Breakdown Page 2

  He doesn’t know I’m carrying. Or maybe he does and he’s getting off on the challenge that presents. He’s getting off on something because, as he pulls me out of the way of people pushing through to the primo liquor, drugs, music, and connections that await within the manor, something distinctly stiff and insistent prods my stomach.

  He draws me farther away. I could kick him with my stilettos until his cock snaps like the branch of a tree, but there’s so much effort involved. So, I opt to get what I want another way.

  “I don’t believe in favors,” I say carefully, my tone calm though he’s gripping me too forcefully. “I believe in paying for services rendered. What I want is to walk inside that house without being hassled.”

  “How’s that going to happen?” he asks.

  “You’re going to escort me in. I can wire more money into your account by morning than you’ll earn this entire year.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.” He chuckles, and already we’re so far from the manor that I think perhaps this won’t be as simple as I originally calculated.

  Uncertainty manifests as microscopic beads of sweat along my temples and cleavage.

  Damn Atlanta and its cruel heat.

  “Stop touching me,” I say. “One phone call and I could have you demoted to supermarket greeter.”

  “Yeah, bitch? I’m the one with the power right now.” For emphasis, he shoves me, and I stumble from the brick path to the grass. My heels stab the ground and I almost fall.

  “Eat my dick if you want in that house,” he says.

  “That’s considered touching, so…no. Anyway, my lipstick’s perfect.”

  “Then strip for me.”

  “What?”

  “Get on your knees or take off that dress. Be grateful I’m giving you a choice.”

  I want to refuse, to run away, to manipulate the situation…but I can’t. There is nothing I won’t do to walk through the doors of Perversion Records again.

  I lay my purse on the ground and slide down the front zipper of my dress. The luxurious black silk parts, revealing my white skin.

  “Look what we’ve got here. Georgia’s Peach is nothing but a common whore.”

  He’s wrong—I’m not Georgia’s Peach anymore. That girl died right along with Daddy four years ago. As for the common whore? That’s wrong too. I’m far from common.

  My picture is missing from the foyer.

  Last year when my friends gutted me with a force-out vote, I attempted to set the boardroom ablaze with my eighteen-karat lighter. As the Atlanta PD pigs escorted my attorneys and me from the premises, I paused briefly in this foyer and gazed, one last time, at the supersized gilt-framed images hanging on the stone front wall.

  Back then there were four portraits of Perversion’s moguls and from left to right I was second. At first the music industry had resisted us, offended that a group of young, rich friends sat together on a throne reigning over the world’s hottest and most infamous hip-hop label. Nuances of diversity had always been woven into the fabric of Perversion, but marginalized voices are the heartbeat of our brand, comprising the majority of our board of directors and talent.

  Now my portrait is gone and I am erased, as though my vision and inheritance weren’t what catapulted us all to the rawest, most profane form of success.

  But I can’t linger over the symbolism of my portrait’s absence. I have limited time to conduct business. By being here, I am in violation of the restraining order my ex-friends filed in total overreaction to my attempted arson. I’m an unwelcome trespasser in my home.

  Perversion’s base is more of a home to me than the extravagant mansion where my brother and I grew up. When I’m not tearing through any given city on a self-destructive bender, or posting glitzy photos on social media to feed the millions who follow because they worship or envy me, I stay home with a host of staff whose loyalties I bought with generous salaries.

  I wander to the recording wing. When I was little, I’d slip into the studio and watch artists in the booth. When I was older, I began putting my ear to closed doors and peeping through windows. Once upon a time I thought Daddy was rich and famous by magic. Eventually I learned it wasn’t magic—it was force. Coercion. Threats. Violence.

  We confronted Daddy once, my brother and I. I took an open hand across the mouth and he a pint glass of bourbon to the head. Our sin? Questioning the necessary means of survival.

  Good and bad walk together. You can’t be good if you don’t deal with the bad. You can’t beat the devil if you don’t play his game.

  I remember Daddy’s lesson every day. It lulls me to sleep at night and jostles me awake in the morning.

  My feet have decided their own path, and suddenly I realize I’m headed up the spiral staircase toward the parlor where Daddy would spank me for speaking out of turn—but I stop, shake my head, and revise my route.

  Servers in formal attire offer appetizers and drinks. I take two swallows from a glass before I realize it’s freaking water, not vodka. Abandoning the glass on the floor, I keep moving until I’m drawn into a group passing around syringes and product.

  Fuck, yeah. Cocaine. Heroin. I want the mixture in my veins and these people’s secrets in my ears.

  I speedballed once before, in the restroom of a Thai restaurant with an Emmy-nominated family-drama actor who zipped and ran once I started seizing during urinal sex. I was naïve then, still discovering my limits and how to violate them.

  I’m too mesmerized by the familiar crushed powder on the marble table to care about overdosing again. It’s white, soft, weightless, as fragile as freshly falling snow. Real snow that sweeps across as if to conceal everything we recognize and know…

  I call it Mama’s whisper. It stirs the scary sort of euphoria I felt when she whispered to me that day—a chill that grazes my hairline and tumbles softly down my spine.

  Every time I let it in, it takes me to her.

  I dip my fingers into the powder, and the woman cutting lines with her American Express black card slaps my hand away.

  Reality settles again. I know this place, but it’s a stranger. It’s my home, but I’m lost here.

  “Please,” I say to the man controlling the syringes. Mixing the drugs, collecting large-denomination bills as gratuity per injection, he’s our bartender. I hold out my arms and repeat myself. “Please.”

  Immediately he says no, growling “fuckin’ crackhead” as he turns his back to me.

  I get in front of him, demand, and threaten, because I need Mama now.

  He pushes me onto someone’s lap, and I’m vaguely aware of their teeth sinking into my shoulder from behind as he kneels and pierces the inside of my arm with a needle. I don’t know if it’s clean. I don’t ask.

  I want to remind myself that this is not my mother’s whisper, but I cling to the lie that it is. Year after year, hit after hit, I pretend it has the power to transcend cancer and death and time to carry a little girl to the comfort of her mother.

  It’s not real.

  Absorbing the speedball, I listen to the chorus of voices around me. Someone trades a Glock for a roll of cash thicker than what I’d given Jordi to drive me here. I note words and faces and transactions as the speedball takes me under. The information will be useful…if I live through this high.

  When the others decide I’m not entertaining enough, they ignore me and I drift from their cluster. A random glass finds its way into my hand and only after I’ve drained it do I register its contents as whiskey.

  Pushing through a knot of people grinding to a club hit—crunk rapper Authentix’s “Beat That Up”—I feel the pulse of fury beneath the surge of my high. It’s as hot as the flame that snapped from the lighter I used to set a sheaf of papers alight in the boardroom.

  Authentix was Perversion’s first hip-hop client—the artist I acquired behind Daddy’s back ju
st before his death. I conspired with my friends, screwed Daddy over, to get Authentix on our roster. I composed the lies that convinced my brother to cowrite the debut album. I’m featured on Authentix’s top-grossing track—my glory barely more than sex moans in the background and my whistle register accessorizing the hook.

  Frustrated, I land a kidney shot to the unlucky fucker obstructing my path. Man or woman, I don’t notice—nor do I care as I hunt my prey. Ezra del Toro could be anywhere on this sixty-nine-acre estate.

  Or sneaking off to board a private jet with his wife.

  I wouldn’t put it past Ezra and Merritt to leave Sophie to defend herself against spies such as myself. All three betrayed me. Who’s to say they won’t turn against one another?

  Counting on their disloyalty and how it might benefit me, I continue to move from one room to the next. The main floor turns up nothing more than curious gossip; cataloging it, I take the elevator to the top-floor executive suites.

  A surge of euphoria overwhelms me as I approach the frosted French doors that open to reception and lead to the CEO, CFO, and COO offices.

  My heart beats like sticks on a drum. Drums. My drums. Where is the man who bought me a drum set and told me to beat the fuck out of them?

  My brain is sprinting, pivoting, twisting free of something abstract.

  I gulp in air, but my lungs feel tight.

  I stand still, my hands on the door levers, and the floor crumbles beneath me. The walls shake and the ceiling cracks like the shell of an egg that’s tumbled from its nest.

  Bracing for the fall, I see myself as I was four years ago, mourning Daddy’s death and my brother’s desertion, yet excited that this company was mine. Mine to share with friends who’d help Perversion reach unrealized heights.

  We did make it happen. We celebrated our mainstream media respect and Grammy Award success with champagne and angel dust…but we quickly changed. Or they changed and I stayed the same woman I’ve always been.

  Imogen Creed, Sawyer “Midas” Creed’s daughter in every way.

  I release the levers, because the world hasn’t fallen to ashes. I’m shaking, confused, and I open my purse to make sure my revolver is still with me. In times of haze, the delicate weapon offers clarity.

  I touch it, slide it from its hiding place, just to be certain it’s real, because I feel as weightless as a line of coke.

  “Give me the gun, Imogen. Or I can slap it out of your goddamn hand.”

  Panic seizes me and I drop the revolver before I can regain control—if I had it to begin with.

  Taking the gun, pointing it as he directs me to open the double doors, Ezra looks pissed off enough to do some real damage with it.

  He and the others stole my record label, what matters most to me—so of course he’s capable of finishing me with a well-aimed shot.

  Calling on false confidence, I march across the parquet floor past reception straight to the CEO’s office. Somehow, I make it there without spilling onto the floor. I feel constricted, stifled, as though my spirit is clawing through my skin to escape the rest of me.

  “That’s Merritt’s space,” he says, his voice the low rumble of thunder on a clear southern night.

  “It should be mine.” I turn to him and notice he’s not alone. The bodyguard who accompanied Ezra, Merritt, and Sophie up the grand stairs earlier is standing nearby—removed from the situation, but close enough to intervene on Ezra’s directive. “So, you can’t handle me on your own? Where are your balls these days? Merritt’s handbag, or swinging from the mirror of that sweet-ass Koenigsegg you bought her?”

  “I surprised her with the car this morning,” he says, invading my personal space. “How the fuck do you know about it?”

  “I have my ways,” is my casual reply. Translation: I paid a maid to surveil their house this morning.

  His voice drops lower; his lips hover closer. “Know how Merritt thanked me for that car?”

  The maid recounted in gratuitous detail how he and Merritt fucked like mad against the hood of the Koenigsegg. “Uh-uh,” I deny. “I don’t know what she did.”

  “Liar.” Ezra smiles, and as charming as it might be to someone who doesn’t despise his ass, it looks unnatural on him. He wasn’t made to smile. “Let’s find Merritt now.”

  “No!” I shout. “Just give me back my gun. It’s for protection.”

  “You need someone to protect you from yourself.” Ezra empties the gun of its bullets and hands it to the goliath. He tosses the bullets around in his palm, taunting me. “What were you going to do—commit suicide in Merritt’s office?”

  “It’s my office.”

  His stare penetrates me. I stare back, fascinated by more than the arresting symmetry of his features, the angry set of his jaw, and that he gives not one fuck that his dark hair is disheveled.

  It’s the profanity on his lips, the temper that provoked the “fightin’ Irish” nickname inmates gave him in lockup years ago, the vile Spanish words he learned listening to his father abuse his mother before tragedy happened.

  He’s eight years older than I am, but his eyes hold the jaded wisdom of someone who’s lived two lifetimes on this earth. In a way, he has. Before me, and after me.

  Ezra was my brother’s friend, but I changed his life. I confessed my most perverse thoughts to him because that’s my love language. He gave me inexplicably personal gifts because that’s his love language.

  Now we face each other with only history and hatred between us.

  “Were you going to eat your gun?” he asks.

  He wants to embarrass me, inflict shame, but even with whiskey and a coke-and-heroin mixture in my system I’m not toasted enough to allow it.

  “What would give you that impression?” My smile is restricted to my lips. My eyes can reflect nothing but disdain and disappointment when I look at him. When he was absent from my life while serving a prison term, I didn’t think less of him. I never imagined my adoration for him could die under the weight of resentment.

  “Hold her steady,” Ezra tells the bodyguard. It’s not a request; it’s the crack of a demand from a man used to issuing orders.

  The bodyguard secures my wrists behind my back and my purse hits the floor. I tell Ezra to go fuck himself, but he reveals no reaction and I wonder if he heard me.

  “Hey,” I object when Ezra yanks down the zipper on my dress several inches. “No dinner first?”

  “Shut the fuck up.” The tattoos under his cuff come out of hiding as he pries one side of the dress over my shoulder, exposing my scar. Like my brother, Ezra and the rest of their sex, drugs, and rock and roll crowd used their bodies as canvasses. “This wound says more about you than anything else.” He signals the bodyguard to release me and walk off, and now he and I are alone with the assault of rap music around us.

  “You tried to kill yourself before,” he says.

  “Forever ago,” I reason. It seems that forever ago I was sixteen and anything but sweet. “I’m not that dramatic anymore. Life’s good. I’m rich, hot, and free to fuck anyone I please.”

  “But you don’t have Perversion.”

  Fightin’ Irish doesn’t always use his fists—the truth can be a weapon too.

  I collect my purse, and when I try to reclaim the gun, he denies me.

  “You don’t have your gun, either,” he says.

  “You’re a dick.”

  “And you’re a rabid bitch.”

  As he gets close, I see my reflection in his eyes, yet I don’t exactly recognize myself. Closer still, and I can almost, almost, feel the prickle of his beard. “Imogen, if I put you through a window, no one in this city or industry would give a shit.”

  Another strike of truth, this one harder. “Maybe Sophie quakes under your authority and Merritt lets herself be dazzled by what’s swinging between your legs, but you can’t control
me.”

  He has no immediate response and I consider his silence victory. I zip my dress and return to the CEO office doors. “Unlock these. I want to see all the ways she erased me from my company. I already noticed that y’all removed my picture from the foyer.”

  “You say you’re about risk and innovation and manipulating trends, but you can’t adapt, Imogen. That’s why this business isn’t for you.”

  Adapting, altering perceptions—it’s his expertise. He went to college, served time in prison, earned an MBA degree, and diversified his fortune with crypto investments. He understands finance as masterfully as I understand men’s naked bodies. But an ex-convict with wild determination in his eyes and ink on his skin isn’t welcome into elite boardrooms at first sight. He knows how to conceal his beast and when to cover his inner hellion.

  “I was born into this business, Ezra. What were you born into again? Oh, right. Poverty.”

  Beast baited. Hellion called.

  Ezra stabs a code into the security panel and rams a shoulder to the door, throwing it open.

  My office. No, Merritt’s office.

  Traces of me are gone. The walls have been painted a calming lavender. An overstuffed sofa rests adjacent to the windows that overlook a night-shaded courtyard. An L-shaped workstation breaks up the space, and decorating the polished surface are photographs of those who matter to her. Family. Friends. People she respects.

  I’m in none of the photos. Erased.

  Ezra approaches, and I can hear the rattle of my bullets in his pocket.

  They’ve taken so much from me. Merritt’s taken so much.

  I whirl on Merritt’s husband and slap him with syringe-given moxie. “This window,” I say, pointing. “Put me through it. You said you would.”

  “I said I could put you through a window, not that I’m fucking stupid enough to do it.”

  His words are a fissure in his steel exterior. A flicker of humanity in his viciousness. I’ll use it. I won’t leave the Moss plantation until I’ve taken from both Ezra and Merritt.