Page 5 of On the Beat

The audience breaks into applause. I reach for the mic again. “Good night, Houston!”

* * *

Backstage, I wash off the few traces of makeup, hair gel, and sweat that have mixed together on my face in a gross, sticky combination. Next to me, George Hugh, my agent, scrolls through Twitter while my personal assistant, Mia Rose, is making a call.

“Yes, yes, I’ll tell him to call you back.” She fixes the phone between her ear and shoulder before pausing. “What do you mean, it’s urgent? He’s just finished a concert, can’t it wait?”

I stop dipping a cotton swab in makeup remover and say, “Who is it?”

She mouths back,your lawyer.

This can’t be good.

Mia pulls the phone away from her face as an agitated male voice blares from the speakers. The gold beads on her braids clink softly against each other as she hands me the cell phone. “He’s here. You can talk to him yourself.”

“Ryder.” The voice belongs to none other than Flynn “The Shark” Stevens, an aggressive attorney who is famed around L.A. for his billboards about accidents, injuries, and divorces. “It’s not good.”

I lean back in my chair and pick up a bottle of water. “What isit?”

“It’s your brother,” he says.

My brother. That could mean anything. River Black, my older brother, thirty-three, was in and out of rehab, has some entrepreneur gig I’m unsure of, and is living in Austin. I’d thought of visiting him once my set ended. “What about my brother?”

I want him to tell me anything. That River won the lottery and is asking my lawyer how best to split the winnings and transfer them to me. That River is on another hare-brained scheme and wants me to write him a cheque. Anything but the words that fall out of Flynn’s mouth.

“He’s going to jail.”

“Jail—” I repeat, and choke on my swig of water. How much of my life is falling apart behind the scenes? “He’s going tojail?”

Maybejailis the name of some fancy new nightclub or all-expenses-paid resort.

“He’s under arrest for embezzlement and fraud,” says Flynn, continuing as though he isn’t shattering half of my life, breaking one of my kneecaps, and driving a bulldozer through my childhood. “His company, Firma, was exposed as a fraudulent company that is actually a pyramid scheme.”

“What does this have to do with me?” I rasp out, my throat raw from singing all night.

“Ryder, you recently donated two million dollars to your brother,” Flynn snaps. “You’re not getting that back, and the police are looking into your accounts to see if you were involved with Firma, too. It’s not looking very good for you.”

Another phone rings, the one on my vanity. WONG AND WINSTON flashes across the screen; my publicity firm is calling me. Mia snatches it up and presses the phone to her ear, used to doing these things for me.

I should give her a raise.

I should call my brother.

I should go out and sing an encore.

“Ryder?” Flynn prompts, his tinge of impatience transforming into something more like concern. Dangerously close to pity.

I don’t need his concern or his pity. I am Ryder Black, winner of America’s Got Talent, a music artist with one of the bestselling albums of all time. Even if my life is crumbling behind the scenes—what is that to him?

“I’m fine,” I say automatically, though that isn’t what he was asking.

“Listen, keep a low profile for the next few days. I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, don’t do anything crazy.”

“I won’t,” I promise.

But doing crazy things is what got me my career in the first place. So why shouldn’t I?

“Ryder,” George says, catching the look in my eye. “You look like you’re about to run into traffic or something. Talk to me, man.”

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