Page 48 of The Casting Couch

Oof.Direct hit.

He wasn’t wrong, though.

Images of Riley floated through my mind like a horror movie montage.Riley, with her tattoos and deadpan stare.Riley cheerfully explaining interest rates while tossing a butterfly knife between her hands.

I swallowed hard.

As mortifying as this… scene sounded, it still felt marginally less terrifying than waking up duct-taped to a radiator in Riley’s basement.At least I wouldn’t die of internal bleeding.

Hopefully.

I could almost see it now.Paying off a sizeable chunk of what I owed her.Maybe even getting out of that hellhole hostel.A crappy studio apartment somewhere with a door that locked and no smell of stale socks and broken dreams.

I took a shaky breath and nodded.

Doomed.Completely doomed.

But maybe… slightly less doomed than yesterday.

Jack clapped his hands once.“Great.Laura, you’re directing.”

Laura looked like someone had just told her she’d been volunteered to babysit a pack of feral toddlers.“Me?Seriously?”

Jack shrugged.“You’re the best we’ve got at making something like this look… I don’t know… artistic?”

Liam snorted.“Good luck with that.”

Jack ignored him.“We want this done by the end of the week.”

Laura’s eyes widened behind her glasses.“Jack, are you kidding me?Do you know how many guys we’ll need for this?Like… at least twenty extra performers.We’re gonna have to cast, book, schedule, prep… I mean, I appreciate your faith in me but…”

Liam cut her off with a laugh.“Laura, it’s not like you’re asking them to perform Shakespeare.All they have to do is show up and jerk off.You know how many guys in this city would kill for that kind of day rate?”

“Five hundred bucks a pop,” Jack added, like it was some amazing promotional deal.

Laura looked faintly horrified.“You’re both insane.”

Nessa leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs with the smug satisfaction of someone who’d just lit the match and walked away from the explosion.“Make it happen, girl.”

Laura muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a curse in another language, but she pulled out her planner anyway and started scribbling.

The meeting moved on to boring logistical stuff after that.Set rentals, shoot schedules, who’d be running camera B, but I barely heard any of it.

I just sat there, staring at my salad, quietly accepting that this was my life now.

Covered in shame.

And soon… apparently… covered in a lot more than that.

* * *

I left the conference room feeling… nothing.No anger.No panic.Not even embarrassment anymore.Just pure, clean, industrial-grade emotional numbness.

Like my brain had flipped a breaker to protect me from overload.The human equivalent of Windows blue screen of death.

I drifted through the office like a ghost, past Dimitri on the phone, past Moira arguing with a delivery guy about the wrong brand of makeup wipes, past the smell of coffee and scented lube.

None of it registered.

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