Chapter 1 A Beautiful Lie

The flashbulbs were blinding, even behind tinted glass.

Lena Hale adjusted her sunglasses, lips slightly parted, not in surprise, but calculation. Outside the car window, a huddle of paparazzi waited in the drizzle like vultures with credit card debt, lenses lifted and twitching for a shot worth five figures. They weren't here for her. Not yet.

"Miss Hale, are you ready?" her driver asked without looking at her. The question was redundant.

"I'm always ready," she replied smoothly.

She opened the door and stepped out, immediately wrapped in the strange silence of a hundred clicks. No one shouted her name. Not this time. They weren't sure it was her yet-she liked it that way.

Lena's stilettos tapped against the wet pavement as she walked into the hotel, posture immaculate. Head high. Eyes forward. Inside, the lobby was a wash of gold fixtures, soft jazz, and overpriced perfume. A man in a suit greeted her with a practiced smile and handed over the key without asking for ID. Discretion had already been paid for.

The elevator ride to the penthouse was quick but not quiet. Her heart ticked louder than the floor numbers. She checked the corridor behind her twice before inserting the key.

The suite smelled like bergamot and memory.

Callum Maddox stood by the window, back to her, shirtless, nursing a glass of something dark. His reflection in the glass didn't turn when she entered, but his voice cut through the stillness.

"You're late."

Lena dropped her bag. "You're paranoid."

He turned. And even after all this time, she still felt the punch of it-his presence. That cinematic face, all bone and storm, the way he looked at her like he could see the thoughts she hadn't said yet. Hollywood's most wanted man, barefoot and wrecked, wrapped in silence and shadow.

He didn't smile. "Someone followed you."

"I lost them three blocks from here."

"Still." He downed the drink. "They're getting closer."

Lena kicked off her shoes and walked toward him. "They're always getting closer."

He let her take the glass from his hand, set it on the table. The tension between them hummed like a wire stretched too tight.

"I think it's time," he said.

"For what?"

"For us to stop hiding."

Lena stilled. Her blood cooled as if someone had opened a window in winter.

"You're not serious."

Callum stepped closer, voice low. "The walls are closing in. Someone knows, Lena. Someone who's not playing games anymore. You saw the last message."

She had. And she wished she hadn't.

It arrived two nights ago: a photo slipped under her apartment door. She and Callum, asleep in a Lisbon hotel room, limbs tangled, utterly unaware. The angle was wrong-close. Personal.

On the back, a handwritten note in blue ink:

I see what he sees in you. I would've kept you safer.

No signature. No prints. Just a chill she couldn't shake.

Lena turned away from Callum now, arms crossed.

"If we go public, they'll make me the story," she said. "Not you. Not us. Just me. The girl who bagged the mystery actor after he vanished for a year. And when they dig..."

Her voice trailed off, but he knew. He always knew.

Her past wasn't something she'd ever fully told him. Not the way she should have. The controlling ex. The dead one. The silence she'd paid for with bruises and therapy and relocation. Her career had been born from escape. Her image? Carefully constructed armor.

"I can handle headlines," Callum said quietly. "What I can't handle is watching you fall apart from fear."

She looked at him then, and his expression-frustrated, protective, helpless-sliced through her.

"You think I'm scared?" she said.

"I think you're pretending you're not."

Lena sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly tired.

"Paranoia is a luxury," she murmured. "Fear is fuel. It keeps me moving. Keeps me alive."

Callum sat beside her, shoulders brushing.

"Do you regret it?" he asked.

"What?"

"This. Us."

She didn't answer right away.

How could she?

Regret wasn't the right word. She regretted the price. The secrecy. The mounting dread that their love wasn't something beautiful, but something hunted. But not him. Never him.

"No," she whispered. "But I do regret not seeing it sooner."

"Seeing what?"

"That someone was watching us long before we noticed."

He didn't respond. But she felt his body still beside hers.

Lena rose again and walked to the windows, her silhouette framed by the fogged skyline. The city stretched below them, unaware, or pretending to be.

"They're not just watching," she said. "They're waiting."

"For what?"

"For one of us to break."

Behind her, Callum's phone buzzed once on the table. Neither moved at first.

Then he picked it up.

One message.

No number.

Just a video thumbnail. Lena recognized the first frame-it was from their Paris trip six months ago. Her in the bath, eyes closed, singing something soft. A moment that felt safe then. Private. Sacred.

But now-violated.

Callum didn't open the video. Just stared at it like it might explode in his hand.

"This isn't just blackmail," he said at last.

Lena nodded.

"No. This is personal."

Silence settled between them like ash.

Far below, the photographers were still waiting-cameras lifted, lenses trained on a hotel window where no one appeared. Not yet.

Lena Hale stood there, in the glow of cameras neither on nor off.

And somewhere out there, someone was watching through a lens that didn't blink.