Chapter 48: FILLER
If you held on long enough, there would always be someone willing to give you the warmth you had been waiting for.
"Valerie is precious now," Nicole whispered to Quinn, her voice barely above a breath.
Quinn nodded slowly. "Insured for over a hundred million dollars. That is enough to buy Xova outright."
"I am so tempted to thank that jerk Liam for sparing our Valerie from ever marrying him," Nicole said, shooting Quinn a wide grin. "Let him hold onto that shameless second-rate model and take themselves as far away from us as possible."
Quinn smiled. "He has absolutely no idea that while he is busy plotting against Valerie, there is someone out here willing to put a hundred million dollars of insurance on her."
As the Secret shoot drew closer, Liam threw himself into a relentless media campaign back home. He flooded every available channel with statements about Amara, positioning her above one name after another, building her up as the superior talent, the shining star. Her exposure ballooned dramatically. By comparison, whenever my name appeared in any coverage, it was buried somewhere in the middle of articles that were really about Amara, just a handful of lines before the focus shifted back to her.
My fans started to worry. The official fan club reached out to Quinn repeatedly, wanting to know how I was holding up and what was being done. Each time, I gave Quinn the same signal. Stay quiet. Quinn understood immediately. Secret Magazine, for all the fuss being made, was only a third-tier publication overseas. Making noise over it would only make me look reactive and small-minded. So she sent back four simple words to every anxious message she received.
Have faith in Valerie.
That was enough. My fans knew how I operated. They had watched me hold my ground quietly through situation after situation, always with a clear head and a plan underneath the calm. Four words from Quinn carried the weight of everything they already knew about me, and they settled.
Meanwhile, in Amara’s corner, things felt triumphant. Her assistant scrolled through the online reactions and reported back with visible satisfaction. "President Liam, Amara’s support back home has climbed again."
"What about Valerie’s numbers?" Liam asked.
"Thanks to Iris’s PR work, we used Valerie’s name early on to generate interest around Amara, then layered in top celebrity associations to raise her perceived value. The later statements did not need Valerie at all. We may have stepped on a few toes with other fan bases, but Valerie’s share of the coverage is only a fraction of Amara’s."
Iris looked over the results with a cold, satisfied expression. "The interest and the momentum are all in our hands right now. But to truly finish this, we need the Secret photo shoot to deliver. If Amara performs as well as these numbers suggest she should, then once we land back home, Valerie will not even register anymore."
Amara lifted her chin with full confidence. "I have watched Valerie’s work. I do not see how she is better than me. And let us not forget, she was once my substitute."
What Amara did not know, and had never been told, was that I had spent that entire time deliberately pulling back, shrinking myself down just to fit into her shadow. Every instinct I had as a model, I had suppressed in order to imitate her. She was measuring herself against a version of me that was never real.
Iris leaned forward. "I will manage the photographer on my end and make sure the shoot is framed to place you at the center. Amara, spend time thinking seriously about how you want to embody the Oriental Trend theme. This needs to be deliberate and polished."
"I will," Amara said with a nod.
Iris’s expression turned serious. "This is the first time you will be sharing a stage with Valerie directly. Understand that your reputation is not the only thing at stake here. If you fall short, it reflects on all of Xova. It puts Liam’s judgment into question. This is a battle you cannot lose."
"After the humiliation I was put through yesterday, I have every reason to win," Amara said firmly. Her swelling popularity had filled her with a confidence that felt unshakeable.
Tomorrow, she and I would be standing on the same stage.
And only one of us was truly ready for it.
The headlines Nicole pulled up on the morning of the shoot were exactly what we expected. "Amara Vs Valerie." "Trendy Goddess Battles It Out With Outdated Model." "Valerie and Amara Fight in the Same Frame." Every single one of them had Iris’s fingerprints all over it. That was just how the internet worked these days. Yesterday Amara was the mistress everyone was whispering about, and today she had somehow been repackaged into a goddess, the ideal model in the public’s eyes. Nobody could predict how the entertainment industry would spin things from one day to the next.
What was certain was that Xova had thrown everything they had behind Amara.
Her team had already arrived at Secret’s headquarters before the shoot even began. Nicole scrolled through the coverage with visible irritation and looked over at me. "For Amara’s sake, that man has given absolutely everything. I heard there is going to be an interview between the two of you before the shoot even starts." She set her phone down and looked at me directly. "Valerie, are you really not going to do anything? Amara has three appearances a day, she is constantly engaging with her fans, and she has an entire team running her image. They are treating her like an international superstar."
"She has been positioned above some of the most recognized international supermodels," I said, flipping calmly through a previous edition of Secret magazine. "It makes sense that people are treating her accordingly." I looked up briefly. "Today, both of you need to learn how to compliment others and mind your manners."
Nicole stared at me blankly. "Compliment what exactly? There is nothing worth complimenting." Quinn, who had already figured out what I meant, turned in her seat and looked at Nicole pointedly. "Have you already forgotten what Valerie said last night?"
Nicole thought about it for a moment, then it clicked. "Oh. Right. Let her overconfidence be her own undoing."
Comments