The Beverly Hills suite was a cathedral of glass and silence. Kristina’s bare feet sunk into a carpet so plush it muffled her steps, the insulation so total she could forget she was thirty floors above a city built on noise and electric desire. There were three rooms: a main parlor with a baby grand she never played, a dressing room so immaculate it looked like a show home, and the bedroom where blackout curtains held daylight hostage until summoned. At the center of it all was a full-length mirror, flanked by two spotlights set to mimic “golden hour”—the perfect backdrop for Instagram stories and impromptu fittings.

  She stood in front of the mirror now, arms folded across a ribbed tank and men’s basketball shorts, hair a wild and joyous mess. The woman who stared back was neither Mia Amor nor entirely Kristina; she was an in-between creature, the shell of one shedding, the ghost of another not yet ready to surface.

  Kristina touched her face. There was still a faint shimmer on her cheekbones from the morning’s powder, a slight redness where the wig adhesive had tugged too hard. She traced the arc of her own jaw—thicker than her stylists preferred, but hers. Her lips, naturally full but unlined, sloped into a frown that vanished when she caught herself performing it for the glass.

  She pressed both palms to the cold surface, as if by osmosis she could push through and meet the real girl on the other side. She wanted to believe that somewhere beneath the mascara, the set lists, and the perfectly uncontroversial opinions, Kristina De Los Santos still lived. She wanted to believe that if she closed her eyes and breathed in deep enough, she could conjure the smell of her father’s old Chrysler, or her mother’s cornbread, or the magnolia trees behind the house in England, Arkansas.

  Instead, the air was conditioned and bland, the only scent the lemon polish used to wipe fingerprints from the furniture.

  She turned from the mirror and paced the perimeter of the suite, opening drawers and closing them just for the noise. On the credenza, there were three unopened bottles of champagne, a basket of fruit so pristine it looked lacquered, and a pile of swag left by the venue—a deck of playing cards, branded sunglasses, a heavy-stitched robe with her stage name embroidered in metallic gold.

  She stopped at the window and watched the city unspool beneath her. The sun was setting now, and the Strip looked like a fuse burning down: pulsing, sequined, relentless. She could see the billboards from here—her own face twenty stories tall, eyes haloed in computer-generated sparkles. Mia Amor: FINAL SHOW, read the scrolling ticker, and underneath: The World Is Watching.

  She shivered, suddenly and inexplicably, and reached for her phone. No missed calls from Leslie, which meant she was either managing chaos or sparing Kristina from it. There were three new texts from her cousin in Santo Domingo—memes, all in Spanish—and a video call scheduled for 8:00 p.m. Central. She checked the time: five minutes to.

  She opened the contacts and tapped her father’s name, thumb hovering over the button for a second before she let it go.

  It rang twice, then the screen resolved into the familiar geometry of Samuel De Los Santos, framed by the faded lemon-yellow of their kitchen back home. He was in a collared shirt, sleeves rolled, eyes crinkled and alert even after a full day at the shop.

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  “Look at you, mija,” he said, without preamble. “Is that my old tank top?”

  “Maybe,” she said, trying to affect a look of innocence.

  He gave a low whistle. “Now I see where all my laundry went.”

  She grinned, for real this time. “How’s Arkansas?”

  He leaned back, camera wobbling, and gestured with a spoon to something offscreen. “Rained all morning. Mrs. Carpenter’s chickens got loose again, so I spent half the afternoon fixing up her fence. She sent you a pie, by the way. I froze it.”

  Kristina let herself close her eyes, just for a moment, and remembered the taste of Mrs. Carpenter’s chess pie. It was enough to make her heart tighten and her stomach growl at the same time.

  “How’s your week, Papi?” she asked.

  He shrugged, the gesture so familiar she could almost hear the cotton of his shirt stretching. “Same as always. I got a new client, that retired dentist who moved up from Hot Springs. Wants me to turn his barn into a man cave. Your mama would’ve laughed at that.”

  There was a beat of silence, not uncomfortable, just heavy. Her mother’s absence was an old ache now, mostly healed, but some days—like this morning—it pulsed back into life.

  “You eating okay?” Samuel asked.

  “Trying to,” Kristina said. “We did catering at the shoot, so I had a lot of salad. And like… weird sushi. The kind that’s mostly air.”

  He snorted. “You got to eat real food before you perform. No one sings from salad, you know that.”

  She didn’t say anything, just smiled and nodded.

  He studied her through the phone, eyes narrowing with concern. “You look tired.”

  “I am tired,” she admitted, voice low. “But it’s a good tired, you know? Like after we’d spend all day fixing the fence and I’d sleep through church.”

  He laughed at that, the deep, vibrating kind of laugh that filled a room. “You were the world’s laziest farmhand,” he said. “But you sang like an angel.”

  There was another pause, lighter this time.

  He grew serious, the smile dimming but not gone. “You okay, Kristina? Not Mia, not Amor. Just my girl.”

  She hesitated, searching for the right layer of truth. “I’m managing. It’s just a lot. The show, the press, the people telling me I have to be perfect all the time.”

  He nodded, slow and deliberate. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just got to be real.”

  She swallowed hard, the words hitting something deep. “I wish it was that simple.”

  Samuel’s eyes warmed. “Simple doesn’t mean easy. Sometimes you build something strong, then you got to walk the fence every day to make sure it holds. That’s all this is, mija. You’re just mending fences.”

  She wanted to hug him through the screen.

  He switched gears, as he always did when the air got too heavy. “Did you see the package I sent? I slipped in a photo. You and me at the fair, right after you won the pie-eating contest. You look like you ate a cloud.”

  She laughed, the memory bright and sticky-sweet. “I remember that. I puked in the parking lot.”

  He wagged a finger. “But you still finished the song that night.”

  “Yeah,” she said, voice thinner now. “I always finish the song.”

  He gazed at her, all warmth and no judgment. “That’s my Kristina.”

  She checked the time, feeling the old guilt of not wanting to hang up but needing to. “I have a thing in a few minutes. I should go.”

  He nodded, but didn’t end the call. “You call me after. Tell me how it goes.”

  She smiled. “Love you, Papi.”

  He waved, the camera wobbling again. “Te quiero, mija.”

  She pressed end and set the phone down, suddenly aware of the echo in the suite—the emptiness of high ceilings and too much space. For a long minute, she didn’t move, just stared at the window where the city kept pulsing, indifferent and immortal.

  Then, with a single decisive motion, she stood up, walked to the mirror, and ran her hands through her hair. She studied the girl staring back—her own girl, her father’s daughter, no one’s brand.

  She knew what she needed to do.