Page 31 of State of Ruin

She cues a new video. Dreamy, aspirational music fills the room, and the word solène appears once again in yellow on white before fading like a firework display.

In its place, a close-up of a face fills the screen, and I swear, I turn to ice where I sit.

Elyse.

I’ve seen her at work, I’ve seen her with a full face of makeup on, and I’ve seen that makeup streaked down her face after I’ve brought her to orgasm, but I have never seen her like this.

I dig my fingernails into my biceps as, on screen, she looks toward the camera and smiles straight at me. Without a scrap of makeup on, she looks luminous. Luminous, and enchanting, and fucking magnetic. The footage is amateur, but it’s in slow motion, and it works. It fucking works. She’s somewhere in Manhattan, in low sunlight, and it might not be St. Tropez, but it lights her up, and in one, horrible instant I know that Vanessa is worth every single penny we’re paying her.

Watching Elyse smile and toss her hair and gaze off into the distance, watching her so close up and makeup free, feels like I’m stripping her naked. In this moment, with my brother sitting a yard away from me, my connection with her feels every bit as intense as when I was snorting her cunt the other night like a fucking truffle hound. There’s an extraordinary vulnerability to her, a fragility it’s impossible to look away from, and I latched onto it as soon as I saw her. I was magnetized by it.

I just didn’t realize, because I’m what Wolff would call a complete and utter muppet, that everyone would feel it. That everyone would be entranced. That her look, her aura, is what Vanessa would surely call iconic.

Vanessa begins to speak over the music. “This is Elyse Ward. She’s a relatively unknown model repped by Vantage NYC. This footage came from her agency, but I thought it captured her allure well. She’s twenty-six, but her look is very timeless. She’ll appeal to the younger generation, I think—she has the clean-girl thing going on—but she also has this very elevated vibe that will resonate with all ages. I like that she’s a brunette. Those are her own eyelashes—no extensions. Great, full brows. She checks every single box. And just look at her mouth. I mean, way to cue a zillion new lip filler requests. She’ll be incredible for the lip gloss collection. Move aside, Hailey Bieber.”

I am indeed looking at Elyse’s mouth.

I cannot not look at Elyse’s mouth. Her infernal agent now has her sucking on a Popsicle in profile, and it’s like watching porn. I’m back in that room in Alchemy as she gazed up at me through her eyelashes and worked my dick better than any Popsicle. Under the table, said appendage stirs in appreciation as her full upper lip snags against the snack. I recall achieving the same effect by pressing my index finger against it. The worst thing is, this isn’t even meant to be porno. I’m pretty sure it’s just meant to be hot girl with great skin eats Popsicle while looking natural and aspirational.

Unfortunately, everything this woman does looks pornographic to me. I am incapable of surveying her objectively, weighed down as I am with the most salacious memories a man could ever dream of. And the truth is, I feel as much of a voyeur sitting here as I did the first time I trussed her up in that pillory and looked my fill. She has that effect on me.

The home movie comes to an end, thank Christ, and Vanessa clicks her controller, seemingly unaware that I’m on the brink of a major heart attack or panic attack or some kind of attack.

“These are the shots we took at the test shoot,” she continues, and Elyse’s face fills the screen once again, looking straight at the camera. Her hair is scraped back in this one, and the part of me that runs a multibillion-dollar beauty empire can see that her skin is fucking flawless. It’s dewy and slathered in product, and I wonder why she ever bothers with makeup. “Her skin-mapping results were fantastic, and you can see how great she looks with just a little product.” Vanessa clicks on through the close-ups, and then we’re onto some more fluid shots of Elyse in a white tee against a plain white backdrop. There’s nothing editorial about these images, but her natural beauty shines through.

“She’s stunning,” my idiot brother says, and I want to clock him.

“Did you say she hasn’t done any big campaigns before?” my chief marketing officer, Audra, asks from my other side.

“That’s right,” Vanessa says. “She’s only five-four, so I guess that’s limited her options. She’s mainly done catalogue stuff, some smaller beauty brands, and jewelry. But I’ve gotta say, I believe this is an instance where the portfolio isn’t a reflection of the person. She’s a hidden gem, and she honestly encapsulates everything I want us to communicate for this brand.”

She clicks onto another slide, which I assume is Elyse’s official headshot from Vantage. She’s in a plain black shirt, hair tied back, and looks young and ethereal and perfect. “Thoughts?” Her voice carries all the certainty that this is a mere formality, that she’s hit this particular ball out of the park.

She absolutely has.

And I absolutely cannot sign off on this campaign. I’ve known it from the moment she put Elyse’s face up there on that screen.

I lean forward and place my hands on the table. “She’s very pretty,” I say, making what feels like a herculean effort to keep my voice level at a time when I feel low-key hysterical, “but I think we can do better.”

My brother blows out an amused breath. Everyone else at the table turns and stares. And Vanessa puts down the remote so she can stand and plant her hands on the table.

“I beg your pardon?” she says in the kind of tone she might use if I suggested we should move to an all-male workforce.

I shrug, feigning a nonchalance I don’t feel. “You heard me. She’s meh. A little too commercial.” I know that word will land with Vanessa, and I mean it to. I mean it to detonate. We all want commercial as an end point, but we need a model to have a vaguely editorial look, not a commercial one. Not too edgy, but not too bland. They need to look as if they’re capable of giving us arty Vogue shots rather than modeling bras for fucking Sears.

Elyse is not too commercial. She is lovelier than I could ever articulate, and she is so fucking perfect for this campaign that I could weep. Hers is a face in a million. The problem is that Vanessa knows that, and that the whole world will know that if this thing airs, and then Elyse will be public property. Every brand under the sun will clamor for her next gig, her career will go stratospheric… and I will have no leverage left, financial or otherwise. She won’t be mine to coax, to mold, to pay. I’ve just found her, and I pulled off the mother of all proposals to secure her, and she and I are perfect together behind closed doors. We’re electric. And fucking Vanessa waltzes in here and, out of all the thousands of goddamn models in New York, tries to persuade me to share Elyse with the world?

I don’t fucking think so.

I found her first.

“I strongly disagree,” Vanessa says. “The consumer research we’ve done backs me up. Every demographic responded to her—every single age group overall chose hers as their favorite face for the brand over ten other faces.”

I’m starting to sweat. Of course they did. Of course they were dazzled by her. “She has a nice, girl-next-door vibe,” I say. “That’s it. She’s honestly generic. She’s not memorable.” Lies, all lies. She is impossible to forget. She is inimitable.

Vanessa actually gasps, as if what I’ve said is sacrilege, and quite rightly. “With respect, Sinclair, no one could call that face generic. She’s accessible, yes, but that’s different.” She straightens up and folds her arms.

“I disagree,” I lie.