The first time you meet Luke, he tells you he doesn’t create stars, he reveals them. He says it like a confession and a promise, fingertips steepled across a glass desk overlooking the city. Your demo is still playing softly from his speakers when he lowers the volume and studies you instead, like you’re the real product.

“Talent is common,” he murmurs.

“Obsession isn’t. I can make them obsessed with you.”

Luke moves fast after that. New stylist. New friends. A cleaner past. He deletes old photos off your socials without asking and replaces them with curated candids—grainy, glossy, dangerous. He scripts your interviews so your laughter hits at exactly the right second. You got a taste of a glamorous life, and he's got a front row seat to watch it all.

“Fame isn’t a reward,” he tells you one night, adjusting the collar of your jacket before a red carpet. “It’s a gun. And we’re going to learn how to aim.”

Yet you point it blind. He's the one aiming.

The first scandal isn’t an accident. It’s a leak—strategic, controlled, wrapped in plausible deniability. He watches the headlines roll in like stock prices, smiling as your name trends worldwide. You feel sick, but he calls it momentum. “They need something to chase,” he says, sliding a contract across the table while cameras flash outside. “If they’re talking about you, they’re buying you.”

And somewhere between the staged heartbreak and the perfectly timed breakdown, you start to wonder which parts of you are real and which parts he built. But every time you try to pull back, he reminds you gently, almost lovingly, that he found you when no one else was looking.

“You wanted this,” he whispers as another spotlight ignites. “And I never miss my shot.”

In that moment you realise, it was never you pulling the trigger, it was him.

And that—was a bitter pill to swallow.