Page 134 of The Hollywood Switch-up

“She came into my life. And I watched him circle her—the compliments that were calculations, the isolation that looked like attention. Watched him take her apart, one scene at a time.” His voice hardened. “I should have gone to the studio. Called a lawyer. Filed a report. Instead, I took her to dinner. Told myself I was protecting her. Qué chiste. What a fucking joke.”

Y la decepcioné. Let Martin walk right up to her while I did nothing that counted.

“When everything fell apart, I walked away. Left her on that island. Told myself I’d come back, I’d fix it, I’d find a way.” He met Teagan’s eyes. “But you don’t get credit for promises you break. So no. I’m not the hero. I’m the man who could have stopped this and didn’t. Who watched the fire start and walked away before it burned.”

Kodi’s recorder blinked red.

Teagan’s pen came down. “Prove it.”

Stefan tapped the hard drive.

“Everything Isabelle Vance has been gathering for eight years. It’s all on here.”

Kodi picked it up, turning it over in her palm. Her professional distance dropped.

“Zenith’s head of crisis management, stockpiling dirt on one of their top directors. Why would she risk that?”

“Because she helped bury Stasia and it’s been eating her alive.” Stefan braced his hands on the back of his chair. “Patricia Voss—Zenith’s HR director—closed every complaint, shredded every report, and paid off every woman who tried to speak. El sistema perfecto. And Isabelle watched it happen, hated herself for it, and started building this file in secret—waiting for someone stupid enough or angry enough to light the match.”

“And that’s you?”

“That’s me.”

Kodi opened her laptop.

“Start with the HR files.” He pointed over Kodi’s shoulder, his voice tight. “A decade of complaints, all stamped with the same phrase: ‘insufficient evidence to proceed.’ Every single one signed by Voss. In this town, that’s just code for ‘we don’t want to know.’”

“Then the emails. Warnings, legal replies. They knew exactly who Martin was and chose to protect the investment instead of the actresses.”

Teagan’s pen flew across the page. “They knew.”

She studied him for a long moment. He didn’t wait for the question he could see forming.

“Claro que sí. I know how it sounds. But if I only cared about my reputation, why would I hand the Courier every file that could destroy me?”

He pulled up his phone. “But this is what matters.”

Grainy footage filled the screen—Lena, luring Erika across the empty set toward the abandoned bar, the door closing behind her, and Martin waiting in the shadows.

“Premeditation. In high definition. Un monstruo, and everyone looked the other way, including me.”

Kodi sat back. Her distance had dropped. “Fifteen years in investigative journalism. I’ve never seen institutional complicity this blatant.”

“Welcome to Hollywood, where the monsters get paid leave and the victims get NDAs.”

Teagan snapped her notebook shut.

“It’s not enough.”

Stefan stopped pacing. Por supuesto que no.

“We need someone on the record. Without a victim willing to speak publicly, Zenith’s lawyers will tear this apart—the HR files become due diligence, the settlements become risk management, and the machine keeps grinding.”

He knew how that story ended. He’d watched that story end before.

He braced his hands on the back of his chair. Somewhere out there Erika was at her sister’s house, curtains drawn, phone unanswered, trying to exist after a system he'd spent years quietly benefiting from nearly got her killed.

Creo que podría confiar en ti. She’d whispered it on the yacht.