Isla's POV
The script landed on my bed like a bomb.
Derek, one of the directors with dead eyes and a clipboard, had shoved it into my hands the moment I walked into my bedroom. "Read it. Memorize it. Execute it tomorrow," he'd said, then left before I could ask questions.
Now I sat on the edge of my mattress, looking at the words in front of me like they were written in a language I couldn't understand.
SCENE 5: BEACH DATE SABOTAGE
ISLA (jealous, desperate): "Jesse deserves better than some Instagram fake. He needs someone real. Someone like... me."
VANESSA (shocked, hurt): "Excuse me?"
ISLA (spiraling): "I know him better than you ever will. We have past. Chemistry. You're just a pretty girl with fans."
JESSE (disgusted): "Isla, you're unhinged."
I dropped the script like it had burned my hands.
This was the plan. This was what I'd signed up for. Be the evil. Make people hate me. Destroy the pairs so America would have drama to watch with their popcorn on Friday nights. I'd read the deal. I'd known what I was getting into.
But that was before Jesse looked at me in the backyard with three years of pain in his eyes.
That was before I remembered what his real laugh sounded like.
My phone buzzed. A text from Thomas, my boss.
"Derek said you're dragging your feet. Remember—Diana's care depends on you finishing this show. Nail tomorrow's scene."
I looked at those words. Diana. My little sister in a hospital bed, hoping this experimental medicine would actually save her life. Diana who asked me every single day if I was "winning the show" because she thought getting on reality TV meant I was finally going to be okay.
My hands were shaking.
There was a knock on my door. Soft. Careful. The kind of knock that meant the person didn't want the cameras to hear.
I opened it and found Jade Kim standing there in the hallway, looking over her shoulder like she expected security to grab her at any second.
"We need to talk," she whispered. "Not in here. The cameras have voice pick-up."
"How did you—"
"Follow me. Quickly."
She pulled me by my wrist down the hallway toward the mansion's back stairs. We moved fast, quiet, staying out of the main areas where I knew cameras pointed from corners and ceiling vents. My heart was beating in my chest. What was happening? What did Jesse's manager want with me?
We ended up in what looked like a storage room filled with old furniture and boxes. Jade locked the door behind us and turned to face me.
"Marcus Webb is playing everyone," she said without any introduction. "Including you."
"I know that already. That's the job—"
"No. You don't know." She pulled out her phone and showed me pictures. Documents. Videos. "He has dirt on everyone here. Blackmail. Manipulation footage. He's directing this entire show like it's a video game and we're all his characters."
I felt cold all over. "What do you want from me?"
"Tomorrow, when you're supposed to sabotage Jesse and Vanessa, I need you to refuse."
I laughed. Actually laughed, even though nothing was funny. "Refuse? Do you have any idea what will happen? I'll break my contract. Marcus will destroy me. And my sister—"
"Your sister is dying because you're too scared to fight back," Jade said, and her voice was sharp as a knife. "Marcus is using Diana as pressure. He doesn't actually care if she gets help or not. But if we reveal him, if we show the world what he's been doing to you, to Jesse, to everyone on this show—"
"It won't matter. My job is already dead. Jesse's will survive because he's rich and popular. But me? I'll just be the girl who tried to take down a director and failed. I'll be radioactive."
"Or you'll be brave," Jade said quietly. "For once in your life, you'll choose something other than survival."
She showed me more on her phone. Videos of Marcus in production meetings, talking about me like I was a prop. Footage of him editing scenes to make me look worse than I actually was. Documents showing he'd been the one to feed bad press about me to tabloids ten years ago, back when I first started my career.
He'd been killing me for over a decade, and I didn't even know his name until two days ago.
"Think about it," Jade said. "But don't think too long. Tomorrow changes everything."
She left me in that storage room alone, and I sat down on an old box feeling like the walls were closing in.
My phone buzzed again. Another text. But this one was from an unknown number.
"Isla. It's Jesse. Don't ask how I got this number. We need to meet. In the yard. Midnight. Just you. It's important. —J"
I checked the time. 11:47 PM.
My mind was spinning. Jade Kim telling me to fight. Thomas telling me to follow the plan. Derek tells me to be a villain. Jesse asking me to meet him in secret.
And me, stuck in the middle of all of it, not knowing which way was up anymore.
I grabbed a jacket and headed for the yard. The cameras wouldn't follow there. That's what everyone said, anyway. That the garden was the one blind spot in this house full of lenses and lies.
I walked through the dark, my heart beating so hard I thought it might burst through my ribs.
Jesse was already there, sitting on the stone bench beneath the oak tree. He looked up when he heard my footsteps, and in the moonlight, I could see something in his face that scared me more than anything else tonight.
He looked scared.
"What's wrong?" I asked, moving toward him. "What happened?"
"I found something," he said. His voice was shaking. "Something Marcus has been hiding. Something that explains everything."
"Explains what?"
Jesse pulled out his phone. The screen glowed in the darkness. He turned it toward me, and what I saw made my blood go absolutely cold.
It was a movie.
A video of me. From three years ago. The night I ghosted him.
Except there was someone else in the tape. Someone I didn't remember being there.
Someone who looked exactly like Marcus Webb.
And in the film, young-me was crying. Begging. And Marcus—younger but still clearly him—was holding a camera pointed at my face like a weapon.
"How is this possible?" I whispered.
"That's not even the worst part," Jesse said. His hands were shaking. "Watch what happens next."
He pressed play, and what I saw made everything go dark.
Because the video showed Marcus holding something. An envelope. Money.
Money he was giving to young-me.
Money I never remembered getting.
Money that looked, from this view, like payment.
Like I'd been paid to leave Jesse.
Like I'd sold him for cash.