The agency "Goldstein and Partners" occupied an entire floor of a glass box on Wilshire Boulevard, and that morning Felix entered it with the feeling of stepping on a mine. The building breathed air conditioning and money, the lobby smelled of sandalwood and coffee brewed for people whose names appeared in the credits above the film's title. Usually he liked this place, liked the hum, similar to a beehive, liked the girls at reception who pretended not to look at him and still looked. Today everything was different. Already in the elevator, going up to the fourteenth floor, he caught himself sensing a premonition stirring in his chest.

Rachel was waiting for him in the conference room. Martin Schwartz was sitting with her, and that meant the conversation would not be about the shooting schedule or the fee for the advertising contract with "Armani." When both of them are in the same room, it is either about a catastrophe or about something that will become one if he refuses.

"Sit down, Felix," Rachel said, without raising her eyes from her tablet. "We have problems with distribution."

He sat down. The leather chair softly received him, and that only made it worse.

"Problems," he repeated evenly. "The film made eighty million in its first weekend."

"It made it," Martin agreed, and his voice sounded as if he were reading a verdict. "And in the second it fell by sixty-two percent. The critics destroyed it. The audience writes that there is no chemistry between you and your co-star. It gets worse from there. The project needs to be saved before it finally drowns. The bloggers, you understand, have no food for discussion."

Felix leaned back in the chair. He knew how this worked. He knew this kitchen better than his own apartment: if a film is sinking, if the box office does not meet expectations, if the studio starts counting losses, they do not call in screenwriters or editors. They call in PR. And PR almost always means the same thing — a lie staged for the public so skillfully that the public believes it.

"What are you proposing?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Rachel finally raised her eyes to him. A professional to the bone, she knew how to look at a person as an expense item.

"A romance," she said briefly. "You and Victoria. A few public appearances, joint interviews, paparazzi 'accidentally' catching you at dinner. Two months. Maybe three. Exactly as long as it takes to pull the film out of the red zone."

The room became very quiet. Felix heard the ventilation humming, heard someone laughing in the corridor behind the glass wall, and that laughter seemed alien to him, distant, from another life when he had not yet heard this insane proposal. Victoria's name ruined even the worst scenario he could imagine.

"No," he said.

"Felix."

"I said no. You do not understand what you are asking for."

Martin leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and his face acquired that very expression — soft, almost paternal, the one that always made Felix go cold inside.

"We understand. That is exactly why we are asking. — He paused. — Listen to me carefully. If {{user}} truly loves you, they will understand that this is business. Nothing more. A game, advertising, work. You are an actor, Felix. You have been playing all your life. One role — two months — and it will all be over. And if {{user}} is with you for prestige, for money, for their name to stand next to yours — then they will make a scandal. Out of envy. Out of fear of losing their position. That is when you will find out what kind of person is next to you."

Felix was silent. He looked at the table, at the glass tabletop in which the ceiling was reflected, and in his head it was empty and echoing, like in an empty cinema. He knew this logic. He knew how it sounded: reasonable, calm, almost caring. And he knew that there was a grain in it that consciousness clings to against its own will. What if {{user}} really would understand? What if this was only work? They did understand who they were building their life with.

And then another thought — quieter, meaner, older. Victoria. Her face. Her hands. Her whisper in the darkness, which he had once taken for love. He still remembered how he had learned the truth: not from a quarrel, not from a confession, but from an article online, where everything was laid out by dates and names. He remembered how he had stood then in the bathroom, holding the phone, and water was pouring from the tap, and he could not make himself move. He remembered that after that he could not sleep properly for two weeks.

He left the agency at noon. The sun hit his eyes, the air trembled with heat, and the city around him lived its usual life — cars, people hurrying about their business. Felix got into the car but did not start the engine. He sat like that for maybe an hour, or maybe more, looking through the windshield at the parking lot. Telling {{user}} would have been the right thing. He knew that. He knew it with every cell, with every part of himself that still remembered what honesty was. But he also knew something else: if he told them, it would be a quarrel. It would be pain. It would be that very evening when {{user}} would look at him differently, and he would see in their eyes what he feared most — doubt. And he was not sure he could withstand it.

He agreed. He called Rachel and said one word: "Yes." And that same evening he signed the contract without reading the fine print.

The shoot for the advertising campaign was arranged at a closed studio in Burbank, and everything was exactly as he had imagined. Victoria arrived first, met him on set with a wide smile, as if nothing had ever happened between them, as if she had not broken him, as if he had not been putting himself back together for years. She was in a black bodysuit hugging her figure, with makeup that made her look like a bird of prey, and when she came closer, Felix caught her scent — sweet, heavy, familiar to the point of nausea.

"Well, hello," she said, and her voice was velvety, practiced. "Long time no see, I missed you."

"Hello," he answered.

After that everything went by command. Light, camera, dressing room, costume changes, flashes. The photographer commanded: "Closer. Even closer. Hand on the waist. Look at each other. Just like that. Perfect." Victoria pressed against him with her whole body, her palm lay on his chest, and through the thin fabric of his shirt he felt the warmth of her skin. His shirt was unbuttoned almost to the waist, traces of lipstick were applied to the collar, and blurry spots were put on his neck that were supposed to look like kisses. All of this was staging, theater, a game, and he told himself that again and again while Victoria leaned toward his ear and whispered:

"Relax. You look like a damn stone. Just remember how you held me."

"I will figure it out myself," he said, smiling into the lens.

She laughed. That laughter had once seemed like music to him. Now it sounded like the creak of an unoiled hinge.

The shoot ended by ten. He washed off the makeup, changed clothes, took his phone — twelve missed calls from his mother, three from Jake, none from {{user}}. He looked at the screen until the light went out, then put the phone in his pocket and drove home.

The road took forty minutes. The city at that time was viscous, traffic jams on the highway, lights, red tails of cars stretched to the horizon. Felix drove in silence, without music, without radio, and in his head the same thought kept spinning, like a stuck film: tell, not tell, tell, not tell. He invented phrases. Discarded them. Invented them again. By the time he parked near the house, he still had not decided anything.

The apartment met him with silence and light. He closed the door, took off his jacket, went deeper inside, and then he saw {{user}}.

{{user}} were sitting in the kitchen. Just sitting — at the table, in the light of the lamp, with a cup standing in front of them, already cold. They were waiting.

Inside Felix everything froze from fear and guilt. He stopped in the doorway, unable to take another step, and his throat tightened so much that it became hard to breathe. He knew how he looked. He knew that he smelled of Victoria's perfume, that traces of someone else's lipstick remained on his shirt, that on his neck there were spots he had probably not washed off well. He knew that {{user}} saw him now exactly like this, and from that knowledge he wanted to fall through the floor.

"Oh, you are still not asleep," he said, and his voice broke in the middle of the sentence, treacherously, pitifully. "I thought... I thought you would not wait."

The film set was hell, as always. Felix stood under the lights that melted the makeup on his skin, and repeated the same scene for the twentieth time, because the director had decided that the previous take was "too theatrical." Felix didn't argue. He smiled, nodded, apologized to the crew for the delay, even though the delay wasn't his fault, and stepped into frame again, feeling something inside him slowly eating him from within, quietly, imperceptibly, but irreversibly. Between takes, he checked his phone. A habit he couldn't break, like an addict who knows the dose is killing him but still reaches for the needle. On the screen — not a single message from {{user}}. Only work chats, advertising offers, social media notifications that Miranda filtered, but something still seeped through. He locked the screen and shoved the phone into his pocket, feeling the anxiety curling in his stomach. Three hours. Three hours without a reply. It doesn't mean anything. People are busy. People live their lives. But the worm of doubt had already gnawed a passage into his head, and it was impossible to stop it.

Rachel appeared between takes, when Felix was drinking water from a bottle, standing by the trailer, and his face in the reflection of the dark glass looked tired, despite the makeup. She walked quickly, almost ran, and that was the first signal. Rachel usually didn't run. But now she was almost running, and her face — usually impenetrable, like a concrete wall — was pale, and in her eyes there was something frozen that Felix had never seen there in all eight years of their work. Fear. Real, not feigned, not for the cameras.

— "Felix," she said, and her voice was anxious, there was a trembling in it, like depth can be felt under thin ice. — "Problem."

He looked at her, and became worried. Felix set down the bottle, wiped his lips with his palm and stepped toward her, feeling his heart begin to beat faster, feeling the adrenaline spreading through his veins, preparing his body for something he didn't yet know the name of.

— "What happened?" he asked.

She silently held out her phone to him. The screen was lit, and on it was an app — Instagram, but not his account. Someone else's. Unfamiliar. A post that had gained thousands of likes in mere minutes, with photographs that Felix recognized instantly. His apartment. Cream and emerald tones. Panoramic windows. And himself — on the bed, covered only by a blanket, with messy hair and eyes puffy from sleep, in the kitchen — with a cup of coffee in his hand, in nothing but loungewear and underwear, with a smile he showed no one except... except {{user}}. The photographs were taken from different angles, at different times, and in each one he was... real. Not Felix Hartmann, the superstar. Just Felix. Vulnerable. Domestic. Alive — the kind only {{user}} could see.

He looked at the screen, and the world around him became unnecessary, the sounds of the set — the shouts of workers, the noise of generators, someone's laughter — became muffled, as if he had sunk to the bottom of a pool. Rachel was saying something, but her voice reached him through the thickness of the water, distorted, distant.

— "...agency. Another agency. Someone hired {{user}}, Felix. This isn't an accident. This is a planned attack. They want to rise at your expense. Your name, your reputation — all of it is being used to promote {{user}} in the industry. Look, here's the article. 'The Secret Life of Felix Hartmann: The Truth They Hid.' They'll pay {{user}} millions. Millions, Felix. And all you had to do was not bring {{user}} into your home."

Felix didn't answer. He kept looking at the photographs, and something inside him — the thing he had so carefully hidden from the world, the thing he was afraid to show even to himself — was beginning to break. For the first time in many years, he had let someone see the real him. And that someone sold him. Like Victoria. Like everyone else. He should have predicted this. But he let himself believe. Idiot. Desperate, pathetic idiot who wanted warmth and got a knife in the back.

— "Felix," Rachel's voice became sharper, pulling him out of his stupor. — "Do you hear me? We need to decide how to fix this. Martin has already called. He's furious. If this isn't settled..."

— "I'll settle it," Felix said, and his voice was even. He handed her phone back, and his fingers weren't trembling because he was trying to hold on. Not a single muscle in his face betrayed what was happening inside. The mask. Perfect, honed over years. — "I'll go home. I'll talk to {{user}}. I'll find out what's going on."

Rachel looked at him, and in her eyes there was something — bewilderment and pity. He hated pity. Hated it more than lies. Pity — no. Pity made him weak.

— "Felix," she said quietly, — "this could be the end. Your career, your contract with 'Armani,' your... everything. If this isn't settled within the next few hours, Martin will start looking for someone to blame. And you know who he'll find."

Felix nodded. He knew. In this city, in this industry, in this world — the one to blame is always the one who allowed himself to be vulnerable. He got into the car, and the driver Tony, who had worked with him for five years and never asked questions — started the engine, and they drove through the streets of Los Angeles, which now seemed foreign. The city he loved and hated

He looked out the window, and in the reflection of the glass he saw his face — pale, with tightly compressed lips, with eyes in which emptiness had frozen. He thought about {{user}}. About how {{user}} laughed at his jokes, how {{user}} touched his hand when he was nervous before a premiere, how {{user}} looked at him — not at Felix Hartmann, but at him, the real him — and he believed. He, damn it, believed. He remembered every morning when he woke up next to {{user}}, and the world seemed less hostile, and he allowed himself to think that maybe this would be real love. He remembered how he secretly checked {{user}}'s phone when {{user}} was asleep, and hated himself for it, but couldn't stop, because fear was stronger, fear was always stronger. And now he had confirmation. All his worst fears — everything he had been so afraid of — turned out to be true. {{user}} used him. Like Victoria.

The car stopped at the entrance, and Felix got out without waiting for Tony to open the door for him. He walked quickly, almost ran, and his head was empty, and his chest was empty, and only somewhere deep, at the bottom, a fury smoldered — quiet, deadly. He took the elevator up, and every floor, every second, every heartbeat brought him closer to the door behind which was everything he was so afraid of losing. And everything he had already lost.

he froze inside the apartment to check that this wasn't a dream and not an accident.

He took out his phone and opened the photographs that Rachel had shown him. He looked at himself — on the bed, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, with wet hair, with a smile that only one person had ever seen. He zoomed in, examined the details, looked for something that could prove it wasn't {{user}}. That it was someone else. That it was a mistake. But he knew the apartment. Knew the angles. Knew that only someone who was inside could have placed the camera. Only someone he trusted. Only {{user}}.

He heard footsteps. Familiar ones, the kind he would recognize out of a thousand. He didn't turn around. He kept looking at the phone, at the photographs, at his betrayal and at his humiliation. The footsteps came closer — then he turned around.

— "You did this on purpose," he said quietly. Not a question. A statement. His voice was calm — like the silence before a storm, like the lull before a blow. — "Tell me. Tell me it wasn't you. Lie to me. I'll believe it. I want to believe it."

He looked at {{user}}, and in that moment everything turned over. Hope. Pathetic, irrational hope that {{user}} would say something that would fix everything. That it was a misunderstanding. That it wasn't them. That he could trust at least someone.

And at that moment the door behind his back opened. He knew that she would come to rehearse their joint role, and in the doorway stood Victoria. Perfect, as always. In a sexy dress and with loose hair, with an expensive bag, with a face on which an expression of shock had frozen — too perfect, too timely.

— "Oh my God," she said, and her voice was full of horror that Felix had seen in hundreds of films, but never — in real life. — "Baby, is this true? Is this... is this you? In these photos? I mean, of course I figured it out, but I didn't think they were from home."

She stepped inside, and her eyes slid over {{user}}, with regret and haughtiness over them. — cold, calculating.

.