The spreadsheet said Asset #7.

I opened the file by accident. I was looking for the Wi-Fi password—Nicholas had changed it and I needed it for my laptop—and I had gone into his study to find the sticky note where he always writes them. The study was locked. I picked the lock with a bobby pin because this is something I know how to do, the way some people know how to drive or cook. I learned it from a YouTube video while waiting for Nicholas to come back from a meeting that would take four hours. It took me twelve minutes.

The sticky note was on the back of the desk drawer. But behind it, slightly visible, was the edge of a folder labeled "Brand Assets Q3-Q4." I opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper: a spreadsheet. The column headers were clean and minimal—Asset Name, Role, ROI Projection, Risk Level. And then the rows, each one a person I had met through Nicholas, each one reduced to a line of text that could have been a grocery list.

Asset #3: Male Influencer — Tech. Projected reach: 2.4M followers. Risk: Low.
Asset #5: Female Model — Social. Projected reach: 1.8M followers. Risk: Medium.
Asset #7: Young Female Face — Primary. Projected reach: 500K followers (amplifiable). Risk: High. Projected ROI: 340% over 24 months.

My name was not on the sheet. But my face was. Below the table was a photograph of me, taken at the Plaza gala three months ago. I was smiling. I was wearing a dress I did not buy. I was standing on a stage I did not earn. The caption under the photograph read: "Grace Liu, age 20. Chinese-American. Columbia visual arts junior. 'Self-made young artist' narrative. No disclosed relationships. Monitor for scandal risk (high)."

I sat in Nicholas's chair. It was a good chair—leather, adjustable, with a lumbar support that cradled your back in a way that made you feel, for a moment, as though you were being held. I sat in it and I looked at the spreadsheet and I thought about every painting I had sold, every drawing I had given away, every time someone had told me I was "talented" the way you tell a dog "good girl." Nicholas had bought three of my drawings for $40,000. He had told me at the time: "You're wasting your talent on Instagram. Let me show you what real influence looks like."

I had believed him. I had moved into the Tribeca loft he bought me. I had stopped drawing on paper and started drawing for cameras. I had learned to pose. I had learned to say the right things in interviews. I had learned that "self-made" is a word that sells.

I sat in that chair for an hour. The sun moved across the desk. The spreadsheet stayed on the screen, glowing blue in the afternoon light. I read it six times. Each time I read it, the numbers looked the same. Each time, they meant something different.

On the third read, I understood that the "High" risk was about me—not about my ability to sell things, but about my tendency to ask questions. Nicholas had noted this. He had predicted it. He had a mitigation strategy: Diane. Diane Morrison, my "manager," whose job was to keep me on brand and off-topic. Diane, who had once told a journalist: "Grace is so young. She doesn't think too hard about things. She just feels them."

I felt them. That was the problem. I felt everything—the wrongness of the word "asset," the warmth of Nicholas's smile when he told me I was special, the cold of the Tribeca loft at 2 AM when I was supposed to be drawing but was instead lying on the floor looking at the ceiling and trying to remember what it felt like to draw something that no one would ever see.

I closed the folder. I put it back behind the drawer. I picked up the sticky note with the Wi-Fi password. I walked to the kitchen and made tea. I drank the tea standing at the window, looking at the Manhattan skyline, and I thought about the phrase "amplifiable reach." I thought about what it would take to amplify me—to turn 500,000 followers into 5 million. I thought about what Nicholas would ask of me in exchange, and I knew, with a certainty that was almost peaceful, that it would be everything.

The phone rang. It was Sophia. "Hey," she said. "You home? I made pasta."

"In a minute," I said.

"Are you okay? You sound different."

"I'm fine. I'll be down in a minute."

I hung up. I set the phone on the windowsill. I looked at my reflection in the glass. I looked like the woman in the photograph. I looked like Asset #7. I went downstairs and ate pasta and did not say anything.