Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 67510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
However, my recreational drug use was far from a problem. That didn’t stop me from going down in a blaze of glory, making Bailey the only reason I was in this bullshit narrative to begin with.
She owed me.
Big time.
Now, if we could just get her management team to agree to have her play the role, she’d be my second chance at saving what was left of my career. The deadline to begin filming was quickly approaching, and I needed her to be my love interest.
When the truth was, after all these years, she might have been the one who got away…
Shit, maybe that was the beginning of my origin story?
I didn’t have too much time to think about it as I walked into the seven-figure wedding I had no business attending. I wasn’t invited, and I was only there dressed in a black suit, trying my best to blend in, because I needed a favor from a man who owed me one.
Self-made billionaire Elias Sinclair was my last resource of actually making this happen, or I’d be up a creek without a paddle. His wife, Capri, was Bailey’s publicist, and if anyone could convince her team to let her costar with me, it’d be her. This couldn’t have been worse timing.
The man just got married in their home, for fuck’s sake.
Yet there I was, waiting in his office, trying to pretend I wasn’t anxious about his response to my demand. But you know what they say—“No good deed goes unpunished.”
It was time to pay the piper.
I eyed the wall art in his office as I waited for him. A one-of-a-kind canvas stared back at me, reminding me so much of my father’s office. There was something about men in power and art. The more exquisite the piece, the more you had to kiss their asses.
It wasn’t until I heard the clicking of Elias’s dress shoes and then him stopping dead in his tracks that I turned around to face him.
The second we locked eyes, he cocked his head to the side. “Aires?” he announced, fully aware of why I was there in the first place.
With my hands in the pockets of my suit jacket, I didn’t hesitate to speak with conviction…
“I’m here to call in my favor.”
chapter one
Bailey
4 Months Ago
“James keeps staring over here at you,” I told my best friend Alexis.
They just broke up not even a week ago, and it was the talk of the Hollywood town, but that wasn’t surprising, given who they were.
Alexis was a top supermodel. James was the son of a music icon, similar to my dad, who was the singer and lead guitarist for the legendary rock band Life of Debauchery.
Alexis and James had been together for almost a year, and in celebrity time, that meant at least a decade. Relationships didn’t last in this town. There was too much temptation—both on- and off-screen.
Of course, that didn’t apply to me. I wasn’t allowed to be human and make a mistake. I basically grew up in front of the public eye, and fans from all over the world felt as if they had raised me. On top of the fact that I was a Jameson and my mom’s side of the family used to be 1 percent outlaw bikers until my granddaddy stole it out from under his old man’s thumb, changing the path of our lives.
My mother married into money, though. My stepdad was the NFL quarterback of his time, and if my rock star father wasn’t pressure enough, I was raised by my stepdad and mom until I was nine years old when all of a sudden, my world was turned upside down and inside out. My biological father unexpectedly entered my life. I had been a fan of his music way before I learned the truth about who he was to me.
Ever since then, the press had known everything about my life professionally and personally. My first audition was when I was ten years old, and right from the start of my career, I was lucky to be chosen as one of the kids of a new show catering to other adolescents called The Kids Club. Along with a group of ten other people from the ages of ten to fourteen, I was thrown into the spotlight, and all eyes were immediately on us from the second we stepped onto that live audience stage.
The show blew up internationally overnight, and our faces were everywhere. From that point forward, my life was never the same. Some said I grew up too fast, while others said I didn’t grow up fast enough. I tried my best to be the good girl the world expected me to be. Instantly, I was labeled as a role model for my peers without me having one say about it. My management team rode my ass, and truth be told, I put food on the table for a bunch of people, and it was one of the things that kept me up at night.