Page 55 of Royal Bargain

Ingrid pours herself a glass of water at the bar cart, her back to me. “Fine. Physically, at least. She’s in holding for the next few hours. The lawyers are handling it.”

I hesitate. She doesn’t offer more.

So this is why she called me. I knew it. She needs something. A favor. Leverage. She’s going to ask if the Brannagans can help clean it up. Or if Senator Burns can lean on the right people to make the footage disappear.

I brace myself, already running through how I’ll explain this to Liam—how I’ll word it carefully enough that he doesn’t explode but not so carefully that it sounds like I’m shielding Ingrid.

But instead, Ingrid turns toward me, calm as ice.

“It’s time,” she says.

I blink. “Time for what?”

She picks up a folder from the glass table and opens it with the kind of precision most people reserve for scalpels.

“To take things to the next level,” she says. “You said you were ready. Now we’ll find out if that’s true.”

My breath catches as she slides the folder toward me. A press sheet sits inside—my name at the top, clean and bold.Annika Volkov: Thornville’s Rising Star. The edges blur for a second as my brain scrambles to catch up.

“I—wait, I thought…” I trail off, embarrassed. “I didn’t think this was about me.”

“It wasn’t,” Ingrid says, briskly. “But it is now.”

She nudges the folder toward me again, but I’m too stunned to open it.

“I thought the nightclub performance was just… a trial,” I murmur. “A warm-up act.”

“It was.” She crosses the room, heels clicking against the marble like a metronome. “But that trial was recorded. And that recording has been making the rounds.”

She grabs a tablet from the table, unlocks it, and swipes through something with a flick of her manicured nail. Then she spins it toward me.

I see myself on the screen—standing under the soft stage lights at The White Swan Café, singing the song I thought no one would remember. The one I wrote in secret, in pieces, between locked bedroom doors and half-slept nights.

The video has over two hundred thousand views. Comments flooding in. People asking who I am.

“What—” I blink. “How did this even get out?”

Ingrid doesn’t even look up from her tablet. “I had someone filming it. Of course.”

My eyes widen. “Wait—you planned that?”

“I plan everything, Annika.” Her tone is sharp, but not unkind—more like a teacher scolding a student for underestimating the lesson. “The moment you stepped on that stage, I knew we had something. I pulled footage from three angles, chose the best clip, and pushed it to my contacts before the night was even over.”

She finally looks at me, a small smile curling at the corner of her mouth. “It’s gone viral. Not by accident. By design. That’s what I do.”

I glance down at the tablet again. My own face stares back at me, mid-chorus, lit up under the stage lights. The crowd in the background looks captivated.

“You gave me a product I could sell,” Ingrid says simply. “Now it’s time to move.” She smirks before continuing. “I’m lining up a new slate of performances—small venues at first, then possibly a slot at the Summit Festival. We’re still early in talks, but the right kind of buzz could secure you a headliner spot.”

My heart jumps into my throat. The Summit Festival is one of the biggest indie music events on the coast. People launch entire careers off it.

But all I can think about is the sharp crack of a gunshot echoing in my ears two nights ago. Burns collapsing. Liam’s hand tight around mine as he pulled me out the door.

“I—I don’t know,” I say quietly. “After the shooting, it just feels reckless to be out in public like that. I’m still…”

Hunted.

I don’t say it aloud, but the word pulses through my veins.