Page 1 of He Sees You
PROLOGUE
Two Days Ago…
New York City
Celeste
The conference room at Crimson Publishing has glass walls, which means everyone on the thirty-fourth floor can watch me slowly suffocate.
I press my thumb against the condensation ring my coffee cup left on the mahogany table, creating a perfect fingerprint in the moisture.
Around me, three executives in suits that cost more than most people's rent are dissecting my career like medical students with their first corpse.
"The problem," Richard Haverston says, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, "is that your last book lacked teeth."
I lift my gaze from the table.
Outside, Manhattan sprawls in shades of grey and glass, snow beginning to dust the skeletal trees far below.
I can see directly into the building across the street, where other people in other conference rooms are having other meetings about other problems.
A massive taxidermied deer head hangs in what looks like a trendy gastropub, its dead eyes somehow finding mine across the distance.
"Crimson Vendettasold over three hundred thousand copies," I say quietly.
"It did." Richard pulls up something on his tablet, projecting it onto the wall-mounted screen. My words fill the white space, and my stomach clenches. "But let's look at what your readers are saying, shall we?"
The reviews scroll past like an indictment:
"Where's the darkness we fell in love with?"
"This felt safe compared to her earlier work."
"I miss when Celeste Sterling made me afraid to turn the page."
"Her heroes used to be dangerous. Now they're just damaged."
Each comment is a small knife between my ribs.
I take a sip of cold coffee to avoid responding, the bitter liquid coating my throat like medicine.
"The market is hungry for something darker," Jennifer from Marketing chimes in, her red nails clicking against her phone screen. "Have you seen what's trending? Stalker romance is up forty percent. Morally black heroes are what readers want. They don't want men who ask permission anymore, Celeste. They want men who take."
"I understand the market."
"Do you?" Richard pulls up another document. "Because Scarlett Cross' latest? Debuted at number one. Her hero killed three people in the first chapter. Hollis Black's new release has a kidnapping on page two. The readers are craving that fear, that adrenaline rush. And frankly, you're not delivering it anymore."
My phone buzzes against the table.
Dad calling.
I flip it over without answering.
"Perhaps," my friend and what feels like my only ally, Juliette Lockwood, says from her corner of the room, speaking for the first time since the meeting began, "we should consider that Celeste's writing reflects her own experiences. When's the last time you felt genuine fear, Celeste? Or real passion?"
The question hangs in the air like a noose.
Juliette sits with perfect posture in her cream-colored suit, looking like she stepped out of a Vogue editorial rather than the fiction editorial department.
