Read Chapter 15: An Offer She Can't Refuse?

The call came at nine in the morning, before the coffee had finished dripping through the filter.

Mara picked up the receiver with her shoulder, one hand still fumbling for a cigarette. The voice on the other end was male, polished, with the kind of Received Pronunciation that made her teeth ache.

"Miss Ellis? My name is Gerald Whitfield. I'm head of A&R at Mercury Records."

She nearly dropped the phone. Mercury. Not Polydor, not some two-bit operation sniffing around after Dex's leak. Mercury had artists like The Who on their roster, and they did not call unknown photographers in Camden flats at nine in the morning.

"I'm listening," she said, keeping her voice even.

"We've seen your work. The shots from the Marquee, the ones of that Vale character before he—" He paused delicately. "Before everything. You have an eye, Miss Ellis. A real eye."

She waited. People who called at nine in the morning with compliments always wanted something.

"We'd like to offer you a staff position. Staff photographer, primarily for our studio session coverage. Album covers, promotional materials, that sort of thing. A proper salary. Benefits. A darkroom of your own, fully equipped."

Mara's hand tightened on the receiver. A salary. A darkroom. Benefits. It was everything she'd dreamed of when she'd first picked up a camera at eighteen, everything she'd been clawing toward for eight years of freelancing and scraping and watching lesser men get handed the work she deserved.

"Your work would be exclusive to Mercury, of course," Whitfield continued. "And we'd require ownership of all negatives produced during your employment. Standard industry practice."

There it was.

"Studio negatives only?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"All negatives produced during your employment, Miss Ellis. Including any personal work shot on Mercury time or using Mercury equipment." A pause. "You'd also be required to surrender any existing negatives of Mercury-affiliated artists. We find it keeps things—clean."

Danny Vale had never been on Mercury. But the film in her pocket, Lenny's promo shoot, the one she was meant to develop with Robbie tonight—that was Mercury-adjacent if you squinted. Lenny's label distributed through Mercury. She'd seen the logo on his singles.

She thought about the debt. The number that sat in her ledger like a stone in her shoe. What Lenny's men would do if she didn't pay.

"The salary," she said. "What are we talking?"

Whitfield told her. It was enough. Enough to clear the debt in three months if she lived like a nun. Enough to never have to photograph another debutante ball or wedding or christening for the rest of her life.

"I'll need to think about it," she said.

"Of course. But do think quickly, Miss Ellis. These positions don't stay open long. And you're—" another delicate pause "—something of a liability at the moment, given the recent press. We're taking a chance on you. I'd hate for that chance to expire."

The line went dead.

Mara stood in her kitchen, the receiver buzzing in her hand, and felt the walls of her tiny flat close in around her.

---

Robbie found her an hour later at his practice space, sitting on the amp crate while he ran through scales.

He didn't ask why she'd come. Just raised an eyebrow mid-phrase, kept playing, let the notes fill the room until the silence between them wasn't heavy anymore.

"You're early," he said finally, setting the bass down. "For tonight."

"I know."

The film was still in her pocket. She could feel it, a thin square of plastic pressing against her hip. The evidence that could bring down Lenny, if she had the courage to develop it.

"Mercury called," she said.

Robbie's hands stilled on the bass neck. "Mercury Records?"

"The same. Staff photographer. Full salary. Exclusive rights to everything I shoot."

He was quiet for a long moment. She watched his face, looking for the judgment she expected, and found instead a careful, studied neutrality.

"And the catch?" he asked.

"All negatives. Including the ones I already have. Including anything I shoot on my own time, if it's got Mercury artists in it."

"You mean including Lenny's film."

She nodded. "They didn't say his name. But Mercury distributes for his label. If I sign, the film in my pocket belongs to them. I'd have to hand it over."

Robbie leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. The afternoon light from the high windows caught the edge of his jaw, the lines around his eyes that she'd come to know, the shape of his mouth that she'd learned to read.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I want to pay off Lenny." The words came out raw, scraped clean. "I want him out of my life and out of Danny's and out of yours. I want the debt gone. I want to stop looking over my shoulder."

"And the film?"

"If I sign, it goes to Mercury. And if it goes to Mercury—" She didn't need to finish. They both knew what happened to evidence that ended up in corporate hands. It disappeared. Or it got leaked to the same tabloids Dex had fed her name to. Either way, Lenny walked.

"You could develop it first," Robbie said. "Before you sign anything. See what's on it."

"You think I haven't thought of that? I agreed to develop it with you. Together. That was the plan."

"Plans change."

She pushed off the amp and started pacing the narrow room, her boots echoing off the concrete floor. "If I sign, the debt goes away. I never have to think about Lenny again. But I lose the film, and I lose my freedom. Every picture I take for the rest of my career, Mercury owns. They can bury them in a vault or sell them to the highest bidder. They can fire me and keep working my negatives without paying me a penny more. I've seen it happen. Women get hired, shot the good work, and then—"

"And then the men take the credit," Robbie said quietly. "And the money."

She stopped pacing, looked at him. "You know how many photographers I've watched get erased? How many careers I've seen stolen because someone with a suit and a signature decided they owned the work? I've been fighting my whole life to make my name mean something. To not be Marian Hope, the girl who ran away with a camera. To be Mara Ellis, the photographer. And this—" she gestured vaguely, helplessly, at the phone that wasn't in the room, at the offer that had come through it "—this would give me everything I worked for. Then take it away."

Robbie stood. Crossed the room until he was close enough that she could smell the tobacco on his jacket, the faint sweat of practice.

"What would you do?" she asked. "If you were me."

His eyes held hers. In them she saw the boy who'd run away from his father's fists, who'd taught himself to play in borrowed rooms, who'd clawed his way into a band by sheer force of will. She saw someone who understood what it meant to want something so badly it hurt, and to know that getting it might cost more than you could pay.

He reached out, and for a moment she thought he might touch her face, might give her something she could hold onto. But his hand dropped to her shoulder instead, squeezed once, then let go.

"Never sell what you love, Mara."

His voice was low, rough, like the words had been dragged up from somewhere deep.

"That's what he told you? Your father?" She didn't know why she asked. The question just came.

"No." Robbie's mouth curved into something bitter. "He never told me anything. But I learned it anyway. You sell your time, you sell your body, you sell your pride—you get those back, eventually. But the thing you love?" He shook his head. "You give that away, you never get it back. It stops being yours. It stops being you."

The words hung between them.

"And Lenny?" she asked.

"We'll find another way."

"Another way? Robbie, the deadline—"

"We'll find another way," he repeated. There was steel in his voice now. "We develop the film tonight. We see what Lenny's afraid of. And then we use it."

"You can't know it's enough."

"No." He met her eyes. "But I know you. And you're not the kind of woman who sells what she loves."

She wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him about the debt, about what it felt like to know her life was collateral for someone else's mistake, about the way she'd stopped sleeping properly weeks ago because every creak in the floorboards sounded like Lenny's men coming to collect.

But she looked at him, and she didn't.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the thing she loved wasn't just the camera.

The thought scared her more than the contract did.

She pulled the film from her pocket, held it up between them.

"Tonight," she said. "Together. Whatever's on this, we face it."

Robbie nodded. "Together."

The word settled in her chest like a promise she wasn't sure she was ready to make.