Willa's apartment smelled like cat food and cinnamon.
She handed me sweatpants. A sweatshirt. Socks. All too big. All her ex-boyfriend's.
"He wasn't coming back for these," she said. "Figured they'd find a use eventually."
I pulled the sweatshirt over my head. It smelled like her. Laundry detergent. Something floral.
"Sit," she said.
I sat on her couch. Three cats immediately surrounded me. Investigating.
Willa disappeared into the kitchen. Came back with a mug. Tea. Hot. I wrapped my hands around it.
"Drink," she said.
I drank.
"You're in shock," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You're in shock. That's fine. Shock is appropriate. You died."
"I didn't die."
"They declared you dead. That counts for something." She sat across from me. Looked at me the way she looked at her illustrations. Like she was figuring out where to add color. "What happened?"
I told her. The morgue. The phone. The video. The hotel. The phones. The run.
She listened. Didn't interrupt. Didn't react. Just listened.
When I finished, she stood up. Walked to her laptop. Opened it.
"Okay," she said. "You're viral."
"How viral?"
She turned the screen toward me.
My face. On every platform. The live stream clip. The hotel video I'd saved and sent to myself—someone had leaked it. Dorian and Sloane in bed. Me walking in. The conversation.
Comments everywhere.
On Twitter: "Mara Cross is the main character of 2024."
On TikTok: "She took BOTH phones. Queen behavior."
On Instagram: "The way she said 'the lighting's terrible for content' I GASPED."
On Reddit: A thread analyzing the carbon monoxide readings. The hospital timeline. The legal implications.
Fifteen million views on my death video.
Thirty million views on the hotel confrontation.
Forty million on the live stream clip.
I put down the tea.
"Where's Dorian?"
Willa checked. "His location is off. But Sloane's is on. She's at her apartment in West Hollywood. Posting."
"Posting what?"
Willa turned the screen. Sloane's Instagram. A new video. Thumbnail: her face, crying, makeup perfect.
"Clearing the air," Willa said.
We watched it together.
Sloane on a couch. White. Beige pillows. Good lighting.
"I need to address something," she said. Voice breaking perfectly. "The video going around. The live stream. All of it."
She wiped a tear. Not smudging her mascara. Impressive.
"I was manipulated. Dorian Voss told me he was separated. He told me his wife had left him. I believed him. I'm a victim here too."
Comments below: "we believe you queen" "she's so brave" "leave her alone"
I watched. Said nothing.
"I'm not a villain. I'm a cautionary tale. And I'm so, so sorry to Mara Cross. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know."
Video ended.
Willa looked at me. "Well?"
I picked up Sloane's phone. The one I'd taken. Opened her photos. Scrolled back three months.
Found the screenshot. Dorian's TikTok. My body on the floor. Her caption: "lol this is my man."
I showed Willa.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, that's good."
"That's not all."
I opened her messages. Dorian. Three months of texts.
Him: "She's being so dramatic today."
Her: "lol what now"
Him: "Wants me to fix the car. Like I'm a mechanic."
Her: "omg husbands are so extra"
Him: "You free tonight?"
Her: "always"
I kept scrolling.
The day of the carbon monoxide. 8:47 AM.
Him: "She's sick. Might take her to the hospital later."
Her: "boring. come over instead."
Him: "Can't. She's being weird."
Her: "film her. content."
Him: "lol good idea"
I stopped scrolling.
Willa was reading over my shoulder. She went quiet.
"He filmed me because she told him to," I said.
"Yeah."
"She told him to film me dying."
"Yeah."
I put the phone down. Picked up the tea. Drank it. It was cold.
"What do you want to do?" Willa asked.
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"First," I said, "I want to eat something. Then I want to shower. Then I want to figure out who Sloane Parrish really is. Not the influencer. The person. The one with the offshore accounts and the real friends and the actual life."
"Why?"
"Because she's not just some girl. She's too good at this. The crying video went up twenty minutes after I left the hotel. Twenty minutes. That's not performance. That's strategy."
Willa looked at me. "You're thinking like an engineer again."
"I never stopped."
She smiled. First time since I'd arrived.
"Okay," she said. "Eat. Shower. Then we dig."
She stood up. Went to the kitchen. Started making food.
I stayed on the couch. The cats had arranged themselves around me. Three of them. Warm. Purring.
My phone buzzed. A notification.
Sloane's new video: "Clearing the air."
Two million views in twenty minutes.
I didn't watch it again. I opened her personal phone instead. Went through her photos. Her messages. Her apps.
Found something interesting.
A folder labeled "work." Password protected. I tried her birthday. Wrong. Tried Dorian's birthday. Wrong. Tried 800k—her follower count.
Unlocked.
Inside: screenshots. Data. Spreadsheets. User information. Email addresses. Phone numbers. Purchase histories.
Thousands of them.
Her followers.
She'd been selling their data.
I kept scrolling. Found the payment confirmations. Offshore account. Caymans. Deposits every month for eighteen months.
The buyer: a name I recognized. A rival platform. One that had been trying to steal market share from Julian Croft's company for years.
Julian Croft.
Sloane's brother.
Her boss.
I looked up. Willa was at the stove. Cooking something that smelled like garlic.
"Willa," I said.
"Yeah?"
"Who's Julian Croft?"
She turned. "Why?"
"Because Sloane works for him. And she's been selling his user data to his competitor for eighteen months."
Willa put down the spatula.
"You're kidding."
I held up the phone.
"I'm not."