Chapter 8

The lights didn’t just turn off; they exhaled. One by one, the towering stands of softboxes and the sharp, unyielding strips of LED went dark, plunging the vast, echoing warehouse of the studio from a blinding, hyper-realistic day into a heavy, velvet shadow. I stood there for a moment, my chest still heaving slightly, the residual heat of a hundred spotlights clinging to my skin like a second layer of sweat. My hair, previously pinned into a severe, chic knot, had begun to unravel, stray wisps of dark curls escaping to frame my face, sticking to my flushed cheeks. I looked at myself in the large, blacked-out mirror that lined the back wall, catching my reflection in the dim emergency exit sign’s glow. I looked like I had been devoured. I looked like I had been loved. "Time to go, baby girl." His voice cut through the haze, low and rough, vibrating in the quiet air. He was standing by the stack of equipment cases, a silhouette against the fading light. He didn’t look like the corporate executive who had signed my contract, nor the polished stranger who had posed with me for the first few hours. He looked like