“He’s so predictable,” she said. She set down the water and walked to the mirror. She began to unclip her earrings, methodically. “He thinks that’s the bomb. That’s just the warning shot.”
The roar of the crowd was a physical thing. It pressed against the soundproof glass of the control room, a muffled, seismic wave that made the monitors tremble. Inside, Leo Vasquez, director of the decade’s most anticipated documentary, Idol Fall , didn’t flinch. He just stared at the bank of screens, each one showing a different angle of the same beautiful, crumbling disaster.
“Good. Then stop hiding. Come in here.”
For three years, Leo had been Kira’s shadow. He had the footage to prove anything: the screaming matches with her mother-manager, the silent panic attacks in the back of limousines, the moment her ex-boyfriend, a rapper named Haze, had smashed a Grammy in a cocaine-fueled rage. The studio had wanted a hagiography. Kira had wanted a confessional. Leo, a documentarian who’d cut his teeth on war zones, wanted the truth.
And for the first time that night, the roar of the crowd wasn't outside the glass. It was inside the room.
“Cut the house feed,” Leo said into his headset. “Keep the stage cams rolling. Mic 7, the one in her dressing room, is that live?”
