Page 146 of The Hollywood Switch-up

He didn’t ask. Just eased the wire cage off the bottle and waited. She nodded. The cork popped.

Bradley’s Castellan pulled away from the curb and Erika watched the city slide past the window.

Arrested. Erika turned the word over, waiting for the impact. She’d expected rage, or relief. There was only a hollow flatness. The city lights blurred past. She wondered when it would feel real.

She looked at her hands in her lap. She’d been thinking about the canvas all day—the unfinished one from the set, sitting in the corner of her Silver Lake apartment now. She hadn’t picked up a brush in three months but her hands kept doing the math anyway.

Anneliese didn’t say anything. Just held her hand in the dark, which was more than enough.

They pulled up to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and it was exactly as she’d imagined—the facade blazing against the night sky, red carpet stretching out ahead, photographers packed three deep along the barriers. The noise hit before the door opened. A roar, the sound of a crowd that had been waiting.

An attendant opened Anneliese’s door first. She stepped out—a gold gown catching every flash, chin up, the look on her face that Erika recognized as her sister deciding to mean it—and the crowd surged.

Erika’s door opened.

She sat with it for one beat. Just one. The noise pouring in, the flashes strobing through the gap, the red carpet waiting. Tonight they were going to look at her on purpose. And she was going to let them.

Done with small things.

She got out of the car.

The flashes hit immediately—white and relentless, the specific blindness of being the subject rather than the observer. She couldn’t see anything beyond the first row of photographers. Couldn’t see the crowd. Just light.

They walked forward. Her heels sank into the red carpet.

Just walk. Don’t think. Just walk.

Anneliese matched her stride for stride. The photographers called their names and Erika turned toward the lenses because she’d said she would. The flashes hit. She held it—shoulders back, chin up.

You said they could look. Let them look.

She kept walking.

A reporter leaned in at the barrier—young, microphone already extended. “Erika—you’re primarily a visual artist. Are you still working?”

The deflection came up immediately. She stopped.

“Actually—” The word came out before the rest of it. She looked at the reporter. “I don’t know yet.”

They moved on. The carpet noise fell away at the theatre entrance—soft classical music, the art deco lobby opening around her. Gold leaf catching the light. She slowed without meaning to.

Not yet. But something.

Anneliese’s hand found hers.

They went in.

Lily found them in the crowd with a wink. “Told you I’d find you.”

They were halfway to the theater doors when Isabelle Vance stepped out of the crowd, moving through it like she owned the room—because now she did..

“I shredded the NDAs this morning. Stasia’s—all of them, every page. The old board has nothing left to hold over you. I wanted you to hear that from me, not read it somewhere.”

Free. The word didn’t fit. She’d carried the no-NDA as both shield and exposure for three months, and free was more complicated than it sounded. She said “thank you” anyway, because it was true even if it was inadequate.

“What happens to her now? Who’s thinking about that?”

“Solokov. He’s already in contact.” A beat. “She’ll have options she didn’t have before.”