第2章

The banging outside slowly stopped.

Her fans had gotten it out of their systems and left, still swearing.

I got up, walked to the entryway, and looked through the peephole.

The hallway was a mess. A little red paint had seeped in under the door and gone dark.

I left it and went back to the living room to pour myself a whiskey.

The ice knocked against the glass, bright and sharp, too loud in the empty apartment.

Mara's stream was still running.

She had stopped crying and started bringing relationship streamers onto the call to talk about how to handle a man like me.

Every one of them denounced me with righteous outrage, using the ugliest assumptions and the shoddiest logic to tear me apart.

I became public enemy number one, a modern-day Don Juan.

I picked up my phone and texted her back.

"I paid cash for that apartment before we got married. What makes you think I'm signing it over to you?"

The reply came back instantly.

"What makes me think? I have ten million followers now! One word from me, and you're finished! Kade, do you still not get it? You're garbage at the bottom, and I'm standing at the top of the pyramid. Call the apartment compensation for the years I wasted on you. If you're smart, you'll sign the deed over to me tomorrow. If not, I'll drop more dirt on you tomorrow. I'll make sure there's nowhere left for you to go."

I scrolled through those lines with my thumb until the cigarette burned down to the filter and the heat on my fingers snapped me out of it.

Every memory of our three years together collided with the cruelty in that message thread.

I had used every connection I had in the entertainment industry to build her up.

To protect her image, I was willing to be a shadow behind her.

No holding hands in public, no showing my face at parties, and when she was sick in the hospital I could only sit with her as her assistant.

I gave her everything, and she decided I was in her way.

I took a drink. The burn went down my throat and my chest stayed cold.

On her birthday a year ago, the second-biggest donor on her list, a man who drove a Maybach, sent $150,000 in gifts during her livestream. She stared at the screen, unable to stop smiling.

That night, she pushed away the bowl of pasta I handed her and asked whether I could make something of myself instead of cooking all day. After that, the way she looked at me changed.

"Mara, can we just end this cleanly?"

I was trying one last time.

"For the sake of what we had, I don't want to take this all the way."

Her answer came back dripping with contempt.

"What we had? You live off me and you want to talk about what we had? Kade, is there something wrong with your head? Who do you think you are? You're a useless waste of space I've been feeding! You don't want to take this all the way? You don't get to say that! Fine. You want proof the hard way? Tomorrow night at eight, I'm bringing the richest man in New York, Mr. Cole, onto my stream. I'm going to tell him everything about you. I'll have him blacklist you across the entire industry! By the time I'm done, not even a day-labor crew will take you!"

I stared at the message, my finger hovering over the screen for a long time.

The richest man in New York.

Adrian.

He was a man whose slightest move could rattle all of New York, and Mara had somehow gotten to him.

I had to hand it to her. She knew how to network.

She had really spared no expense to take me down.

But she had overlooked one very important thing.

I opened my contacts and scrolled to Adrian's name.

A message from the day before was still there.

"Boss, the matter you assigned has been handled."

"The acquisition of the streaming platform has cleared the final stage."

"We can announce it whenever you want."

I did not answer him. I switched back to Mara's thread.

"Fine. I'll be waiting."

I sent those four words and blocked her.

Once something was beyond saving, there was no reason to soften the ending.

She wanted to play. I would play it out to the end.

I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at the neon burning over New York.

In this city countless people claw their way toward something they want, and countless others get greedy and bury themselves.

Mara was the second kind.

She thought that cracking the algorithm meant she could do anything, that catching the wave meant the rules no longer applied to her.

She had no idea whose ground she was standing on.