Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I added the name he’d shown me to my alerts, and it dinged immediately. “The fuck!” I looked at the picture that popped up on the screen and read the caption. It kinda looked like Janie and my head of security in a lip lock. Is he saying that three little girls did this? Where did they get the picture?
***
*Janie*
“No-no-no, this can’t be happening.” I looked for the name of the sender, but there was nothing. How is that even possible? I didn’t know you could send a message with no return number and no email address. I felt real fear for the first time and looked around the room at all of the windows, suddenly feeling exposed.
The phone dinged in my hand with an alert that my name had shown up on some social media platform, and I was almost too scared to look. My hands shook with dread as I opened the notification, and my worst fear stared me back in my face. My phone started ringing immediately, and I threw it against the wall in anger when I saw that it was my dad calling.
This can’t be happening, not now, when Ryder was still missing, and no one knew where he was. I screamed for the maid, who came running and held out my shaking hand. She knew what I needed without having to be told and rushed to get one of my happy pills and a glass of water.
“Give me more.”
“But ma’am, you’re not supposed to….” A hard slap across the face reminded her that she was not allowed to question me or any of my decisions. “Know your place bitch, or you’re fired.” She held her cheek and whined like a little shit while I downed the pills and waited for sweet surcease to kick in.
“Get out of my face.” I threw the glass at her as she fled, then wiped my nose that was already starting to run. My phone hadn’t broken into pieces, more’s the pity, and it kept going off every few seconds.
I ignored it and locked myself away in my bedroom, not willing to deal with anything right now. I don’t know why I was so afraid, to begin with. It’s not the first time someone had tried to overturn my apple cart, not the first time someone tried to destroy all that I had worked for.
Each time Mary had come through for me. She’s the most powerful woman in L.A. Even though she’s never been an actress or anything, she and her daughters are some of the biggest, if not the biggest, stars on the planet. How is that again? I can’t remember, and my brain feels too fuzzy to go diving into that cesspool right now.
Either way, it doesn’t matter who this person is or how they got the picture of me and Ryder’s head of security going at it. Mary will fix it. I crawled into bed, ignoring the alerts from the phone. I have it set up so that it alarms differently according to who the news is about.
That last one sounded like Mary’s alarm, but since no one really knew about the connection between her and my family or the part she’d played in getting Ryder to marry me, I didn’t think that this had anything to do with what was going on with me. Or maybe she was already on the job doing damage control.
If that was the case, then I really had nothing to worry about, and a nap sounded great right about now. If things don’t work out, we can always do what we’ve always done in the past. Dredge up some kind of drama with Elena to take the spotlight off ourselves. It’s worked beautifully in the past, and I do like seeing her name being dragged through the mud.
I felt a slight pang of unease at the thought. There was something teasing the edge of my mind, but I couldn’t quite recall what that was as I sunk down in the bed and pulled the covers up over my head to drown out the sound of the phone alarming and ringing in turns from the next room.
Just before my eyes closed, I remembered what it was that had been evading my thoughts. Yeah, why doesn’t that bitch ever seem worried about anything we say about her? Since coming out of hiding after three years, she seems…. unbothered.
Now that I think about it, she seems happy, while I’ve been miserable. I tried fighting the effects of the drug in my system as my mind began to race. Why didn’t I notice it before? She seems to be winning. The new album, new TV show, new everything, while I’m stuck here wondering where my husband was.
It’s not fair. I have righteousness on my side; that’s what Matt said, and he should know since he’s a spiritual advisor. As long as I was the one married to Ryder, I’m his wife; it’s sanctified; she’s nothing. I won, I won, I won. I felt tears burning a trail down my cheek but was too weak to wipe them away because the drug had turned my limbs to mush, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I’ll deal with that bitch when I wake up. I won.