Chapter 2 - THE GREEN ROOM AMBUSH
The green room of the Dolby Theatre was usually an oasis of eucalyptus-scented mist, thousand-dollar floral arrangements, and curated charcuterie boards designed for stars who only ate raw almonds and air.
Tonight, it felt like an interrogation cell waiting for a firing squad.
The heavy soundproof doors slammed shut behind me, muttering a dull, hydraulic thud that cut off the roaring tempest of the red carpet. Arthur Pendelton took up a defensive post near the double oak exit, his briefcase resting across his knees like an unholstered weapon, while his junior associate stood by the door with an iPad already flashing with real-time news alerts.
*“VALE BOMBSHELL ROCKS VANGUARD PREMIERE.”*
*“CELESTE VANE ACCUSED OF IP THEFT ON LIVE TV.”*
*“STATION SHARES DROP 8% IN AFTER-HOURS TRADING.”*
I walked across the plush Persian rug toward the vanity mirrors, my ruined dress trailing silver thread behind me like a wounded animal leaving a trail of blood. I caught my reflection in the massive illuminated glass. My skin was pale, my jaw was tight, but my eyes were blazing. For seven years, I had dreamed of this evening. I had rehearsed every syllable, every legal cite, every tilt of my chin.
Yet the metallic taste of adrenaline in my mouth was far more bitter than I had imagined.
The door burst open with such force that the heavy brass handle gouged a crescent into the drywall.
Harold Vance entered first, his bow tie undone, his tailored collar damp with cold sweat. Right behind him came Celeste, a white fur wrap clutched frantically around her shoulders as if she could hide the trembling of her arms beneath layers of dead mink.
"Are you out of your psychotic mind?" Harold roared, his face mottled a terrifying shade of aubergine. He didn't look like an entertainment mogul; he looked like a butcher whose meat had gone bad in the sun. "Pendelton! What is this theatrical stunt? You know damn well that Delaware injunction doesn't hold jurisdiction over our international distribution rights! I'll have you disbarred! I'll have the Bar Association strip your license before dawn!"
Arthur Pendelton didn't even look up from his phone. "Keep shouting, Harold. Your blood pressure monitor is syncing with your Apple Watch, and I believe your cardiologist warned you about sustained spikes above one-eighty. As for jurisdiction—the loan collateral for your European distribution was underwritten by Deutsche Bank using the Julian Vale catalog as primary equity. When you committed wire fraud in 2018 to forge his estate signature, you crossed from civil copyright dispute directly into federal racketeering. The Southern District is already reviewing the wire transfers."
Celeste lunged toward me, her manicured nails hooking into claws. "You bitch! You planned this! You took the supporting role in my movie just to do this!"
"It was never your movie, Celeste," I said, turning to face her with absolute stillness. "You couldn't write an obituary, let alone a three-act psychological thriller. My father spent ten years drafting *The Gilded Cage*. He wrote it while my mother was dying of lymphoma. Every line of dialogue, every metaphor, every breath of that script was paid for with his agony. And you put your name on the cover page because you wanted an Oscar to validate your vapid little ego."
"Your father was a nobody!" she screamed, her voice cracking into a jagged screech that would have horrified her vocal coach. "Nobody cared about Julian Vale! If I hadn't attached my name to that script, it would have rotted in a cardboard box under a probate lawyer’s desk! I made it art! I gave it life!"
"No," I replied, my voice dropping an octave, cold and absolute. "You gave it a press tour. You gave it lip gloss. And then you murdered the man who wrote it by stealing the money meant for his immunotherapy."
Harold took a heavy, intimidating step toward me, his hands curling into fists. "You listen to me, Mara. You think you've won some clever little viral moment? This is Hollywood. By tomorrow morning, my PR machine will paint you as an unstable, grief-stricken former child who suffered a nervous breakdown on live television. We will release statements from three different psychiatrists questioning your mental competence. We will drop your agency representation by midnight. CAA won't return your calls. WME won't let you through the security gate. You will be toxic. Radioactive. Dead."
"Try it," I said softly.
I walked over to Arthur, took a second tablet from his briefcase, and tapped the screen once.
A high-definition audio file appeared on the display. The metadata read: *Vance_Penthous_Recording_Oct_12.wav.*
Harold's eyes narrowed, his breath catching in his throat.
I hit play.
Harold’s voice echoed through the green room, distinct, arrogant, and unmistakably clear:
*“Julian’s coughing up blood in the valley facility. If we keep the settlement checks tied up in the shell company for another ninety days, the old bastard won't survive to see the contract dispute. Celeste gets the solo screenwriting credit, Vanguard takes seventy percent of the backend gross, and the daughter gets five grand and a non-disclosure agreement. She’s twenty-one years old, Harold. She’s waiting tables at a diner in Silver Lake. What the hell is she going to do against a three-billion-dollar studio?”*
The silence returned. But this time, it was lethal.
Celeste’s eyes darted toward Harold, wide with sheer terror. "Harold... what was that? Where did that come from? Who recorded that?"
Harold looked like he had been struck in the chest with a sledgehammer. His knees swayed, his hand reaching out blindly to catch the corner of a dressing table. Perfume bottles clattered against the glass.
"You had bugs in my office?" Harold choked out. "That’s illegal wiretapping. It’s inadmissible! You can’t use that in court!"
"You're right, Harold," I said, tapping the screen again to pause the file. "It’s completely inadmissible in a court of law under California’s two-party consent statutes. Arthur told me that three months ago."
I leaned in close to his sweating, gray face.
"But it is entirely admissible on Twitter. On TikTok. On YouTube. On every news outlet on the planet. I don't need a judge to send you to prison to destroy you, Harold. The court of public opinion has no exclusionary rule for evidence. And if you attempt to launch one single whisper campaign against my sanity, this file gets uploaded to every server between Tokyo and New York."
Celeste sank onto a low velvet sofa, her fur wrap slipping to the floor like a pool of melting snow. Her face was completely colorless. For the first time in her pampered, untouchable life, she was staring down the barrel of total, irreversible annihilation.
"What do you want?" she whispered, her voice trembling so violently her teeth clicked together. "What do you want from me?"
I looked down at her, feeling not joy, not triumphant ecstasy, but the grim, hollow satisfaction of an executioner carrying out a long-delayed sentence.
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"I want you to go out to the theater," I said. "I want you to sit in row A, seat twelve. I want you to watch the premiere of my father’s masterpiece. And when the end credits roll, and the screen says *Written and Directed by Julian Vale*—you are going to stand up, Celeste. And you are going to applaud."
***
