Page 9 of All That Glitters

I grab my purse and stalk past him. “Yeah, right. Feed me another line and see if I fall for it.”

“A line?” he calls out.

“You know, one of those things you tell yourself even though it’s not true? Except this time, you want me to live in your delusion with you, and I’m not going to play along.”

Having the last word leaves me feeling like I’ve got the high ground. If only it were true.

FOUR

Another fucking day of bringing work home with me.

After driving to the reading, we swung by the office, and I rushed inside with Empire sullen in the front seat of the sedan, waiting for me to hurry my ass up, as she put it. She is somehow over me, even though she’s the one causing the upheaval.

We managed to get to the reading on time, although I’d had to drag her through the door with a lighter grip than usual, lest someone saw the manhandling and decided to call the rags. Nothing like a piece of juicy gossip to keep them all in business. I’d have hell to pay for sending her in there with the wolves with bruises dotting her arms. Sometimes, though, I wanted to squeeze her and ask her what’s going on in the vacuous confines of her head.

The pocket doors cutting off the old library close softly behind me, not a hint of squeaking in the hinges, and although a line of light still filters in underneath the wood, it’s all the privacy I’ll get.

Her head isn’t vacuous, I’m forced to admit inside my own mind.

She just doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about herself or her career, the latter of which is the most important thing in the world to me. She got the part. Nothing is ever good enough for her, and I have a sneaking suspicion she won’t be happy until she’s completely separated herself from reality.

She got the goddamn part, the role of a lifetime, and now, I need to convince her to take it.

If not, then my money is going to go dry, and I’m not going back to the bottom. Never again.

Hollywood isn’t for the faint of heart, and I’m not just talking about the actors and actresses who work their entire careers for a star on the Walk of Fame. I’m talking anybody who chooses to live in this hellhole, those with a pervasive masochistic streak. They like the pain. They like the struggle and the chaos and the heat. It’s life, and it’s hard.

I’m one of those fucks who prefers the inferno to a regular life. There is something enigmatic and intoxicating about carving out a place for yourself here, which is why I loved my apartment and office closer to the city lights. If I have a bad day or things aren’t going the way I want them to go, I walk to the windows overlooking the busy street and watch.

Today, I’ve swapped my air-conditioned office downtown for Mr. Stone’s old library.

It’s too quiet at the mansion.

I drop down in Bennet’s chair and stare at the leather wingback where I used to sit across from him, drinking tequila and shooting the shit. Those days are long gone. The new normal is going to have to be a repeat of the hellish experience from today—forcing Empire into the shower, picking out her clothes, cracking the whip to get her dressed.

And that’s before we left the house!

Forcing her to go through with the reading had been a nightmare of wondering whether she’d bolt the second my back was turned. Luckily for me, the moment she got called in to read, she behaved. Hopefully, she tried her best, because the part is a big deal for her.

A headache brews exactly where I don’t need it to, and I reach behind me, pushing my knuckles into the back of my neck. The kinks stay behind, stubborn as shit.

The producer is a friend of mine, although I use the term loosely. We used to know each other in the early days, and while I cast my lot in with the Stones, Parker Heath chose to stay with the old gang and use their strength to get him where he needed to go.

It’s a risk working with him in any capacity, even one as far moved as manager to the lead in his production, but it’s a risk I’ve got to take, because the payoff will be huge.

If Empire pulls this off.

There’s a lot hanging on her reading today.

Better to be home, though, instead of a phone call away if there’s trouble. Given the traffic and the drive up to the manor, it’s too far with Empire in the mood she’s in. Frustrated, sullen, stomping around the house…

My stomach flips at the thought of her, and I growl, wrenching open the lid of the laptop, staring at the screen as the laptop boots to life. The girl spends more and more time in her room being obstinate, reclusive. She also hasn’t updated her social media in weeks, although she assured me in the car that she’s working on it.

Any kind of extended break can be a catastrophic hit for her upward momentum, even though it’s hard to blame her after the media ruckus.

The paparazzi got through the lines. I’m not sure how that one in particular ended up with photos of the plane crash. I want to tear his neck out and shove it up his asshole for what he did. How the fuck can you call yourself a man if you shove those kinds of photos in front of a grieving young woman?

It takes the worst kind of person, because even me at my darkest wouldn’t dream of doing anything close, and I’ve done terrible things.

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