM.
I’m not watching as a fan. I’m watching as the exhausted idiot who’s been remote‑editing inserts for this thing for three weeks straight.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter, nudging a crumb off the trackpad. My tiny studio apartment smells like burnt coffee and neighbor’s weed. The rent invoice is open in another tab, a bright red OVERDUE glaring at me like judgment. “Just thirty more seconds and I can invoice, and then you can maybe afford real groceries, Marina. What a wild concept.”
On my screen, Studio Feed A shows Dante onstage, haloed in soft gold light. His jaw could have been carved by a propagandist sculptor. He’s laughing with some host whose name I’ve already forgotten, one hand tucked into the pocket of a perfectly tailored black suit. His teeth flash white. The audience screams like a single organism.
In Feed B, the telethon graphic: DONATE NOW. CUREKIDS.ORG. A counter climbs, the numbers ticking like a slot machine.
In Feed C, a behind‑the‑scenes angle: crew, cables, a handheld swinging past a glittering backdrop. And in Feed D, my domain: the pre‑packaged segment we spent all day wrestling into shape. The one where Dante is supposed to cry.
“You good with ingest?” a voice crackles in my headset. I’m not on‑site; I’m patched into the control room from my couch, hair in a messy bun, surrounded by empty noodle containers and a sick fern.
“Good enough,” I say. “File’s clean, audio’s synced. You’ll get your ugly sobbing.”
“Nothing about Dante’s ugly,” the tech snorts. “Switch at my go. Three, two—”
On my laptop, the digital switcher panel glows. I’ve been doing this long enough that it’s muscle memory: click, cue, fade, breathe. I hate live work—too much chaos, too much that can go wrong—but I also like eating and paying off my student loans.
The segment I cut is a five‑minute emotional hammer: Dante visiting kids at the hospital, kneeling by their beds, holding tiny hands. We filmed it three days ago. He hit every mark, every beat. His eyes even glistened on schedule.
“—one. Roll package,” the voice in my ear says.
I hit the key that cues my segment. On the main preview window, the first frame pops up: a close‑up of a cartoon mural in the hospital hallway, bright and hopeful.
Then everything jerks.
For half a second, my screen glitches—a flicker, like a skipped heartbeat. The software window jumps. My finger, already descending for a drag adjustment, lands not on the crossfade slider but on something else.
A small, red square labeled END STREAM.
I don’t even register it until I feel the click through my finger.
The call in my ear explodes. “What the—? We just dropped! We DROPPED!”
On my laptop, the feed goes black.
No, not black. Worse.
A new window slams open, a raw camera feed I was never supposed to see, much less route anywhere. Grainy, off‑angle, ungraded. There’s no lower‑third, no logo. Just Dante, backstage, in a dim hallway ten seconds after he walked offstage for the package roll.
He rips the earpiece from his ear like it burned him.
“Is she serious with this script?” he snarls at someone off‑screen. His voice isn’t smooth anymore; it’s frayed. “You want me to cry on cue while you parade sick kids in front of a f—ing donation counter?”
My stomach turns to ice.
This is not for air.
“That’s the job,” a woman’s voice says—cool, precise. Vivian Cross, executive producer. I’ve heard that voice in too many pre‑production meetings. “You’re selling hope, Dante. Be grateful you can still do it.”
“Grateful,” he echoes, laughing once, breathless. He presses his palms into his eyes hard enough that I wince in sympathy. “I’m on my feet for fourteen hours a day, my joints feel like ground glass, and you want me to smile more for the cameras. At what point am I allowed to not be grateful?”
“After the box office numbers,” Vivian says.
The counter on the streaming dashboard blinks angrily: LIVE. 4.2M VIEWERS.
They can see this.
Oh my God. They can see this.
My cursor darts, stuttering. I try to kill the feed, any feed, but my hands have turned to mittens. Every click lands a millimeter off.
“Kill it, cut, CUT—” someone screams in my headset.
Dante’s pacing now, tie yanked loose, the perfect golden boy curdling into something jagged. “I’m not a product you can repackage when my face wears out,” he says. “You don’t get to own my breakdowns, too.”
The chat explodes in a fast‑moving riot of text. I catch glimpses: WHAT IS THIS??? and HE’S SO UNGRATEFUL and omg is this real
My vision tunnels. I finally slam the keyboard with the heel of my hand. The window shudders, flickers—to black, then to the test graphic that means the stream is down.
The view counter freezes.
The silence in my headset hums, thick and electric.
“Vale,” the control room director says, voice low and terrifyingly calm. “What did you just do?”
My mouth opens. No sound comes out.
What I did was clear: I patched a raw backstage feed to millions of people, then crashed the entire stream. I don’t know how yet. I only know that the industry I already hate just found a brand‑new reason to hate me back.
“I—something glitched, my panel jumped, I must’ve—”
“Don’t move,” he says. “Stay on the line. Don’t touch anything. Legal is coming on.”
Legal.
I stare at my own reflection in the black screen for a second. Pale, wide‑eyed, hair standing up in every direction, Dante Riker’s accidental executioner.
Then, because I’m a coward, I rip the headset off and hang up.
By the time the internet finishes turning me into a villain, it’s three in the morning.
I lie on my couch, staring at the cracked ceiling. My phone keeps vibrating against my thigh like a trapped insect. I made the mistake of opening Twitter once. Just once.
#DanteDeservesBetter is trending. So is #MarinaVale.
Not in a good way.
I swipe again, even though every scroll feels like rubbing salt into a fresh wound. A grainy clip of the backstage feed has already been cut, looped, memed. Someone slowed his “I’m not a product” line and set it to sad piano. Others intercepted the moment he called the script “parading sick kids” and decided that meant he hates children.
Underneath, my name.
MARINA VALE, THE SABOTEUR EDITOR.
Leaked “by accident”? Or bitter nobody looking for clout?
I throw the phone face‑down.
A voicemail icon glares at me from the corner of the screen. Sixteen unheard messages. Seventeen. Eighteen. My email inbox has collapsed under the weight of phrases like CEASE AND DESIST and URGENT ACTION REQUIRED.
They’re going to sue me. Of course they are. Streams that big have insurance policies bigger than my net worth times a thousand. I skim a headline that says THE LIVESTREAM DROP COST CUREKIDS MILLIONS.
I want to throw up.
The knock on my door is polite, which somehow makes it worse.
Three measured raps. Not a neighbor. Not at this hour.
I don’t move.
“Ms. Vale?” A man’s voice, muffled through cheap wood. Smooth, practiced. “My name is Cole Harrington. I’m with Riker & Cross Media.”
I close my eyes. Fantastic. They sent PR.
“Go away,” I call, because dignity is a luxury I lost sometime around the hashtag #FireMarina.
“Can’t do that,” he says, still maddeningly cordial. “If it makes you feel better, I brought coffee.”
It doesn’t. It also absolutely does.
I drag myself to the door, check the peephole. The man outside is mid‑thirties, dark skin, expensive coat over a dress shirt that probably cost more than my rent. He holds up his hands when he sees me.
“Not here to yell,” he says. “Vivian will do that later.”
I crack the door an inch. “Promising start.”
He offers me a to‑go cup through the gap. “Purely selfish. I need you awake enough to understand the terms before you sign your life away.”
My grip on the chain lock tightens. “The terms of what?”
“Not the lawsuit,” he says. “Not yet. The thing we’re offering you instead.”
His eyes are sharp, assessing. Taking in my T‑shirt, the clutter, the half‑dead fern on the windowsill. I feel stripped bare.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I blurt. “The stream. It was a glitch, my panel jumped, I misclicked, I—”
He nods once. “I know.”
That surprises me enough to make me unlatch the chain.
“How could you possibly—”
“Because if you had done it on purpose,” he says, stepping inside when I open the door fully, “you would’ve released something a lot more explosive and a lot less ambiguous. You were cutting a hero package five minutes before it aired. You don’t hate him that much.”
He says it like a fact, not a question. I bristle anyway.
“I don’t hate him at all,” I say. “I don’t know him.”
Cole’s mouth tightens in what might be sympathy. “You’re about to.”
We sit at my cluttered dining table. He pushes aside a pile of old storyboards to lay out a folder embossed with the studio logo. My laptop screen, still open on the dead stream, feels like an accusation.
Cole taps the folder. “Here’s the situation. What went out tonight cost the studio and the charity a lot of money. Sponsors are panicking. Vivian is… not pleased.”
“That makes two of us,” I mutter.
“Three,” he says lightly. “Dante is also not pleased. For what it’s worth, he’s not mad you revealed his tantrum. He’s mad he had one in the first place.”
My chest twinges. “It wasn’t a tantrum.”
Cole’s gaze flicks to me, interested. “Interesting word choice, coming from the internet’s new favorite villain.”
I color. “I mean, it was—it was human. He was tired. He was being pushed. I shouldn’t have seen it, but… it didn’t look like a monster. Just a guy who needs sleep.”
“Hm.” Cole’s finger drums on the contract. “You should maybe not say that part on Twitter.”
“I’m not saying anything on Twitter. Every time I open the app, another stranger wants me dead.”
He doesn’t argue.
“So,” I say. “Am I being sued, or are you here to offer me the chance to apologize on camera before you sue me?”
“Plan A was to sue you,” he says frankly. “But Vivian is too good at her job to waste a crisis. The clip is viral. Engagement is through the roof. The narrative is still fluid.”
“Narrative,” I repeat, bitter. “You mean ‘how best to spin the girl who ruined your golden boy.’”
“Exactly,” Cole says. “We could let you be a nameless tech error and take the hit. Or…” He pushes the folder toward me. “We give you a name, a face, and a role.”
I stare down at the first page. CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENT – TALENT ENGAGEMENT.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“What is this?”
“A way to not be destroyed by legal fees,” Cole says. “In exchange for… a different kind of destruction.”
“Comforting.” The words blur a little as I read. “You want me to appear on camera as… Dante’s enemy?”
“His on‑screen nemesis,” Cole corrects, with faint PR polish. “The woman who ‘exposed’ him. The internet already hates you. We lean into it. We frame it. You become the villain everyone loves to boo.”
I flip the page. There are references to a promo campaign, to a movie I’ve only ever worked on from my dim editing bay—RIKER: RECON.
“And this part?” I point to a clause halfway down. “‘Subject will reside in provided housing for the duration of the campaign’?”
“Yes,” he says. “We call it the enemy house. Working title,” he adds when my face does something involuntary. “Think Big Brother meets Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Cameras, confessionals, lots of artfully staged conflict. You and Dante under one roof. The girl who ruined his reputation and the man the world can’t stop watching.”
My heart lurches painfully. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were,” Cole says, and for the first time his smile slips. “I pitched an adversarial cohabitation concept months ago. It was supposed to be two actors with media training and a stunt coordinator. Not… this. But the studio loves serendipity.”
“Serendipity,” I echo. “I commit career suicide on live stream and you call it serendipity.”
“You committed a mistake,” he says, voice softening. “The machine we work for is turning it into content. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
He exhales. “Look. If you don’t sign, they will make you the faceless tech scapegoat and they will come after you for damages. We’re talking numbers that start with seven and have a lot of zeros. You will lose. You will never work in this town again, and maybe not in any town.”
“And if I do sign?” I ask, throat tight.
“Then they own your face for the length of this contract,” he says. “But you get paid. Your legal exposure goes away. You get a shot at controlling at least part of your own story. And…” He hesitates. “You get to look Dante in the eye and know he has to deal with you as a human, not a headline.”
Something in my chest flinches at that. At the idea of meeting the man whose worst five minutes I blasted into the world.
“I don’t want to be in front of the camera,” I say. It comes out more raw than I intend. “I’m an editor. I don’t—this isn’t who I am.”
“Maybe,” Cole says. His gaze is steady, unnervingly kind. “Or maybe you’ve just never been asked who you might be if you weren’t busy cleaning up other people’s stories.”
I look down at the contract again. The lines swim.
“I tanked an indie once,” I say quietly, more to the table than to him. “Bad edit. Wrong call. The director trusted me and I blew it. I told myself I’d stay invisible after that. No more power. No more chances to wreck anyone’s life but mine.”
Cole doesn’t look surprised. “How’s that been working out for you?”
I bark out a humorless laugh. “Fantastic. I’m wildly successful and loved by all.”
He nudges a pen toward me. “You were going to get destroyed either way, Marina. This way, at least, you’re in the frame when it happens.”
I think about the rent notice. The hate comments. The way Dante’s shoulders hunched when he said, I’m not a product.
Maybe I deserve the villain edit. Maybe I deserve worse.
But some stubborn, furious part of me—the part that still loves film despite everything, that still sees shots in layers of light and sound—whispers: If they’re going to use you, use them back.
I pick up the pen.
“When do I meet him?” I ask.
Cole’s mouth curves, rueful. “Contract says you report to the house tomorrow afternoon. Dante’s already there.”
The words thud through me.
“Tomorrow.” I sign on the last line, my name a messy scrawl that feels like an execution order. “So soon?”
“The internet moves fast,” Cole says. “We have to move faster.” He takes the contract, sliding it back into the folder with practiced efficiency. “Pack light. The show likes it when people arrive with emotional baggage, not physical.”
I try to smile and fail. “Any advice?”
“Yeah.” He pauses at the door, hand on the knob. “Don’t let them convince you you’re only what they say you are. And… don’t underestimate him.”
“Dante?”
He nods. “He’s not just the guy you saw on that feed. He’s worse. And better.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
I stand in the center of my tiny apartment, the quiet pressing in from all sides. My phone buzzes again. Another notification. Another stranger deciding who I am.
Tomorrow, I’ll walk into a house wired with cameras, straight into the orbit of a man whose life I just set on fire.
I don’t know if I’m going there to be punished, to survive, or to do something I’ll regret even more.
But I do know one thing as my fingers curl around the cool metal of my front door, imagining a different door, a different threshold.
Whatever Dante Riker is when the cameras aren’t rolling, I’m about to find out—and there will be nowhere left to hide.
