CHAPTER 1
INDIA
The thing about being a pop star is that no one tells you how boring it is.
Not the shows — the shows are everything. Two hours of lights and sound and thousands of people singing words I wrote back at me. That part still feels like magic, even after six years. Even when I'm exhausted. Even when my voice is shredded and my feet are screaming and I've smiled so hard my face hurts.
It's everything else that wears you down.
The hotels that all look the same. The interviews where they ask the same questions. The handlers and stylists and managers and security, all of them wanting something, all of them treating me like a product to be optimized. Smile here. Stand there. Don't eat that, you're photographing heavy. Be grateful. Be humble. Be available. Beon.
Tonight's show was good. Phoenix crowd, twelve thousand people, the kind of energy that makes the exhaustion worth it. I killed the encore. I did the meet-and-greet after without snapping at anyone. I smiled for every photo, signed every album, pretended I wasn't counting the minutes until I could be alone.
And now I'm walking into my hotel room at midnight, heels in my hand, ready to collapse face-first onto the bed and not move until someone makes me.
But something's wrong.
I know it before I'm fully through the door. Before I've dropped my bag or done any of the post-show rituals — order room service I won't eat, stare at the ceiling wondering why I still do this.
The room looks exactly the same.
And that's the problem.
I stand in the doorway, key card still in my hand, and let my eyes move across the space. King suite, same as every other city. Tasteful beige, overpriced minibar, view of the skyline nobody ever looks at. Everything where it should be.
Except.
My suitcase is by the closet. I left it by the window. I remember because I'd been digging through it for my good earrings before going to soundcheck, and I'd left the whole thing open and messy and exactly where it was.
I step inside and let the door fall shut behind me. My heart is beating too hard but I make myself walk further in, make myself look. The bathroom door is open the way I left it. The complimentary robe is still draped over the chair. My laptop is still on the desk, charging cable coiled beside it.
But my makeup bag has been moved. Just slightly. Turned so the zipper faces the other direction.
The clothes I left spilling out of my suitcase have been refolded. Neat edges. Careful stacks.
And the necklace I always leave on the bathroom counter — my grandmother's pendant, the one I never wear onstage but can't travel without — is sitting on my pillow.
Centered. Careful.Placed.
I don't scream. I don't run. I just stand there, staring at that small gold pendant against the white pillowcase, and feel something cold settle into my bones.
Someone was in here.
Someone touched my things. Went through my suitcase. Refolded my clothes like they had all the time in the world. Handled my grandmother's necklace — held it in their hands, carried it across the room, set it down just so.
And then arranged it all again, neat and deliberate, so I'd know.
So I'dfeelit.
This wasn't violence. It was intimacy. And that's so much worse.
I back out of the room without touching anything and call Nate.
Nate's pacing the hallway outside my room, phone pressed to his ear.
"It has to be him," he's saying to whoever's on the other end. "I know. Iknow. That's why I'm calling you."
I'm sitting on a luggage cart someone abandoned near the elevators, knees pulled to my chest, watching my manager spiral. Nate doesn't spiral. Nate is the calm one. Nate handles crises with spreadsheets and conference calls and that steady voice that makes everyone believe things are under control.
