Chapter 6: The Pitch Meeting
The key turned in the lock with a sound like a breaking bone. Marcus shoved the door open, the sweat-cooled steel of the handle slick under his palm. He stepped into the apartment’s sterile air, his breathing still ragged from the brutal, self-punishing miles he’d logged on the gym treadmill.The apartment smelled of artificial coconut and ozone.
Across the room, backlit by the harsh LED strip, Kylie was a performance in motion. She was perched on the edge of the IKEA sofa, phone propped on the coffee table. Her head was tilted back, eyes half-lidded, a look of ecstatic astonishment on her face as she inhaled deeply from her own wrist.
“...and that’s the magic of Égoïste Sauvage,” she purred into the camera, her voice a throaty, convincing whisper. “For the man who doesn’t ask permission.” She held the pose for a three-count, her augmented cleavage a deep, shadowed canyon in the unforgiving light, then leaned forward and tapped the screen.The red recording light died.
She let out a long, deflating breath, the sensual mask dissolving instantly into blank fatigue.She didn’t look at him. “Bro,” she said, her voice dropping into its natural, deeper register.“This is too easy. I forget how stupid dudes can be.” She picked up the tacky cologne bottle—a freebie from the brand—and tossed it onto the rubber flooring where it clattered and spun.
Marcus leaned against the closed door, the chill of the painted metal seeping into his shoulder blades. His sweat was drying, leaving a salty, anxious film on his skin. He watched her scroll through the video on her phone, her expression critically flat.“You didn’t answer,” he said. His voice was rough from exertion.“Answer what?” She didn’t look up.“Eleanor.Last night. The call.”
Kylie swiped the video away and finally glanced at him. Her eyes were sharp, calculating.“Oh, that.No.You didn’t answer it either. Let it go to voicemail.Smart.” She shrugged one bare shoulder.“She texted this morning. Something about a charity gala she’s chairing. Wanted to know if ‘Damon’ had a tux.I said you’d be honored.It’s a good angle. Philanthropic.Safe.”
He pushed off the door, his muscles protesting. The protein shake on the table had separated into murky layers.“And the wire?”
“Cleared. All of it.” A ghost of Kyle’ old, greedy smile flickered on her lips, but it was tempered by something else—a focused intensity.She pulled her laptop toward her, the screen brightening. “Which brings us to the next act. We can’t let the momentum die.”
He walked over, the black rubber floor giving slightly under his weight.He looked over her shoulder. On the screen was not a TikTok analytics dashboard, but a meticulously crafted spreadsheet. Next to it, a browser tab was open to the LinkedIn profile of a man named Gavin Pryce, CEO of PryceLogic. The photo showed a guy in his late forties with the tired, triumphant eyes of someone who’d sold his second startup for low ten digits.
“Who’s that?”
“Our retirement plan,” Kylie said. She tapped a manicured nail on the spreadsheet column labeled ‘Kylie Engagement.’ “Gavin Pryce.Subscribed to the premium tier six weeks ago.Likes every post. Tips… conservatively, but consistently.DMs are… earnest.Lonely.He’s recently divorced. His ex got the Napa house.He’s adrift.”
Marcus stared at the profile. The guy looked soft.Vulnerable.A hollow feeling spread in his own chest, a familiar echo. “So you’re catfishing a tech bro.Big deal. The premium tier isn’t buying you a new identity.”
“The premium tier gets you the weekend experience,” Kylie corrected, her voice low and smooth. She opened another tab—a breathtaking, professionally rendered webpage for ‘Sage’s Sanctuary: A Wellness Retreat for the Discerning Soul.’ It featured the same 3D model of the resort from last night, now populated with serene, blurry figures practicing yoga on the deck.“Gavin Pryce doesn’t just want nudes.He wants meaning. Connection. He wants to be seen by someone who transcends.” She gestured to the screen, to her own crafted image.“Sage can give him that. For a bespoke, in-person, weekend-long ‘energetic alignment and corporate vision quest’… the quote is two hundred and fifty thousand.”
The number hung in the air, thick as the scent of the discarded cologne.A quarter million.Marcus felt a jolt, part electric greed, part visceral dread.
“A weekend?How? Where?”
“The ‘where’ is a five-thousand-dollar-a-night rental in Montauk I’ve already reserved under the Sage LLC credit card. It’s got a zen garden and an infinity pool. The ‘how’…” She leaned back, looking up at him.Her eyes were clear, utterly mercenary.“Sage is a spiritual guide. Her partner, Dao, is a silent, physical trainer who facilitates the somatic release.That’s you. You’ll be there. Your job is to look impeccable, say almost nothing, and occasionally adjust his downward dog.The retreat is about her connection with him. You’re just… atmosphere.”
The pieces clicked into place with a cold, logical finality. They weren’t just running two separate scams anymore.They were merging them.Using his physical transformation as a prop in her digital fantasy. The masterstroke.“He’ll want to meet beforehand. A video call at least,” Marcus said, thinking aloud, slipping into the logistical puzzle. It was easier than confronting the moral crater they were digging.“He already has.Well, Sage has.Last Tuesday. She was in a softly lit room, talking about chakras. He loved it.” Kylie minimized the retreat page and brought up a dense email thread.“The deposit is already in the Sage LLC account.A hundred grand. Non-refundable.He’s flying in Friday.”
The speed of it was breathtaking. While he’d been agonizing over a missed call, she’d been closing a deal. The ambition in the room was a physical pressure.
“And after the weekend?” Marcus asked, his voice quiet.Kylie’s expression didn’t change. “Sage feels a powerful, karmic shift.She’s called to a monastery in Nepal for an indefinite period of silent retreat. All communication will cease.The LLC dissolves.The accounts are emptied. We vanish.” She finally looked at him, truly looked at him, seeing the sweat, the tension, the conflict. “It’s clean, Marcus.Cleaner than Eleanor.No long con.One weekend, one payoff. Then we’re done.”
Done.The word echoed.It meant money, safety, escape. It also meant betraying a man who, from his earnest LinkedIn profile and his lonely tips, seemed to genuinely crave what Sage was selling. It was a different flavor of cruel than the Eleanor scam—less intimate, more transactional, but somehow just as cold.
The laptop screen cycled to a slideshow of auto-playing OnlyFans previews, other creators, other fantasies, a silent parade of longing. The LED strip flickered once, casting a stutter-step shadow across Kylie’s face, making her look for a second like a stranger.
She watched him processing it, the gears turning behind his eyes.She closed the laptop with a soft click, sealing Gavin Pryce’s fate inside. “It’s just business,” she said, but the phrase sounded hollow, even to her. She stood, her movements strangely fluid in the harsh light. “We need to be in Montauk by Thursday to set up.You’ll need different clothes.Linen.Loose. Nothing that shows off the… merchandise.You’re Dao. You’re a shadow.”
He nodded, a short, sharp movement.The decision was made. There was no alternative path laid out in the black rubber of their floor. The momentum from Eleanor’s money, from their own twisted symbiosis, was carrying them forward now, a wave they could only ride.
“I’ll pack,” he said, turning toward the bedroom.He stopped, hand on the frame.“What about Eleanor? The gala?”
Kylie was already picking up her phone, likely to check for new tips from Gavin.She didn’t look up.“We’ll deal with her after Montauk. One masterpiece at a time.”
As he walked down the short hallway, he heard her phone start recording again, her voice lifting back into Sage’s ethereal, honeyed tone. “You are not a problem to be solved, darling. You are a universe to be explored…” The door closed softly behind him, muting the performance, but the words lingered in the sterile air, a haunting promise they were about to sell for a quarter of a million dollars. The countdown to the weekend had begun.
The countdown to the weekend had begun. It echoed in the hollow silence of the hallway, a timer only he could hear.
Marcus stood in the bedroom’s artificial twilight, the smart glass wall muted to a dull gray. His gym bag lay empty on the pre-warmed bed.He should pack.Linen.Shadows. Instead, he just stared at his reflection in the vanity mirror, a stranger sculpted from anxiety and chemicals. The pills were in his hand before he realized he’d opened the bottle. Two white ovals, like miniature moons.He dry-swallowed them, the bitter chalk coating his throat.
He heard the soft pad of bare feet behind him. The scent of coconut and vanilla grew stronger, cutting through the sterile air. Kylie’s reflection appeared beside his in the glass, her Sage persona shed, leaving something quieter, more real.“You’re standing here like a statue,” she said. Her voice was low, no performance in it.“It’s just a different set. Different marks. Same game.”
“It’s not the same.” He didn’t look at her, just at the combined image of them in the mirror.The perfect, fraudulent pair. “Eleanor… she thinks Damon is a good person.This guy, Gavin… he thinks Sage has answers. We’re not just taking money anymore.We’re taking hope. It’s fucking bleak.”
“Hope is a luxury item.” Kylie leaned her hip against the vanity. “We’re free-market capitalists.We provide the product, they provide the cash. Don’t get poetic about it now.”
He finally turned from the mirror. The ache in his joints was a deep, familiar throb, a side effect of the transformation he’d demanded of his own body. He felt swollen inside his own skin. She was close, watching him with an unsettling focus, her eyes tracing the lines of his shoulders, the tense set of his jaw.Her expression softened, or seemed to. A faint, complicated smile touched her lips. “You know,” she said, her tone shifting into something almost tender.“For all the acting classes, you never could just live in the moment. Always in your head.”
She stepped into his space. The LED lights of the vanity haloed her hair, but her face was in shadow.She raised her hand, her movements slow and deliberate. Her palm, cool and smooth, settled flat against the hard plane of his stomach, where the abs were etched like armor.He flinched at the touch, a static shock of awareness. Her hand slid upward, over the tight swell of his pec, coming to rest finally on the dense curve of his shoulder. She squeezed the implanted deltoid muscle, testing its firmness. Her other hand came up to cradle the side of his jaw, her thumb brushing the stubble there.
She held him there for a long moment, her eyes searching his, and for a second it wasn’t Kyle or Kylie looking back, but someone else entirely, someone he didn’t have a name for. Then she leaned in, her lips parting.
Kylie puts her hand on Marcus’s perfect pec and before giving him a passionate kiss saying wow babe your looking jacked.
The kiss was deep, consuming, tasting of her gloss and his own sour adrenaline. It wasn’t like the frantic, angry collision against the wall.This was slower, more claiming. Her body pressed against his, all soft curves against rigid muscle, a perfect complement of their deceptions.
She pulled back an inch, her breath warm on his mouth.Her eyes were dark, unreadable pools. “Wow, babe,” she whispered, the words a soft exhalation against his skin. “You’re looking jacked.” It was part compliment, part verdict, a final appraisal of the weapon they’d built.
Before he could respond, could process whether this was comfort, manipulation, or something else entirely, her phone buzzed violently on the vanity surface. The screen lit up, casting a frantic blue swipe across the ceiling.
She broke away, her professional mask snapping back into place as if the kiss had never happened.She scooped up the phone, her brow furrowed. “It’s the rental agency,” she said, all business. “They need a copy of Dao’s driver’s license for the house agreement.Fake ID. Now.”
She was already walking out, tapping on the screen, her silk robe whispering against the doorframe.“Get the Delaware one! The photo still works!” she called over her shoulder, already gone, absorbed back into the machinery of the scam.
Marcus was left alone, the ghost of her kiss on his lips, the impression of her hand still burning on his skin.He looked back at the mirror. The reflected man seemed even more like a stranger now, a puppet whose strings he could no longer feel. He touched his own shoulder where her hand had been.
The echo of her words—you’re looking jacked—hung in the air.It was the only confirmation he needed.The masterpiece was ready.The performance was about to begin. And he had no choice but to step onto the stage.