Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Drake faltered, recoiling, then averted his eyes. “Don’t fucking take it out on me.”
“That’s why I said to leave me alone.” Turning his back on Drake, Brendan stalked down the hall. He needed to be…somewhere else. Somewhere not here. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll play nice. But for right now, leave me alone until I feel less like punching a wall,” he pitched over his shoulder. “Make sure he gets home safe.”
“He’s not my client,” Drake protested.
Brendan stopped, looking over his shoulder. “Drake.”
Drake clucked his tongue, then sighed. “…yeah. Okay. Sure.”
“Thanks.”
It was the last word Brendan managed to get out before his jaw locked tight. He had to get out of here—and without waiting for Drake’s response, he rounded the corner of the hall, thrust open the door, and stepped out into the furious glare of a morning sun that seared just as bright as the anger that refused to quiet inside him.
He needed to calm down. Breathe. Divert himself to something else…or he didn’t know what the fuck he might do the next time he saw Oliver Newcomb’s smug, smirking face. He couldn’t trust himself right now.
And if he wanted to even pretend to be a civil human tomorrow, he needed a diversion.
l
DRAKE STARED AFTER BRENDAN’S RETREATING back; stared at the tight set of his shoulders, at the way his stride had transformed from the casual, easy swagger he’d cultivated as part of his presence, replacing it with something else. Something menacing, something that simmered in a prowling, bristling lope that carried with it the promise of a darkness Drake hadn’t realized slept within his client.
He'd known Brendan for a long time now.
Seen him in his egotistical tempers; in his quiet anger every time he demanded more of people than they gave to a production, when Brendan Lau expected nothing less than their all; in his sullen broods, withdrawn into himself with the temperamental, unpredictable nature of the typical artist, caught up inside his own head and refusing to come out until he was good and ready.
But he’d never seen Brendan so angry.
Silently brimming with a violence Drake never would have thought him capable of, no matter how physically imposing and intimidating Brendan could be.
If Brendan were a stranger to him, Drake might almost find it frightening.
But then he understood it, too. He wasn’t fucking happy about this himself. About that kid; about his client coming here every day like nothing happened, letting Oliver Newcomb continue to build his name as a director on the power of both their stardom and charisma with no consequences whatsoever. Drake got why Cillian wanted to wait—he did. Even if it was just for the sake of the staff who couldn’t afford to lose their jobs if the production were cancelled. Let the crew get paid and pay their rent, then expose the director for a sleaze.
It still rankled.
As brazen as Newcomb had been about trying to force an up-and-coming actor in his own dressing room, there’d probably been others. Many others. People like that tended to have a serial pattern, and made young actors think this was the entry fee they had to pay to make it to the top.
And it made Drake’s teeth grind to wonder just how many had been afraid to speak up.
Just like that kid.
Groaning, dragging a hand over his face, he turned and trudged back to the kid’s dressing room. He rapped the backs of his knuckles against the door.
“Cillian?” he called. “Brendan asked me to check on you. Make sure you get home safe.”
No answer.
Drake hesitated a moment, then pushed the door open—on a darkened room. When he flicked the lights on…nothing. Just the sofa, vanity mirror, garment rack, mini-fridge.
No sign of Cillian Tell.
The kid was long gone.
Safe, Drake hoped.
…or Brendan was going to shit a brick.
l
BRENDAN PACED THE LENGTH OF his apartment and stared out at the vista of the Hollywood Hills. He wasn’t really seeing it, familiar landscape and tall letters fading into background noise. His mind kept taking him back to—
Newcomb. Leering. Bending over the sofa.
Cillian. Trapped, face frozen in shock, disbelief, fury.
The relief when Cillian realized they’d been interrupted.
And the look of promise in Newcomb’s eyes, as he’d raked Brendan over on the way out.
That look.
As if to say You’ve yet to see my reach.
You can’t touch me.
But what until you find out what I can do to you.
Brendan would like to see him try.
Newcomb wouldn’t like how this turned out, if he tried to turn this unspoken thing between the three of them into some sort of power play.
Brendan stopped in the middle of the floor, just staring across the reflective tiles of the broad, high-ceilinged loft, the pillars bisecting the room in odd places to give it an asymmetry Brendan normally found calming. But now it was just an erratic discordance, grating on his nerves. If northern California wasn’t a twelve-hour drive, he’d be out of this overly glitzy space—the home of the actor, rather than the home of the man—and be gone already. But he would never make it back by morning, and tomorrow morning he had to go in for cast meetings, table readings, a start on rudimentary lighting and set blocking.