Service Was Mediocre: Reviewing My Billionaire Lover

Inside the penthouse, Cullen Hunter walked over to the nightstand. He picked up the three hundred dollars. He crushed the bills in his fist, his knuckles turning white. He looked at the empty space where she had stood.

He didn't feel the satisfaction he usually felt when he discarded a nuisance. He felt a burning, unfamiliar irritation.

"You're awake. Finally."

The voice was low, vibrating with a morning rasp that usually sent shivers down a woman's spine. But for Avery Hall, it triggered a sharp, blinding headache that started behind her eyes and drilled into her skull.

She didn't open her eyes immediately. Her body felt heavy, like she had been dragged over gravel. The scent of sandalwood and expensive, chemically crisp laundry detergent filled her nose. It wasn't the smell of her mildewy apartment in West Hollywood.

It was the smell of money. Cold, hard money.

Avery opened her eyes. The ceiling was too high. The light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling glass was too bright. She turned her head, ignoring the stiffness in her neck, and looked out at the Los Angeles skyline. It sprawled below her like a circuit board of grey and smog.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through the fog in her brain. She knew this room. She knew the minimalist grey furniture that looked uncomfortable to sit on. She knew the man who was currently running the shower in the adjacent bathroom.

She looked down at herself. She was wearing an oversized white dress shirt that wasn't hers. Her legs were bare. There were faint, purple bruises blossoming on her thighs.

The memories hit her then. Not her memories. The memories of the woman she used to be-or the woman she was supposed to be in this script. The desperate, clawing need for validation. The drugs slipped into a drink at a party she wasn't invited to. The stumbling into Cullen Hunter's car. The begging.

She sat up, the movement making the room spin. She wasn't that woman anymore. The realization settled in her chest, heavy as a stone. She had woken up in the "Death Flag" scene. This was the morning Avery Hall got kicked out, humiliated, and started her downward spiral into oblivion.

The shower turned off. The silence that followed was louder than the water had been.

She had maybe two minutes.

Avery swung her legs off the bed. Her feet hit the cold hardwood floor, and the shock helped ground her. She spotted her dress-a torn, sequined disaster-crumpled in the corner. She cursed under her breath.

She moved to the nightstand. There it was. A single sheet of heavy, cream-colored personal stationery lay next to a signed, blank check drawn from a private bank. The payoff. The silence fee.

A surge of anger flared in her gut, hot and acidic. It burned away the last of the fear. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to beg him to love her. She was going to rewrite this scene.

She grabbed