"We’ve got someone managing your accounts. Enough scheduled content, enough polished captions to keep up the illusion. Your fans won’t notice and your assistant has been… reassured all is fine."
My mouth goes dry. "You'repretendingto be me? How fucking dare you! You can’t be me!"
He meets my stare without flinching. "Until we figure out what kind of threat you’ve created, yes."
I take a step back. "That’s insane. I swear to God, if you screw up my brand…"
"It’s smart. You built your brand to be effortless, remember? No one questions a digital detox when it’s framed with the right filter."
I take a shaky breath, then another, trying to steady myself, trying to find a footing on this shifting, treacherous ground. "So, what now?" I ask, the sass returning. "You keep me here until I'm Stockholm Syndrome Barbie? All obedient and grateful? Is that the grand plan?"
He doesn't answer my question. With a quiet pivot, he walks to the door. He's already bored with me.
"You'll have dinner delivered at seven," he says, his hand already on the handle. "Ifyou behave."
I snatch the throw pillow from the chaise lounge and hurl it at his retreating back with all my strength. It hits the doorframe behind him with a soft thud.
Damn, I missed.
I stroll over to the chaise lounge and plop down hard. The plush fabric offers no comfort. I want to cry, but I won't. I refuse to give him that satisfaction. I refuse to let him see me completely broken.
Instead, I whisper into the suffocating silence of the lavish room. "Someone will find me. They have to."
CHAPTER 6
RAFE
The security feed projects her image onto the wall in front of me, a silent, grainy film. I rewind the tape and watch her throw the pillow as if she genuinely believes a soft object crashing harmlessly into drywall can somehow undo the rules of this place. Her movements are fueled by an intense rage that's almost fascinating in its futility.
She doesn't know the room has no microphones. Only cameras. The audio would be a distraction. I don't need to hear her speak when I can already see precisely what she's trying, desperately, to conceal.
Her body language is far more reliable than her words. She doesn’t eat the food. She doesn’t cry. She paces, stubbornly dramatic, as if her rebellion can be livestreamed to someone who’ll care.
And yet… there’s a crack now. Her pacing has slowed. The show’s ending. The silence is seeping in. She’s beginning to understand no one is watching but me.
I allow precisely three hours to pass before I return to the room. It's a calculated interval, long enough for her initial burst of defiance to dissipate, but not so long that despair can truly settle in. I want her agitated, not resigned.
When I walk in, she's standing, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. She's always ready for a fight.
"Oh look," she says. "The brooding overlord returns. To what do I owe the distinct displeasure?"
The silence, again, is my most potent weapon, saying more than any words.
"I'm serious," she continues. "If this is going to be my life now, if this is my new normal, I at least deserve a wardrobe upgrade. I can't believe your guys left my luggage behind and there's only so much neutral beige a girl can take. My aesthetic is being severely compromised, and that, is a form of torture. I'm sure there's something about it in the Geneva Convention."
I walk to the table near the glass wall where an untouched tray of food still sits. I set a thin, cream-colored file down.
She stares at it, her head tilted slightly. Her hands remain clenched, but her gaze is fixed on the folder. A subtle shift from aggression to suspicion.
"What's that?" she asks, her tone laced with suspicion. "Something for me to sign?"
"Your digital trail," I state. "Thoroughly compiled and printed. Every single pixel you thought you controlled."
She crosses her arms defensively. "I'm sorry, did you just say you printed the internet? Are you a digital archaeologist? Is that a thing now?"
I ignore the flippant remark and open the folder. I slide a few pages toward her across the polished surface of the table. Screenshots. Posts. Comments. DM timestamps. Geotag data. Metadata. A complete record of her public and private digital existence.
"This," I say, tapping a finger lightly on the top sheet, "is every piece of content you created over the past six months that included location services. Public and private. Synced from cloud backups, from your various applications, from evenyour discarded drafts. A comprehensive record. We're very thorough."
