34. Misunderstanding the Assignment
Misunderstanding the Assignment
Romi
The makeup chair was bolted to the floor, as if they thought I might get up and break something.
Smart. Four mirrors threw my face back at me, the big Hollywood-lit one in high-def with no room to flinch.
The artist—Mona, nervous hands, bleeding-heart wrist tattoo—worked in matte brown and adhesive fumes while downtown LA did its usual through the trailer window: soupy air, garbage trucks, a seagull acting like it paid rent.
"You ever done TV makeup?" she asked.
"Guest starred on an FX show once. Played myself, basically." I watched my own mouth move in the mirror.
She snorted. "You're funny. Figured you'd be scarier."
"Give it time."
A PA stuck her head in. "They're calling for you in thirty. You look amazing, by the way."
"Can't wait to be objectified by Hollywood," I said, and she ducked back out, unsure if it was a joke.
Mona spritzed me with setting spray and stepped back while her pocket fan blew over my face. "Camera ready."
I already knew. Cheekbones soft, lips matte and mean, the woman everyone expected to either kill or be killed by morning. I loved it.
Then I checked my phone, and the buzz died a little.
There was a new email from Peachtree Brass with the subject line: APPROVAL NEEDED: FINAL ARTWORK.
And there was a FaceTime from Jamel, which I let go once, then picked up on the second ring to prove I didn't care.
He appeared on the screen in a glass-walled conference room, wearing his usual uniform: forest green cashmere and a button-down without a tie. His eyes flicked up, then down, then up again.
"You're late," he said.
"I'm in makeup. What's up?"
He looked left and right, then leaned in. "You did it."
I let him wait. "Did what."
Jamel's mouth twitched before he gave up the ghost and went for it. "The new single. It's charting above projection. Your freestyle got the most streamed song on the platform this month. All of them, Romi. You did that."
I watched myself in the mirror, not reacting.
"You want the number?" he asked, eyes glinting.
I didn't. But I nodded anyway.
He read it out, slow, each digit heavier than the last. "Fifty million. By day three, you had cleared thirty."
Mona stopped cleaning her brushes. Peeked at the phone, then at me. Went back to her kit.
"That's more than your last two singles combined," Jamel added, softer. "If projections hold, you're going to knock-off Cam and Stacks' single next week."
I didn't care. Okay, fine. I cared. Not enough to ever come for Cam in a verse again, those days were dead and buried. But knocking her off the top spot fair and square, off numbers? That I could enjoy.
I bit the inside of my cheek to kill the smile before Jamel peeped it.
The number wasn't the part that mattered.
What mattered was I pulled up to the studio space in Inglewood, eight people in the room, half of them on their phones when I walked in.
The beat he ran was slow and menacing and gave me room to think in between bars for better aim.
He'd nodded once, and I'd closed my eyes and unloaded every slug I'd been holding for months off the rip.
Because I held off. That was the part nobody wanted to credit.
Months of Skye posting vague little stories without saying my name, Niko smirking at every journalist's question about "the next generation" and making the silence do the work, both of them poking at me sideways and waiting to see if I'd bite.
I didn't, until I did. You keep throwing rocks and hiding hands, eventually I'm gonna catch one in the air and throw it back.
Didn't even need to say names. Quiet as a sniper with a silencer.
It was the kind of dismantling that didn't need volume. The room went heavy and still in the way rooms do when real shit is happening. When I stopped, Terrell leaned back, crossed his arms, and said, damn.
That was two weeks ago. The number was consequence.
Mona stopped tapping her brushes and looked at me, then at the phone. She considered it for a second and went back to contouring my cheekbones.
"We need to talk about the deluxe rollout—" Jamel began.
"Can it wait?" I asked. "I'm due back on set shortly."
He checked his calendar, as if this was a normal thing to schedule around. "Fine. But they want to do a feature with Rolling Stone. I said you'd think about it."
"I don't like interviews." Not these days, anyway—not when every question comes with a wink and a headline baked in. "They're a necessary evil, but," I waved it off.
He paused, checked his other screen, and his face changed. "I'll get Z on it with publicity. Oh. Almost forgot: you asked for a sweep on Red Riding Hood."
My pulse stuttered a half-beat.
"They got it done," Jamel said through the tablet screen, his usual business voice slipping.
"The verse is gone. Not just from the streaming version—every backup, every master, every engineer's copy, every Dropbox in the ecosystem.
There's a spreadsheet documenting every deletion, with logs.
Legal handled the rest. That verse never existed. "
The words settled while Mona worked shimmering powder around my eyes. Sixteen bars. My best work in months. Brutal, personal, perfect. Erased because I couldn't do it to her.
"And Karma Bank$?"
"Already said yes to the remix. Didn't need to hear the beat first." Jamel's grin was sharp with satisfaction. "Girl's excited to work with you. Smart, too—she knows what this could do for her numbers."
The cameo I was shooting today, this was the favor that made it possible.
The label CEO at the label owed a TV exec a favor, and my appearance here settled that debt.
I wondered if Cam knew what I'd sacrificed.
I wondered if she'd care, or if she'd understand the weight of making sixteen bars of spite disappear for her.
My label moves fast when I tell them to.
"For the special edition, let's see if we can grab Deevo Carter, too. He owes me a feature."
"Sounds hot. Done." Jamel looked straight at me through the screen, eyes soft but serious. "You got more juice than you think, Romi. Just don't waste it."
The words hit different than I expected. This was never only about killing one song. It was about knowing whose neck was under my heel, and choosing how hard to press. And when to ease up.
"Never do," I replied.
He hung up, leaving the reflection of my face staring back at me.
For a minute, I just sat there, taking inventory: the gloss on my lips, the shimmer on my skin, the feeling of total, absolute control. There was no part of me that wasn't calculated, no detail left to luck.
I smirked, then closed my eyes and let Mona touch up my liner one last time.
Showtime.
After three hours on set, my face felt like a lacquered mask, and my entire mouth tasted like the setting spray they'd refreshed on me in take four. I ducked back to my trailer, peeled off the costume, and flopped onto the padded bench, which was about as soft as a TSA checkpoint.
There was a chicken pesto wrap, still mostly intact except for the one bite I'd managed, on a paper plate, and two bottles of Fiji water with the labels peeled off. My phone waited on the armrest like a loaded gun.
I took a few more bites, then did what any rational person would with time to kill: opened up Pixogram and doomscrolled.
My mentions were the usual: Dulcitos thirsting over my fit, a bunch of threads dissecting my makeup, someone claiming my Coldest Bitch Alive freestyle cured their depression, and two stan accounts fighting over whether my last verse bodied Cam's.
Down the feed: clips from set, every third post a meme of me looking unbothered in the studio.
Someone had dug up an old yearbook pic and decided I must be "industry-planted," so now the conspiracy kids were off to the races.
Boring.
Then I saw the Niko thing.
It started in the comments of a "fan page" with all the air quotes but was really Niko Savage logged into her burner account.
Some people really said 'fuck with nobody in this industry' then turned around and…well. But what do I know? Maybe I misunderstood the assignment all along.
She might've stopped there if her main account hadn't picked up the thread and replied: LMAO she used to be cutthroat now it's giving brunch with the lil fine shyt and in-laws. But go off, Queen.
It was pathetic. It was also not new. Niko had been on a heater since I dropped that verse. This last bit must've got her in her feelings enough to try me again.
The smart play was to ignore it. But today I felt charitable. I had numbers, I had long drug-store receipts, I had fifty million reasons to show her yet again there was a direct correlation between a hard head and a soft ass. School was in session.
So I took a screenshot. Cropped it clean. Then I opened a fresh note and started typing, thumbs moving slow so every word landed right.
Funny how loud it gets when the song stops charting. Some folks really thought the spotlight was permanent. Hustle harder to pay off those loans, sis. Anyway, back to this set…
Niko knew which loans. I never made a peep when she took that loan out for a new body. Kept it to myself like a good big sister. Funny how that grace expired.
I knew the Dulcitos would handle the rest. And weirdly enough, Cam's Wolfepack had started defending me too in recent weeks.
Strangest alliance in hip-hop history, but effective as hell.
Whatever Niko thought she was doing, it was already over.
She should have learned from the first time she tried me that I don't play about disrespect, and now there were a lot more people out there who didn't play about me.
The best response was from Z, though. She didn't even say anything. Z sent a string of skull emojis and the link to a meme of that scene where Scar throws Mufasa into the gorge. Only, Scar had my face, and Niko's was pasted over Mufasa, tumbling off a cliff.