“How do you live in the world and not know that?” Melanie mutters.
Jake holds his hands up. “Hey, I don’t know, all those pop girls look and sound the same to me.”
Becky rolls her eyes, grumbling something about his favorite bands sounding the same.
“Harlow’s the one who fell down during her performance at the VMAs a few years back, remember?” says Melanie.
“I thought that was Madonna?”
“No, she fell at the BRIT Awards.”
“Oh, and then she had that breakdown, right?” A lightbulb seems to spark to life in Jake’s mind. “I remember seeing that rehab story.”
Becky sighs. “It wasn’t a breakdown and it wasn’t rehab—the media made it sound a lot worse because she missed a few shows after Colton Scott announced his engagement, like, a month after they broke up—but yeah…”
“You say that like we aren’t the media,” Jake quips.
Naomi pushes back her chair and stands, weaving through the furniture dotted around the open-plan office to get to Becky. “Let me see.”
Brushing her ash-brown hair over her shoulders, Naomi cranes her neck to watch the video looping on Becky’s phone from the C*Leb TikTok account, which shows the pop star being ushered into jail. Still looking like her usual demure self, Harlow isn’t hiding in a hoodie or staring at the floor like most celebrities do when they’re arrested. Instead, she holds her head high and smirks for the cameras.
An eerie feeling washes over Naomi. Crossing her arms, she watches in awe as the footage of the arrest cuts to a photo of Harlow from earlier in her career, when she was dubbed “America’s Princess of Pop.” Platinum-blonde hair. Dimples. Sparkly green eyes. Thin frame. A complete shift in style to her current, much darker aesthetic. Still, beneath the raven-colored hair, black eyeliner, and thick false lashes, the same magnetic, albeit slightly vulnerable aura encapsulates her.
“This is the article.” Melanie pushes her phone toward Naomi.
As she scans the page, her heart races—an uncommon reaction for the jaded twenty-nine-year-old, who’s rarely shocked these days.
“Joel published it like five minutes ago,” Melanie says, referring to C*Leb’s managing editor, who splits his time between the East and West Coast.
“New York always gets the jump on us.” Jake tosses a ball of paper into the trash can across the aisle.
As if he’s been summoned, Joel Casey’s name flashes onto Naomi’s now-vibrating Apple Watch. She rushes back to her desk to get to her phone.
“Jo—”
“You see the news?” he says, before she can finish his name.
Joel has been Naomi’s boss ever since she first started as his assistant in New York, before working her way up to senior staff writer. He’s one of the main reasons Naomi has stayed at C*Leb for so long. Even though he can be brash and borderline offensive at times, he treats his employees well, especially Naomi. He respects her not only as a writer, but also as a person. He was empathetic and understanding when she needed time off after her life came crashing down, then he helped her transfer to LA.
“Yeah. We just saw the video. It’s…” Naomi can’t find the words to describe it, realizing, for once, she’s actually surprised.Harlow Hayes, of all people...
If Naomi had to put money on it, she would have bet on Harlow being the victim, if anything. The thought reminds her that there’s no mention of one in Joel’s article.
“Wait, who’d she kill?”
Chapter 2
Naomi holds her breath as she awaits Joel’s response, buzzing with curiosity.Who the hell did one of the world’s biggest pop stars murder?
She knows the “why” will have to wait, but you can’t arrest someone for murder without a dead body. Normally, the identity of the victim is revealed before the suspect.
But this is not a normal case.
“Don’t know, it’s all very hush-hush, according to my sources. No one is spilling.” Joel’s frustrated tone is deep but calm. “All I know is she’s in Nash now, waiting to get transported to Rikers.”
“Rikers?” Naomi blurts, unable to fathom someone as glamorous as Harlow locked up there.
“Well, thatiswhere the murderers of New York go.”
