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And Ben is hot, that part is non-negotiable. I just only seem interested in wildly unavailable doctors at this exact moment.

He shakes my hand and introduces me to his associate, Amelia. We make some small talk about Hayes and Tali and the baby, and then his hands steeple atop his notepad.

“So,” he says, “I understand you want to break up with some people.”

I nod. My heart is racing and I press a hand to my chest, waiting to feel air slip in and out of my throat. “I’m terrified,” I admit.

My phone buzzes on the table. Davis is calling me. “Do you need to get that?” Ben asks.

I shake my head. “Do you know how crazy this situation is right now?” I ask them quietly. “I don’t even know if he’s traced my whereabouts. There’s literally nothing in my life he doesn’t know more about than I do. He arranged this phone purchase. He hired my publicist and my accountant and my assistant and they all answer to him. I keep picturing that door opening and him walking in.”

Ben leans back in his chair and shrugs off his jacket. “Then before we do anything else,” he says, “maybe you ought to turn the phone off, just in case.”

I’d worried that I sounded paranoid. Now I wonder if I was paranoid enough.

Ben and Amelia ask questions and take copious notes. They’re so incredibly assured and thorough that I begin to hope they can actually get me out of this mess. But Ben says he needs to see my contracts and all that hope whistles straight back out of me.

Every contract is in the possession of Davis or other people Davis hired. I know of no way to get Ben a thing without alerting them all.

I tell them this, feeling like an idiot. “I was twenty when I got signed,” I explain, “and I was dead broke. I was just thrilled someone was willing to take charge and handle all the details, and anytime I need something, Davis has always just offered to take care of it.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I bet he did.” I hear in his sigh the words he kept to himself. Of course he offered to take care of it—he wanted to make sure no one was checking up on him. For a girl who insists she can’t lean on anyone, it strikes me that I allowed myself to just lie flat where Davis is concerned.

“As far as those contracts go,” he continues, “how do you feel about pretending to buy a house?”

I laugh. “What?”

“You’re going to decide to buy a house. An amazing, very expensive house somewhere in LA.” He turns to Amelia and she nods and pulls out her phone, already researching. “And I’m going to approach your accountant and whoever else for copies of those contracts, because obviously any bank would want to see them before they give you a loan.”

Amelia holds up her phone. “This one’s nice,” she says, showing us a twenty-two-million-dollar mansion with multiple pools overlooking the lights of the city.

I laugh. “I live in a one-bedroom right now. That’s quite the upgrade.”

Ben’s smile is brief. “Great. But I’ve got to warn you—there’s a strong possibility he’s been mismanaging things.”

My stomach sinks. “Mismanaging them…how?”

He frowns. “Drew, even decent people are seduced by power, by someone else’s money. Even decent people rationalize skimming off the top. And Davis doesn’t sound like he was ever a decent person.”

“So you think he’s been taking my money,” I whisper. I’m sure I sound impossibly naïve to him right now, since I’ve clearly painted Davis as an asshole. But there’s a vast divide between an asshole and a thief.

“I’d stake my life on the fact that he’s been taking your money,” he says. “It’s just a matter of how much money, and how many other people have been helping themselves alongside him. He’s gone to great lengths to keep you out of the loop, and there’s probably a reason for it.”

“Are you really going to be able to figure all this out, though?” I ask, feeling winded. Sure, I have money. I have a lot of money. But most of my revenue from the last tour and the most recent album is still “out there” somewhere, theoretically being held until venues and the crew and a thousand other entities have gotten their cut. I wouldn’t know where to begin trying to separate out the truth from the excuses.

“With some help, yes,” he says. I like that he’s so sure of himself—one of us needs to be. “But if my suspicions are correct, he’s going to fight you tooth and nail to hang on to control, and you’re really going to need a backbone when it happens. He’s going to try to convince you to let him handle everything with the house, and he’ll go out of his way to make you back down.”

I want Ben to be wrong about all this, but what he’s describing sounds exactly like what Davis has done all along.

* * *

“Why the fuck are you buying a twenty-two-million-dollar house?” Davis demands when I arrive on set the next day.

I shouldn’t be surprised but somehow I am. Ben contacted my accountant, and my accountant ran straight to Davis. That, to me, is the first nail in the coffin for them both.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I reply. “I can afford it, right?”

I see the way frustration twists inside him. There’s a momentary flare of his nostrils, a curl of his lip. “You’re famous,” he says after a second’s pause. “You don’t need to go through a bank for a loan like you’re Bob and Betty Sue of Buttfuck, Nowhere, hoping to qualify for a new condo. We’ve got people who can take care of all that for you.”