The hum of the tires against the asphalt played counterpoint to her voice, light and airy, floating through the cabin of her brand-new 2019 BMW 7 Series like the mist curling outside the window. The Carolina trees blurred into darkened smears. I watched as the ends of her hair lifted and fell against the wind’s rhythm, the golden strands catching glimpses of a streetlight. There was something hypnotic about how she existed, like an actress seen in the final frame of an award-winning film, too captivating to cut away from.
She shot me a quick look. “Stop doing that.”
I sighed, barely suppressing my annoyance. I knew exactly what she meant. I had bailed out of the high note again.
“It wasn’t even that bad,” I muttered.
“It was Rihanna! You gotta commit,” she insisted, restarting the song, her fingers dancing along the dashboard like an orchestral conductor. When the beat kicked in, she shot me another look—don’t mess this up again—and together, we picked up where we left off, our voices filling the space between us, between Columbia and Carlisle, between the past and whatever waited at the end of this road.
It was always like this with Hollywood: light, effortless. But underneath it all, a script was being written, unravelling before my blind eyes.
We cycled through Mariah, Usher, and Paramore—laughing, dueling, playfully critiquing each other’s runs. This was what she wanted me to remember. This was what she wanted to be our reality. And for a while, I let it be.
She pointed out sights I had seen before, eager to share her version of Massachusetts. “I want you to see Carlisle the way I see it.” The way she saw it—not the way it actually was. There was a difference. I just didn’t know it yet.
The roses outside our door at the Tampa suite had been white.
The bouquet was fresh, delicate, and pristine. It was a quiet reminder, a subtle whisper that I had once been running. But Hollywood had plucked that shadow from my life with the same effortless precision that she orchestrated everything else. There was no boasting, no declarations of power, no monologues revealing the trick before the grand reveal. That wasn’t her style. Her magic was in the misdirection—she never needed to tell me she was in control. I just needed to believe I was safe.
“Are you nervous?” she asked suddenly, breaking through my thoughts.
“About what?”
“Meeting Father.”
The way she said it—Father—carried the same weight as a sacred title. He wasn’t just her father. He was Father.
I shrugged, keeping my hands on the wheel, watching the road stretch endlessly ahead. “Should I be?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached across the console, taking my hand in hers. Soft. Warm. A practiced gesture. A promise that she’d always make sure I was okay.
“Don’t worry,” she said at last, her voice dripping with something I couldn’t name. “You’ll be fine.”
And just like that, she let go.
The way she laughed when she won, her nose scrunched when she was annoyed, and the way she always knew precisely how to navigate a conversation to make you believe you had just figured something out on your own made her Hollywood.
She had never lost before.
She had never even considered losing before.
We arrived in Carlisle just as the last remnants of daylight surrendered to the hush of evening. The mansion stood like a monument to something older than time, shadows stretching long and heavy across the driveway. Hollywood was still grinning, but the set of her shoulders tightened as we stepped inside. The air was thick and charged—like the moments before a storm.
Father greeted us with measured amusement, his presence filling the space effortlessly. He barely needed to speak before I understood the purpose of this night. The basement was colder than I expected, the floor padded, the walls lined with old fight posters. A ring sat in the middle, waiting.
Hollywood sat perched on a chair in the corner, watching, unreadable. But when Father wrapped his hands and looked at me with expectation, I saw it. The wrinkle of her nose. Subtle. Quick. The only tell she’d ever allow herself. She hated this. She hated that this wasn’t hers to control.
But I stepped forward anyway.
The Prestige had already been set in motion. And all that was left was the final act.