Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Was she desperate enough to turn tricks for old billionaires on shiny new yachts?
I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter anyway. My job was rarely to tell the public the truth about a client. My job was to sell them an image, an excuse, a narrative. If Magical Melody had gotten caught on camera giving blowjobs to geriatrics, that would be a different story. I’d have to take the truth and doctor it into something palatable. Luckily, she hadn’t, so my job was much easier. In phase one, I’d employ the oldest trick in the book, deny, deny, deny. She’d been an actress, and a pretty good one according to Con. She’d be able to sell it. In phase two, we’d give the press something else to talk about. A new relationship, a new role. Anything that would unlink her name from Geoffrey’s and attach it to something newer and shinier.
Easy, I decided, and turned off my computer. A couple of weeks of work, half my usual fee, and it would be done, and I’d go back to forgetting the former teenybopper queen existed.
And the next time my A-list ex-wife stopped by unexpectedly and tried to make me a sandwich, I’d pretend I wasn’t home.
4
DESTINY
I thought the yacht girl story would blow over in a day. It honestly wasn’t that interesting. I’d assumed that some of the girls I was partying alongside were sleeping with the septuagenarians who wore thick gold jewelry and shirts unbuttoned halfway down their chests, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses and their leers tucked behind masks. Of course they were. These guys might have been old, but they weren’t running a charity for hot girls in their early twenties. There were no infomercials with sad music and a mournful voiceover imploring: For just twenty thousand dollars a day, you too can help a struggling bikini model get the champagne and caviar that she needs.
Nope.
That wasn’t how the world worked, and everyone knew it. Just like I knew that my fame was my ticket on board. My friends and I didn’t have to pay with our bodies because fame was as good as–better than–sex.
I assumed.
I’d only ever been famous. Sex was something that happened below deck. Off camera. I’d had a couple of sex scenes but acting was as far as it went for me. I’d spent my teen years working, not wanting to get distracted. Then, after fame swallowed me whole, I didn’t trust people enough to let them that close. And once the industry started spitting me out, well, I trusted people even less. I’d barely even been linked to anyone in the years I’d been in the spotlight. A few set up photo ops with other actors who needed a media boost, but that was it.
So that’s why it was so crazy to me that people really believed I was a prostitute.
It was Geoffrey fucking Dorsch’s fault. The story would have died down in a couple of days. Fallen teen stars just weren’t the fodder they used to be. But that slimeball had to drag a seventeen-year-old and a couple of sixteen-year-olds into it. Now it was the biggest thing since the Jeffrey Epstein case and every time there was an article about him, there were links to articles about me.
So, there I was, barely at the periphery of the story, but shining like a beacon, summoning the reporters to my shore. I was getting so many calls from unknown numbers that I changed mine, then changed it again. Somehow, Noemi Thompson managed to track me down anyway. She texted me that she was about to call and to answer this time, and then promptly did so before I even had a chance to get nervous.
“Hi, big sister,” I said cautiously. I hadn’t talked to Noemi in a few months. Not since she told me to stop hanging out with the squad of socialites I’d collected and get serious about my career again. I’m not saying she wasn’t right, but it pissed me off. I was serious about my career. I was doing everything I could to get to the next level of it, but while I waited for the industry to let me in again, I was having a little fun for once. Nothing crazy. Maybe I drank too much sometimes, but I never followed Jasmine into the bathroom for a bump of white powder or slipped the little paper squares of acid underneath my tongue that Candy popped like, well, candy.
“Hi, little sister,” Noemi said, her voice coming down the line like silk, like expensive French perfume, like a slim arm wrapping around my shoulders and squeezing. “I heard you’re a prostitute now.”
I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut tight. “Come on. Do I really have to tell you I’m not a prostitute?”
“I know you aren’t, but I’m saying that’s what I heard. And that’s what I keep hearing. And you know the problem with rumors in this town.” Noemi’s voice was crisp, practical. She’d navigated the rumors in this town for decades. She could write the playbook on how to avoid getting tackled by scandal. Her ex-husband actually had written a playbook called Uncancelled, and it had been on the bestseller list for months.