Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 125248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
His mother’s film was beyond amazing too, but so were the four others nominated for best film.
He’d grown up knowing that sometimes brilliance still lost. Sometimes another project landed with more force. That was show business, the cruelest, most unfair lottery ever.
It wasn’t Xander Vale’s fault and it damn sure wasn’t a reason to hurt him.
Oh god, Devyn Frost.
His stepdad had paid for that.
It had been rumored he’d never work again. He and his partner had narrowly survived the vicious beating.
“We don’t care about your motives, Ashford,” the first man said. “That’s not our concern. You hired us to do a job.”
“Then fuckin’ do it, goddamnit! This is dragging on too long,” Bennett barked. “He’s staying at a public hotel. He’ll be back on the lot soon. The news is doing half the work for you. Every idiot with a camera keeps telling the world where he’s been and where he’ll be next. Now is the time to strike, not sitting in my house complimenting his new bodyguards.”
A chair scraped across the calcite onyx stone floor.
River bolted into the first open doorway on his right, into the small formal sitting room. He eased the door almost closed, leaving a thin crack.
His pulse hammered so hard he could feel it behind his teeth.
The office door opened and the two men stepped into the hall.
He could only see pieces of them through the narrow gap. Dark clothing, black caps. No faces. Nothing useful enough to identify them later.
Bennett followed them out.
“Forty-eight hours,” his stepfather said harshly. “You have forty-eight fuckin’ hours before I find men who don’t need their hands held.”
The second man laughed. “Yeah, you do that, and you’ll get amateurs who bring cops to your door.”
Bennett stepped closer. “And if you bring them to mine?”
“Have a nice life, Ashford.”
The front door opened and the men left without another word.
Bennett stood in the hall for a long moment, breathing hard.
River didn’t move, watching his stepfather through the crack.
Bennett’s handsome face was drawn tight, his silver-streaked hair perfect, his shirt cuffs immaculate. To the house staff he looked like a powerful man having a difficult business afternoon.
To River, he looked like a madman who’d lost his mind.
Bennett walked toward the back of the house, his shoes striking the polished floor in sharp, angry beats.
River waited until he couldn’t hear him anymore, then slipped out of the sitting room. He stood there with his keys clutched in his hand, unable to believe any of this.
He knew Bennett loved his mother more than anything, but this kind of love was going to destroy her.
Bennett treated his mother like a queen, even when the cameras were gone. He brought her tea exactly the way she liked it when she was writing for hours at a time, kept fresh flowers in her rooms, complimented her beauty whether she was wearing sweats or an evening gown, gazed at her as if she were the only woman in the room, threatened paparazzi anytime their questions crossed the line, and still kissed her hand each time he helped her out of the car.
Bennett was there for his mother…not him. His stepfather tolerated him at best.
Bennett thought he was lazy because he didn’t want a life in entertainment. Considered him soft and privileged, because he’d chosen to study computer engineering at UCLA instead.
He was in his third year of an accelerated graduate track, counting the months until he could move far enough away from Bennett’s influence and the Ashford name.
River looked toward his mother’s wing of the house. There was no way she would agree with this. She might be shattered right now and grieving over a dying dream she’d built with her own hands, but she wasn’t cruel.
She’d spent too much of her life surviving pain to wish it on someone else.
River couldn’t let this happen.
He pulled out his phone, then stopped.
Who the hell can I call?
The police? What would he say? ‘Hi, my stepfather is Bennett Ashford, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, and I heard him through a door talking about hiring men to hurt Xander Vale. No, I didn’t record it. No, I didn’t see their faces. But my mother has nothing to do with this. Oh, and please don’t leak this to the press.’
Damnit.
He could call in an anonymous tip. Try to reach Xander’s manager or agent. But how could he do that without sounding like some unstable fan?
River stared at his phone until the screen dimmed.
He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he had to get close enough to Xander Vale to warn him.
Syn
Four days was a long time to sit in another man’s house pretending the rest of the world wasn’t still moving.
Syn hadn’t left Ro and Johnson’s place once.
Not to work, the shop, the corner store for food, nowhere.