Pieces of consciousness came back to me in fragments. Dark shapes at first, all still, not moving. My chest burned from whatever I had inhaled. My throat was raw.
The first thing I realized was that I couldn’t move my arms. They were twisted behind my back, something biting into my wrists whenever I tried to move. My back pressed against something hard. I was seated, I realized. In a room. A dark room. Small room.
In the darkness, it was difficult to make out what was in front of me. It looked like a series of sticks of some sort, propped up on the ground. Something round protruded from one, and a square protruded from another. All of them taking the form of silhouettes with the faintest artificial light streaming through the window. City lights? Streetlights? That familiar amber color that used to stream into my old apartment?—
Wait.
That shadowy dent in the wall. That specific crack in the plaster that looked like a lightning bolt. I’d stared at it athousand times while filming, always meaning to patch it, but never getting around to?—
Holy shit.
I’m in my apartment.
My old studio room, to be exact. The room where I’d built my empire, one perfectly curated post at a time. Everything had been moved, relocated to Axel’s penthouse. But somehow, this man had gotten in. Copied my key when I wasn’t looking? Broken in? Did it matter?
Movement flickered in my peripheral vision just before lights exploded like a bomb going off. Stadium bright. Interrogation-room bright.
I squeezed my eyes shut from the assault.
“Good. You’re awake.” Mathew’s voice drifted from across the room, casual, as if we’d bumped into each other at Starbucks.
I forced my eyes open, blinking through the burn until the room came into focus.
He stood behind what I now recognized as a professional setup he must have brought himself: tripods loaded with cameras, angled beauty lights, positioned with surgical precision. One circular, one square. He’d even set up a bounce board against the far wall, the kind that made your skin look porcelain perfect and erased every flaw.
All of it aimed directly at me.
A quick scan revealed the rest of his twisted vision: my old dresses—the ones I’d been searching for, the ones that had somehow disappeared shortly before we broke up—now hung in shredded ribbons across the back of my chair like confetti from hell. And covering every inch of the wall behind me were photos. Hundreds of them.
All of me.
Screenshots from my videos, candid shots I’d never posed for, images where I was smiling that perfect influencer smile.Every single one showed me looking like the epitome of success and beauty.
What in the ever-loving hell is this?
“What …” My voice cracked, thanks to whatever chemical cocktail he’d used to knock me out. How long had I been out? Hours? Days? “What are you doing?”
Mathew ignored me completely, fingers dancing across multiple cell phones and camera controls. Over half a dozen devices, all blinking red, like hungry little eyes.
“Time for your live stream,” he said, not bothering to look at me. His tone was conversational. Friendly even. Which somehow made it ten times more terrifying.
He’s about to go live,I realized. Probably on allmyplatforms.
“Want to know what I’m calling it?”
The cameras beeped in sequence with a digital countdown to disaster. My follower notifications were probably exploding right now. Thousands of people tuning in, expecting another slice of my life.
“Dakota Fox’s Final Live Stream.”
The word hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
Final.
Oh God.
57
AXEL
