“Has either of you seen Emma? Distribution rep and our in-house online marketing rep are on a Skype call. She passed my office about a half hour ago, saying she was headed to the restroom, but she didn’t come back and the floor receptionist hasn’t seen her. She left her phone in her office.”
“What about production?”
“Already called. Nothing.”
That was strange. “I’ll look for her.” If Emma’s car was still on the estate, then she was somewhere close. Emma wasn’t the type to lose herself on a scenic stroll of the grounds or fall asleep with her nose in a book in the courtyard. When she came to headquarters, it was to work.
“What about the meeting with distribution and online marketing?” Charles asked.
Shit, that call needed to be handled by someone with more authority than even the CEO’s right-hand man.
“I’ll take the call,” she said, abandoning her desk to go to the conference room. “Would you two please ask security to check the parking lot and reception to review the visitor log? I want to know if Emma also received flowers. Let me know.”
The assistants dispersed, and Chelsea hurried to the conference room and apologized to Riley Cone from the in-house online marketing team—located just downstairs—and Gordon Reyes, cofounder of Wrecked Domination Entertainment, the distribution company Devil’s Music had acquired seven years ago. It had been among Delilah Bishop’s first orders of business to use WDE’s reputation and unparalleled music promotion success to position Devil’s Music clients exclusively.
“Forgive the brief delay there,” she said, sitting down in the air-conditioned room. On the table in front of every chair at the conference table was a tablet, a notepad, and a fountain pen bearing the company’s recently redesigned logo—a pair of gold headphones with red horns. “Emma Toledo is addressing a different matter at the moment, so I’ll be speaking with you.”
“To be frank,” Gordon said, tapping his beringed fingers on his desk in a clear sign of agitation, “I don’t care who I talk to. I want to know who the hell is going to pay for the scratches on my Lamborghini and make this fucking lawsuit go away.”
“Excuse me?”
“ ’Bout an hour ago,” he said, his lips so tight they were pale, “I go out to my spot and find scratches all over my car. Someone keyed it. And under my windshield wiper is a goddamn summons. Moniqua Prenz is suing me.”
Court processors could be ballsy, but would any take it personally enough to scratch up someone’s shit while serving papers? It didn’t make sense. “You have video surveillance of the lot, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and the son of a bitch was completely covered up. Hat, sweatshirt, gloves…The build looks like a man, but I can’t tell if Moniqua did this shit herself or sent somebody.”
Or it could be the doer wasn’t Moniqua at all. Vandalism happened in large cities, and Atlanta was no exception.
Riley was silent, but Chelsea could see the disturbed panic behind his glasses. “Uh, Gordon, did you call the police? The sheriff’s office has a record of who served you.”
She also found it odd that the summons and complaint had been discovered under his wipers. Documents of this nature were delivered face-to-face or left at defendants’ residences, not attached to a windshield.
Not to say it was unheard of. Obviously it wasn’t. It was…strange.
“I’m already doing what I need to do. I called your marketing guy here to let him know Wrecked Domination’s on hiatus until I get a check from Devil’s Music to replace my car and confirmation that this lawsuit’s dismissed.”
“Wait, wait! Gordon, you can’t do that.” They were quickly approaching Vitalz’s new single release. “We have a contract.”
“Yeah, and so does that bitch Moniqua Prenz. If she didn’t, then she would be somebody else’s problem and not terrorizing me and my company.”
The flowers. The attack on Gordon.
And where was Emma?
Chelsea glanced at her smartphone. No update had come from either Charles or Teagan. She needed to find Joshua.
“We’ll neutralize Moniqua Prenz’s aggressions,” she said with confidence to both Gordon and Riley. “In the meanwhile, Gordon, please cooperate with the police and provide us with a repair estimate for the damage caused to your vehicle. We will not provide you with a new automobile, and if you do interrupt or delay the marketing of our clients, you’ll receive another summons—on behalf of Devil’s Music. Are we done here?”
“Noted, and yes,” Riley said anxiously, and left the session immediately.
“I’m cofounder of this company,” Gordon persisted angrily. “I’ve been promoting since before you were born—”
“Yet you work for me, don’t you? It gives me no satisfaction to remind you of this fact, but I’ll bust your balls if you push me far enough. Again—are we done here?”
Her phone lit with a notification of a new text. She clicked off the conference call and picked up her phone. Teagan’s message confirmed that Emma’s car was still on-site.
Thanks, T, she responded, and left the conference room to pursue Joshua’s suite.
His assistant’s office was in perfect order and empty. But if Chelsea trusted the ear she pressed to his door, there were at least two moaning people inside.
Damn it, he was cheating on Emma again—with his assistant this time?
Chelsea really would slap him. Or she might put him through a glass door herself. She threw the door open and rushed in with her right hand ready to swing.
“Bastard—” Her favorite stiletto sandals teetered to a stop on the waxed wood floor. “You’re with Emma?”
In Emma’s mouth would be more accurate, being that he was sprawled on the leather couch with an amber drink in one hand while the other guided his wife’s blond head as she slurped his flesh.
Chelsea felt three things—relief that Emma was safe and her husband wasn’t cheating on her at the moment, disturbed to walk in on a sloppy blow job, and turned on because it was so damn sexy.
“We have a business development to discuss,” she said. She wanted to relocate her gaze but…couldn’t. “We should visit marketing so we’re all on the same page. And visit them soon, if you want to let him go, Emma?”
A wet kissing sound carried to her as Emma took her mouth away, yet she continued to work him in her fist as she looked at him askance.
Relief had fallen away and Chelsea was left with the weirded-out and turned-on feelings. She’d never seen so much bold intensity between them.
She should leave. Her presence was intrusion, naughty, wrong.
“We’re not finished,” he said, taking a swallow from his drink, looking at Chelsea over the glass as he brought Emma back to him.
But Emma whispered, “Later…please.”
Stroking her hair, he considered and ultimately nodded.
She kissed the tip of him, cleaned him with a few gentle pats of a tissue, and fit him back inside his pants with care. All while looking into his eyes.
Chelsea knew they had to be all about eye-contact sex.
Hold on. Why was she still here? What the hell was this, and how had she ended up pressed to the door with her hands sliding up her abdomen?
She threw herself to the liquor buffet and poured from the first decanter she could grab. A Harrods gift card would not fix this.
“Brief us on the way?” Emma said as she and her husband approached.
“Sure,” Chelsea said, stunned that they could switch from sex to business so smoothly. She handed Emma the glass. “Here. I think it’s whiskey. It should disguise the cock on your breath.”
Emma rolled her eyes but took the glass and preceded them out of the office. She stopped off at her own suite to check in with her assistant and retrieve her phone, then led the way to the marketing department.
Chelsea murmured to Joshua, “I came in calling you a bastard because I thought your assistant was moaning through the door.”
“Emma came in,
so we told her to take a long lunch.”
“Something’s wrong if I immediately suspect you’re with someone other than your wife.” The look he gave her was a hard warning, but she didn’t care. “While she’s sucking your dick and massaging your shoulders and telling everyone how much you love her, you’re lying to her about Delilah…and how many others.”
“Is that a question?”
“No.” She pasted a calm smile onto her face as they passed the floor receptionist’s station. “Don’t tell me. It’s horrible enough that I know about Delilah and haven’t told Emma.”
“I can’t be responsible for what you think when you walk into my office.”
“I think, Joshua, that today it was Emma but tomorrow it could be anyone else.” And that tells me the trust isn’t there anymore.
As they took the grand staircase downstairs, she informed them that Gordon Reyes had reported over the Skype conference call that he’d been served with papers and then had his car attacked. She delivered the facts but withheld her own suspicions.
“So Gordon gets served and figures we’ll treat him to a new car for the inconvenience.” Joshua chuckled. “Takes stones to try to fuck with us like that.”
“I’d have to agree,” Chelsea said. “He did demand a new car, like, immediately. How he was served isn’t our concern, but Moniqua’s suing him to attack us. She also sent me flowers. If that’s not a sociopathic mind game, what is?”
Emma’s anger was transparent in the snap in her blue eyes. “She’s taunting us. This won’t end until she’s released from her contract.”
Chelsea urged them to the side of a wide, sunny hall along the front of the building. The light attracted the sparkle of every piece of diamond and gold between the three of them. “What if that’s not enough for her? She’s suing us for ninety-five million dollars. That’s going to be an accounting nightmare. I’m leaving soon and hopefully I’ll get what we need, but even if we do successfully launch our project, Moniqua is still a problem without a solution.”
“She has a cushion,” Emma said, sipping her whiskey. “Shatter Records is waiting for her to finish putting us through the wringer.”
“Gut her.” Joshua’s face held no hesitation. “Eliminate her cushion, starting with Shatter. Kill her resources. She’ll hit the fucking ground when we cut her loose. C’mon—let’s get to marketing.”
He started walking, the sun streaming over his broad shoulders, and the two women glanced at each other.
Chelsea took Emma’s drink and downed the last of it. “I think this is what war feels like.”
BREAUX BRIDGE, LOUISIANA
The irredeemably wealthy were a unique class of people. Whether by windfall or fortunate birth—how they got it didn’t matter, when it came down to the nuts and bolts of things—rich people shared a common personality trait.
Entitlement.
Alexis Lazarus tried not to take it personally. It had nothing at all to do with her that Chelsea Coin and Dante Bishop had rolled up on her earlier than their agreed-upon meeting time. Twenty-six hours earlier, to be exact.
Still, the industrial-size fan at Barnacle Auto Repair’s front reception desk was broken, it was hotter than a jalapeño’s coochie, and sweat had soaked her bra clean through underneath her coveralls.
“Who dat?” Adelaide Dupeux asked, her brown skin flushed with heat and her gold eyes more suspicious than curious. Barnacle didn’t often have the pleasure of working on cars that looked like they belonged on the set of a 007 film.
“I don’t know, MawMaw.” She raised her arm to wipe sweat from her face—and so her grandmother wouldn’t see the transparent lie in her eyes. “I’ll check.”
Between returning to the ’89 Camaro she had on a lift in the garage and confronting the man and woman who’d exited the black BMW sports car and were ordering from the street-food vendor outside the front window, Alexis would choose the Camaro.
The rusted old third-generation Chevy she understood. She had more in common with it than she did with the people who’d come for her. The car’s best days weren’t behind it—people just thought so. Same with her.
It didn’t say much. It preferred a skilled touch to sweet-spoken words. Same with her.
The UPS man had brought a box in with a smile—he knew she’d be like a little girl at Christmas unwrapping the four-speed fuel injector she’d been waiting for. Just as she’d been in the thick of things, her phone had vibrated against her thigh, and after a glance at the screen showed her the number was private, she’d known who was calling.
Adelaide began signing and Alexis snapped back to attention. “All right, MawMaw. I’ll kick the doorstop.”
One of the other mechanics had wedged the stop into place when he’d gone out on an errand, but that seemed to only fill the office with the outside heat.
Alexis toed the stop out of the way with her ratty tennis shoe and studied Chelsea and Dante. Even before losing what most people called her sense of hearing, she’d had a keen sense of smell. But her awareness of scent and touch had heightened intensely after the world had become quiet.
The aroma of Petite Grill’s locally famous fried hot dogs was profound, but she could sniff past it with little effort. The entitled had a particular scent—she would describe it as though the human body’s pheromones released a chemical that reacted only when one achieved a level of overpoweringly pungent affluence.
The street was loud—it was bright with pedestrians and cars ambling in every direction, it was heady with perfumes and sweat, and the vibration was strong. She could feel it under her tennies as she walked toward the vendor’s ketchup-and-mustard-colored portable stand.
The woman courted a chilled bottled water and shook her head when the man appeared to offer her the loaded-with-everything grilled dog.
Dressed in jeans and Tshirts, they likely thought they would blend into the milieu of this speck of Breaux Bridge. They didn’t; they smelled rich.
“Element of surprise,” she said to them. Her speech ability was no secret. She’d posted videos highlighting the various challenges and gifts she’d met upon becoming deaf at age nine. “Mind if we step around the corner to talk?”
The man, Dante Bishop—ooh, the media had such a boner for his scandalous family—nodded agreement, and he and his travel buddy said, “No problem,” in tandem.
Nice mouth, and she smiled in response. There were some attractive qualities money couldn’t buy.
“If I’d known you were coming today, I would be at my other day job and wouldn’t have oil on my clothes,” she told them.
In addition to putting her trade school mechanic’s license to use servicing cars at her grandparents’ auto body shop, she was a hostess at an upscale bayou inn.
Chelsea Coin passed the vendor a smile that no doubt seduced oodles of men into their jimmy hats, and came forward. Dante trailed her. “Hi, Alexis. You fix cars. That didn’t come up in our phone conversation before.”
The woman had tension in her lips, but Alexis could read her fine. More important, she didn’t communicate as if deafness made Alexis somehow childlike. Alexis was twenty-eight years old, and yet when most people discovered her inability to distinguish sound the way they did, they leaned extra close and used small words. Plenty of human behaviors pissed her off, and that was easily in the top three. “You asked where we could meet and I told you. Does it change your mind about whatever ‘potential’ you claimed to see in my YouTube content?”
“I simply want the full Alexis Lazarus picture.”
“Well, here she be!” She broke into an exaggerated jitterbug, then used her bandana and coveralls to mimic a striptease. Lord help her if her grandmother should come around the corner and see her acting like a fucking fool on the street, but she’d been suspicious of Chelsea’s interpretation of potential in terms of how it applied to a deaf musical prodigy.
At age eight she’d been on the talk show and major-news “feel-good” human-interest segment circuit, showin
g off her vocal range and instrumental prowess. At age nine she’d been unwanted, abandoned by the press, her friends, and her daddy. At age ten she’d been treated as the starring act of everyone’s favorite freak show—Look at that! A girl who can sing pitch-perfect but can’t hear a damn thing!
Now she could see age thirty on the horizon and she was paying the bills with what she earned dressed to the nines at the inn and what her maternal grandmother’s old auto shop could spare.
“Point taken, Alexis,” Chelsea said, and she stopped dancing. “You’re angry that we dropped in on you like this.”
The woman had spoken so quickly that Alexis pieced together what she could and said, “Damn straight.” She shrugged out of sarcastic humor and gave them what they wanted: the full Alexis Lazarus picture. “I was handled and manipulated as a kid. I won’t allow it to happen again. Coming here a day early in a sneak attack comes off as shady, and I’m not impressed with either of you.”
“Transparency’s a luxury in the entertainment industry, as you must know.” Chelsea unscrewed the cap of her water bottle, then held it out. “You look hot. Would you like this?”
“No, thank you. I’d never turn down a Coke. Not diet—the hard shit. It’s shocking that you two came from Atlanta and neither of you thought to bring a Coca-Cola.”
Dante moved to Chelsea’s side. “You don’t like us, do you?”
“Not particularly. Is liking you a requirement for this…audition?”
His eyebrows rose over his sunglasses, the corner of his mouth flinched like a single heartbeat, and he shut up and ate his hot dog. Charming son of a bitch.
“Professional compatibility is important,” said Chelsea, taking a swallow of the water and staining the bottle with lipstick that, chances were, cost more than what Alexis would net on her next Barnacle paycheck. “We’d like to talk further, about your music and our proposal. Let’s do this somewhere other than a busy sidewalk.”
“I’ll meet you at five-fifteen. My townhouse is on Congress.” She gave the address. “We’ll meet then.”
“It’s almost four now.”
“Which means I’d better get back inside and finish working on the Camaro I’ve got up on a lift. My shift isn’t over and, since I depend on this job to make ends meet, I shouldn’t cut out early to rub elbows with the rich and notorious. No harm intended.” She smiled at Dante, and his frown told her he knew she was bullshitting him. “Unless you’d like us to haul your James Bond car in for service. Oil change? Freon recharge? Lube job, anyone?”
Sin for Me Page 14
