11. Skye
— ? —
Skye
Ellen is hunched over her laptop at the kitchen table, three empty energy drink cans forming a small aluminum graveyard beside her keyboard. The blue light from the screen casts strange shadows across her face, making her look like some kind of tech-obsessed vampire.
I pace behind her, phone pressed to my ear, listening to it ring and ring and ring.
“Still no answer?”
I end the call and toss the phone onto the couch. “Miranda’s not picking up. She’s either hiding or dead, and honestly, I’m not sure which would be more convenient for Adriana at this point.”
“Morbid.” Ellen doesn’t look up from her screen. “I like it.”
The St. Barts photos were still burned behind my eyes from the night before - the villa, the yacht, the bags with more zeros than sense. I’d stared at them until they stopped feeling real. I didn’t need to see them again. I needed the woman who’d posed for them.
“Someone paid for all of it,” I say. “And Miranda had the keys to everything - Jayden’s calendar, my signature samples, the executive systems.”
Miranda. She’d warned me at the gala. She’d looked terrified and guilty in the moments before everything blew apart.
“She’s the key,” I say slowly. “She knows exactly what happened.”
Ellen closes her laptop and looks at me with that expression she gets when she’s about to say something I won’t like. “You could hire someone for this. A professional investigator. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“You know how to plan charity galas.”
“And I know how to read people. I know how to get them to trust me, to open up. I know how to find the crack in someone’s armor and apply exactly the right amount of pressure.
” I grab my bag from the back of a chair.
“The professionals can bill three hundred dollars an hour. I can do it faster and meaner.”
“At least let me come with you.”
“Fine. But I’m doing the talking.”
“Obviously.” Ellen grabs her jacket. “Someone needs to stop you from committing assault.”
“I’m not going to assault her.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The look that says you’re about to make someone cry.”
I consider this. “Fair.”
Before I can find Miranda, I need to understand what I’m dealing with. I need to know if my instincts are right about the texts, about the hotel, about all of it.
The Chateau Marmont is a fortress of discretion, all Spanish Colonial architecture and ivy-covered walls hiding the secrets of Hollywood’s elite.
I’ve been here a dozen times for industry events, smiled at the staff, made small talk with the bartenders.
I know how this world works - discretion has a price, and everyone has a number.
Two hundred dollars to a bellhop I recognize from previous studio events. A casual question, innocent enough: had Mr. Rowland enjoyed his usual bungalow recently?
The bellhop - Miguel, according to his name tag - frowns at me. “Mr. Rowland? I don’t think he’s ever stayed here, ma’am. You might be thinking of someone else.”
Never stayed there.
My heart hammers against my ribs. “Are you sure? The reservation was under J. Rowland. Bungalow 3. It was supposed to be recurring.”
“Ma’am, I’ve worked here for six years. I know every regular. Mr. Rowland has never booked a room here. Not once.” Miguel’s frown deepens with genuine confusion. “I would remember. He’s, well - he’s kind of famous.”
The reservation was fake.
Someone manufactured evidence of an affair that didn’t exist. They sent it to me anonymously, timed perfectly to destabilize me before the gala.
I thank Miguel and walk to my car on legs that feel like they belong to someone else. I sit in the driver’s seat with my hands shaking on the steering wheel, the full scope of what happened crystallizing in my mind.
This wasn’t just about framing me for embezzlement. This was psychological warfare. Whoever did this wanted me paranoid, jealous, irrational - so that when the accusations dropped, I’d already look unstable. So that Jayden would already be primed to doubt me.
The reservation didn’t need to hold up under scrutiny.
That was the genius of it. She never meant for me to actually verify the booking.
She meant for me to see it, panic, confront Jayden with accusations I couldn’t prove.
Once he’d decided I was chasing shadows, the truth wouldn’t matter.
By the time I checked with the bellhop, the damage would already be done - my credibility gone, my paranoia established, my husband already primed to doubt anything I said next.
The forged documents ran on the same clock.
They’d never survive a real audit - the Starlight books balanced to the penny, every dollar exactly where I’d put it.
But an audit takes weeks. A headline takes seconds.
Leak the papers to every phone in the room at once and the verdict lands before anyone thinks to open the ledgers.
By the time the numbers cleared me, the story wouldn’t be the money. It would be me.
And it worked. God help me, it worked perfectly.
I think about all those sleepless nights, staring at my phone, convinced my husband was cheating. I think about the way I looked at him differently, the distance that crept into every conversation, the suspicion that poisoned everything between us long before the gala.
They didn’t just frame me. They dismantled my marriage piece by piece, and I helped them do it.
I pull out my phone and text Ellen: The hotel reservation was fake. Someone’s been playing me from the start. I need to find out who had access to my calendar, my schedule, and Jayden’s.
Ellen’s response is immediate: Miranda Costello. She manages both.
Ellen finds her within an hour. Miranda hasn’t been to work in days, hasn’t been answering calls, but she’s still posting from the same Silver Lake coffee shop every morning on her Instagram stories.
Still holding to routine, still trying to look normal from the outside.
Ellen sends me the address. I text her back one word: coming.
The Silver Lake coffee shop is exactly the kind of place I used to frequent before I became Mrs. Rowland - exposed brick walls covered in local art, mismatched furniture that looks salvaged from a dozen different thrift stores, a chalkboard menu with items like “Deconstructed Lavender Cortado” that cost nine dollars and taste like pretension.
The barista has a nose ring and an expression of terminal boredom. The playlist is all indie folk and acoustic covers of songs that were better in their original form. The whole place smells like espresso and self-satisfaction.
Miranda is in the corner, laptop open, fingers frozen over the keyboard. She looks terrible - dark circles under her eyes, bitten nails, her usually pristine blouse wrinkled like she slept in it. The haunted expression of someone who hasn’t slept in days.
She looks up when I approach, and all the color drains from her face.
“Mrs. Rowland.”
“Just Skye now.” I pull out the chair across from her. “Mind if I sit?”
Miranda’s eyes dart to the door, calculating escape routes. Ellen slides into the seat beside her, blocking the most obvious exit with the casual grace of someone who’s done this before.
“We just want to talk,” Ellen says. Her voice is pleasant, friendly even. “No one’s in trouble. Yet.”
I sit down, positioning myself close enough to speak quietly, far enough to seem non-threatening. I’ve thought about how to play this. Aggressive won’t work - Miranda is already terrified, wound so tight she looks like she might shatter at a raised voice. She needs understanding. She needs an ally.
“I know you helped her,” I say gently. “I know about the vacation she paid for. The St. Barts trip that cost more than your annual salary.”
Miranda flinches like I’ve slapped her.
“What I don’t know,” I continue, keeping my voice soft, “is why.”
Miranda’s hands are shaking. Her latte sits untouched in front of her, the foam slowly deflating into a sad beige puddle.
“The fifty thousand dollars she paid you.” I lean forward slightly. “Was that the price for everything? Or just a down payment?”
“I didn’t-” Miranda’s voice breaks. She looks down at her hands, at the chipped nail polish and ragged cuticles. “I didn’t know. I swear to God, Mrs. - Skye. I didn’t know it would go this far.”
“Tell me what you did know.”
For a long moment, I think she’s going to bolt. Her whole body is vibrating with the urge to run, to escape, to pretend this conversation never happened.
Then she deflates. The fight goes out of her like air from a punctured balloon, and what’s left is just a tired, scared woman who made a terrible choice and doesn’t know how to unmake it.
“My mom has cancer.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Stage four. The treatment she needs - it’s experimental. Insurance won’t cover it. They said it was elective, like she was choosing to have cancer, like she could just decide not to die.”
“So Adriana offered you money.”
“She offered me everything. The cash for treatment. And then the trip. She said I needed a break, that I was stressed, that she was worried about me.” Miranda laughs bitterly.
“She booked the villa herself. Bought me the clothes, the bags, all of it. Made me post everything on social media. I thought she was being generous. I didn’t realize until later that she was building a file.
Proof that I was enjoying the bribe. So if I ever talked… ”
“You’d look like a willing participant, not a victim.”
“Exactly.” Miranda wipes her eyes. “Every designer bag was a chain around my neck. She made it sound so simple. Just access codes. Just calendar information. Just a few signatures for a ‘compliance audit.’” Miranda laughs, and there’s no humor in it, just bitter exhaustion.
“I knew it was wrong. I knew something wasn’t right.
But I kept telling myself it was just paperwork.
Just bureaucratic nonsense that didn’t really matter. ”
“When did you realize it wasn’t?”