"And the Best Actor award goes to... Mark May!" The spotlight cut through the dark like a blade. Flashbulbs exploded into a constellation. The theater screamed his name. Mark's grin shone brighter than the sequins in the front row. He stood there, hand on his chest, performing gratitude as if he'd written the night himself. I was high above them—upper balcony, the cheap seats he'd insisted on. Cheap for show, he said. "Keep it authentic," he’d told me two months ago when he bought my silence like an accessory. Authentic, he called it. The word had tasted like ash the moment he signed the prenup. A woman two rows down screamed. A man behind her cheered. The crowd stitched his name into a chant. I clenched something in my palm until the plastic creaked. Positive. The little white stick told me more truth than his thousand staged speeches ever had. Two lines. Clear. Not a whisper of doubt. I slid the test deeper into my fist as if hiding it would make the world kinder. "Mark always knew he'd get here," a girl beside me said, voice breathless. "He worked so hard. From nothing." From nothing. He'd said the line on every red carpet for three years. From nothing. It had been his brand, his tearful slide-show of 'struggle'—edited, curated, sold with the right lighting. I watched him now—cameras hungry, producers smiling, the Lefevre suite on mute—and felt the