CHAPTER TWO — EVERYONE ELSE IS REPLACEABLE (1)

LAYLA

Forty-eight hours later, I was the most famous woman in America, and none of it was good.

#WineGate had gone viral overnight. The internet—which I had previously believed to be a place where you could watch funny animal videos and argue about soup—had decided I was either (a) a waitress who'd staged a fall to trap a billionaire, (b) a gold digger with a pre-planned wardrobe malfunction, or (c) Dorian Varga's new mistress, which was the option I hated most because it implied I was getting paid.

I was not getting paid. I was getting evicted.

Elinor Rose had posted a photo of herself looking devastating on a yacht with the caption: "Some girls climb mountains. This one climbed a billionaire. #WineGate" — and a hundred thousand strangers had liked it, which is the part that hurt the most. Nobody even liked my painting that much.

Then the gallery called.

"Layla, honey, we have to pull Ember and Dawn from the show," Mia said, and her voice was the voice of a woman who'd been told to deliver bad news or lose her job. "The board—it's a conflict of interest thing—there was pressure from—"

"From Elinor Rose's father," I said flatly.

"Please don't make me say it out loud, honey."

My art, canceled. My rent, due. My dignity, trending worldwide.

I sat in my studio in Queens—four hundred square feet of paint and cat and broken dreams, and my cat, Mr. Whiskers, sat on the one canvas I wasn't using and looked at me with the pure judgment that only a cat can manufacture.

"It's fine," I told him. "I have a plan. Step one: don't look at my phone. Step two: become a hermit. Step three: die quietly in a forest."

Mr. Whiskers blinked. He'd heard this plan before.

The email came at 11:47 p.m., from an address with so many V's it looked like a typo.

Dear Miss Hayes,

The Varga Foundation is pleased to reinstate your gallery contract at ten times the original advance, and to commission you for a private work: a forty-foot mural for the penthouse of Varga Tower. Terms attached. The patron wishes to remain anonymous, but wishes you to know: "Fabric can be replaced. People can't."

I read it three times. I wrote a furious refusal that would have made Hemingway proud. Then my landlord emailed me the eviction notice.

I have principles. Principles are not a checking account.

I signed.

· · ·

The Rose Gala was Elinor's annual declaration of war on everyone else's existence, and she'd invited me personally.

"Bring the girl from the wine video," she'd announced on Instagram, sweet as cyanide. "She needs the exposure."

"It's a trap," Max said. Max is my best friend, a sculptor, gay, and the only person in New York who tells me the truth and then helps me hide the body.

"I know," I said. "I brought heels."

The gala was everything the first one was, minus the champagne towers and plus the distinct feeling of being hunted. Elinor found me within seconds, flanked by her court of interchangeable socialites, all of them wearing the same expression: you are meat.

"Layla Hayes," Elinor cooed, loud enough for the room. "The woman who spilled her way into headlines. How's the billionaire? Still playing dress-up with the help?"

The crowd laughed. It's amazing how fast people laugh when they think they're on the winning side.

"Better than you're playing dress-up with yourself, Elinor," I said pleasantly. "I saw your yacht post. Loved the filter. Did it come with the self-esteem, or is that extra?"

The laugh stopped. The room went quiet in the way rooms go quiet when a small dog has just bitten a larger, meaner dog.

Elinor's smile went razor. "Charming. You know, I did some digging on you, sweetheart. Your little painting got pulled from the show. Funny timing. Almost like nobody actually wanted it."

"Funny timing," I agreed. "Almost like a billionaire's daughter got her father to threaten a gallery because she's jealous of a girl she spilled wine on."

"Excuse me?"

"You pushed me into him, Elinor. I saw your little 'terribly sorry.' We both know what that was."

The crowd's murmur shifted. Elinor's face did something complicated.

And then Elinor played her real card.

"Right," she said, holding up her phone like a holy relic, "since we're being honest—let's talk about the texts."

The photo on her screen was a screenshot of a conversation: Layla: "How much for the penthouse, daddy?" Dorian: "Whatever you want, baby." — My name. His name. My number format, my punctuation, my voice.

Except it wasn't mine. It was a deepfake, and I knew it the way you know your own handwriting, and the room didn't. I scanned the crowd out of habit—looking for Max, looking for an exit, looking for anyone whose face said believe her. Nobody's did. The wine girl, the gold digger, the mystery mistress: they'd already decided which version of me they wanted, and it wasn't the one who painted sunrise.

"Huh," I said. My voice came out steady, which was a lie. "That's a good fake. Whoever made it knows my comma placement. Tell them I'm flattered."

"Flattered," Elinor repeated, delighted. "Is that what you call it when you sell your dignity for a—"

"Miss Hayes."

The voice came from the doorway, and the room rearranged itself like ice parting for a ship.

Dorian Varga walked in wearing a suit the color of midnight and an expression I had never seen on a human face. He was not on the guest list. He did not care. He crossed the room through a silence you could have bottled and sold, and he stopped in front of me, and he did the last thing anyone expected: