Chapter 1

The blue light from the phone screen burned Avery's dry eyes.

She stayed curled on the living room sofa of her high-rise apartment, her knees pulled tightly to her chest.

At the top of the Twitter trending list, the hashtag AveryBirdGetOffTV glared back at her. Beneath it was an endless, scrolling wall of pure venom.

She dragged her thumb across the glass, trying to swipe the timeline away, but her finger slipped.

A video published by TMZ auto-played.

It was Kenneth. He was stumbling outside a club, his face flushed with alcohol, staring directly into the paparazzi's flashing cameras.

"Avery... I just want Avery," Kenneth slurred in the video, his voice dripping with a fake, sickening devotion.

A violent wave of nausea hit Avery's stomach. She gagged, the acid rising in her throat.

She slammed the phone face-down onto the glass coffee table. The sharp crack echoed in the dead silence of the room.

A sudden, aggressive buzzing from the doorbell made her jump.

Avery swung her legs off the sofa. She walked to the door, her bare feet cold against the hardwood floor.

She pressed her eye to the peephole. Quinn, her manager, stood in the hallway, her face flushed and her jaw tight.

Avery unlocked the deadbolt.

Quinn pushed through the door like a hurricane, bringing a blast of over-conditioned hallway air mixed with the faint smell of industrial carpet cleaner with her.

She didn't even kick off her shoes. She marched straight to the dining table and slammed a manila folder down on the marble surface. The network's logo was stamped on the front.

The folder slid a few inches, spilling a single sheet of paper.

The words "Indefinite Suspension" were printed in bold, black ink.

Avery's lungs stopped working.

She reached out and gripped the edge of the cold marble counter, her knuckles turning completely white. The countless sleepless nights prepping scripts, the thousands of hours smiling into a camera lens, everything she had built from nothing over the last decade-all of it turned to ash in a single second. A ridiculous, fabricated lie that had absolutely nothing to do with her was executing her entire career.

Quinn ran her hands roughly through her hair, pacing the floor.

"The executives want to cut ties," Quinn snapped. "They need to put out the fire, and you're the easiest thing to burn."

"I don't even have his personal number, Quinn," Avery said, her voice tight.

Quinn let out a harsh, humorless laugh.

"The public doesn't care about the truth, Avery. They only care about the screenshots Caryn posted. The matching luxury watches. The same flight manifests. The identical hotel check-ins."

Avery snatched her phone off the coffee table.

She pulled up her contacts and hit call on Kenneth's agent's number, holding the phone up so Quinn could hear.

A cold, automated voice immediately filled the room. The call went straight to a full voicemail box. He was rejecting her calls entirely.

Avery's chest heaved. She switched to Instagram and typed in Caryn's handle.

User not found. She was completely blocked.

Avery threw the phone hard against the sofa cushions. Her breathing was jagged, her ribs aching with every inhale.

Quinn stopped pacing. She let out a long sigh and walked over to the liquor cabinet.

She poured two glasses of neat whiskey and walked back, shoving one into Avery's hand.

"Drink it," Quinn ordered. "You need to face exactly how alone we are right now."

Avery took the glass. The freezing condensation on the outside of the crystal grounded her slightly.

She tipped her head back and swallowed the liquor in one gulp. The alcohol burned a fiery path down her throat, forcing the sting of tears back from her eyes.

"Does the PR department have a counter-strategy?" Avery asked, her voice raspy.

Quinn wouldn't look at her. She turned her head, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the swarm of paparazzi vans parked on the street below.

"Standard PR is dead," Quinn said, her voice heavy.

Avery heard the slight hesitation in Quinn's tone. The hair on her arms stood up.

"What else?" Avery demanded. "Tell me the rest."

Quinn reached into the bottom of her leather briefcase. She pulled out a thick stack of legal envelopes.

Avery recognized the embossed logos immediately. They belonged to the top-tier luxury brands she endorsed.

Quinn slid the stack across the marble island.

"Breach of contract warnings," Quinn said quietly. "They are terminating your deals."

Avery stared down at the crisp white envelopes. Her vision blurred.

Her reputation was dead, her career was gone, and now, she was staring at absolute bankruptcy.