The email lands in my inbox at 8:03 a.m., like a bullet with a subject line.
URGENT: REED ACCOUNT – FINAL DECISION
My coffee is still too hot, my office still too cold, my pulse already wrong.
I click before I can talk myself out of it.
Harper,
I need your answer on Jackson Reed by noon. Either you take him as a full-time personal client, or Cole & Lane forfeits the buyout. Without the buyout, we’re done inside of three months.
You built this place with me. Don’t let it die out of pride.
Lydia
A second email is attached, forwarded. The original sender is a name that makes most of Hollywood sit up straighter: Victor Hale, studio god, destroyer of careers, savior of box office weekends. I don’t need to open that one to know what it says. He wants the best crisis strategist in town glued to his golden boy’s side.
He wants me.
The irony tastes metallic.
I set the mug down, too hard. Coffee sloshes over the rim, bleeding into a ring on the report I was pretending to read. Some anonymous actor’s DUI, some easily fixable mess. I deal in those. I do not deal in Jackson Reed.
Outside my window, the Hollywood Hills sit smug in the morning haze, all sharp angles and sun-bleached promise. Somewhere behind that view is a mansion with a private screening room and a locked cabinet full of NDAs, and a man whose face I’ve seen a thousand times under studio-perfect lighting.
And once, in the worst possible way.
My phone buzzes. Lydia, of course.
“Tell me you’ve read it,” she says by way of hello.
“I’ve read it.” My voice comes out flat. I press my thumb into the coffee ring until the paper gives.
“And?”
“And nothing’s changed since last night.” I stare at the cursor blinking in the reply box, the empty space where my signature should go. “I’m not taking him.”
Her exhale crackles through the line. “You’re not taking a seven-figure account that single-handedly rescues our agency from insolvency because…?”
Because his silence ruined my sister. Because he’s the poster boy of the machine that chewed her up and spat her into the internet’s black hole.
“Because I don’t handle A-listers,” I say. “You know that.”
“You don’t handle A-listers because you don’t like losing control. This is different.” Lydia’s tone shifts, less boss, more battlefield surgeon. “Victor is offering us a buyout, Harper. Real numbers. No more begging for C-list reality rehab gigs. You do a year with Reed, build the narrative, hold his hand through award season, and then you walk away with enough cash to actually choose your clients.”
“A year.” I let the word hang, heavy. “A year living in that man’s shadow. No.”
“You won’t be living in his shadow. You’ll be holding his leash.”
It’s meant as a joke. It lands like a threat.
“You could have picked anyone,” I mutter.
“They didn’t ask for anyone. They asked for you.” Lydia pauses, and when she speaks again, the armor drops completely. “Harper… we can’t make payroll in six weeks if this doesn’t go through. I’ve mortgaged my house twice. The bank’s done. I am out of tricks.”
I close my eyes. See Ava’s face, the way she used to look in my cluttered apartment, wearing my oversized college sweatshirt, practicing lines in the mirror. Hear the way she stopped answering calls when audition offers stopped coming. The way her voice broke the night she whispered, It’s not even me, Harp. It’s not me and they don’t care.
