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Chapter Twelve

Mikel

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She isn't answeringher phone.

Why isn't she answering her phone?

“Paige,” I grumble anxiously, my cell pressing hard against my ear, “pick up, pick up! Where are you?”

“Mr. Hause?” Taylor asks urgently. “Your father wants to see you. He's in his office—”

“Not now!” I snap, turning away, ringing Paige again.

“But, Sir, it's about the influencer you were having handle the re-review?”

My neck twinges from how fast I stare at Taylor. “What about her?”

Poor Taylor, he's my age but there's already gray streaks in his hair. I suspect being head of our media department is tough, especially when he has someone like me, who still refuses to create a Twitter account, to listen to. Gingerly, he says, “She abandoned the review.”

“What?” I stammer, lowering my phone. “She wouldn't do that.”

He shakes his head. “I saw it myself. Here, you can watch. Look.” He passes me an iPad that's logged into the site Paige streams on. I see the video isn't live, it's a replay from earlier. I expected her to message me to tell me she was going to do the review before it happened. Apparently she'd gotten spontaneous.

“Wait,” I say before I hit play. “The numbers here are wrong. She had three-million subs before.”

“Just watch the video,” he says with a wince.

Pressing my finger to the touchscreen, I watch as Fawn of the Dead, looking more HD and smooth since my upgrades, begins her production. She's in an ecstatic mood as she celebrates her crossing over into the three-million club, a rare occurrence for any online personality. My smile grows because her joy is my own—I feel her energy, reflect her excitement, and for a while I forget why Taylor told me to watch.

When she holds up the new and improved Secret Reader, my breath catches in my throat. The assault of angry messages in her chat is awful, but more bone-chilling are the images someone has taken of me with Paige.

From the beginning she told me she's a private person. She didn't want her fans to know who she really is. That unravels before me in the form of photos, videos, and other detective-level connections among her viewers as they piece together her name, where she lives, and her relationship with me.

And I stare as her joy melts away along with her subscriber numbers. Through the humming in my skull I realize Taylor is speaking. “—risky but we couldn't have seen this coming, Mr. Hause.”