Julia Ann almost laughed. "That obvious?"

That evening, she did something she hadn’t done in years: she went off-script. No camera. No scripted breathing exercises. She drove to an old jazz bar in Silver Lake, ordered a whiskey neat, and let the piano player’s melancholy fingers work their magic.

She sat in her minimalist office, surrounded by vision boards and half-empty matcha lattes. On the wall, a framed print read: Pressure is a privilege. She had coined that. Now, she wanted to throw it through the window.