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)
My fans loved it, and if anyone was skeptical about the story, no one dared mention their suspicions because no one who values their career in Hollywood would dare cross the Saunders family. Scott was warned that he wouldn’t be able to talk to me just yet and that I would be home soon because my phone had been turned off as part of my healing. They’d thought of everything.
An hour later, there were two men at my door who were there to take me to the private airstrip to board one of Saunders’s private planes.
I was going home, I’d be close to her again, and maybe I’d even get a chance to see her, but first, I had a song to record.
***
*Janie*
I should’ve known she would show up here. I’m surprised it took her this long to tell the truth. I dug my nails into my palms to stay calm and not give away the fact that Mary Hudson makes me very uncomfortable. The effects of the lines of coke I’d just done wore off at the sight of her face as I watched her walk toward me. She didn’t even knock, and no one even told me that she was there.
Her snobbish sense of entitlement made me want to gag, and I did a good job of hiding my inner thoughts by keeping a blank expression on my face. Inside though, I was jumping for joy that she and her family were finally getting their comeuppance.
It was so sweet watching them get dogged out on the world stage that I almost forgot that I, too, was under attack from these unknown people who came out of nowhere to stick their noses in. But even my annoyance at the fact that yet another person was once again protecting Elena was overshadowed by the fact that they were destroying the Hudsons in the process.
Mary was in a rage, which I was sure she was, but doing a very good job of hiding it was a very scary thing. I’ve seen her destroy someone with her tongue one minute and praise them the next. The fact that the only reason I hated her was because she’s never accepted me, never treated me like one of them, even though I married a man with lots of money, was neither here nor there.
She’d made all these promises in the beginning, when all I wanted was Ryder, and she seemed like the only one who could help me fulfill that dream, but I’ve since come to learn that it was all a fairy tale. What she wanted was control; I still didn’t care, though, as long as I got to keep Ryder and make that bitch Elena suffer.
I bit back the moan of distress at the thought of her name and the idea that my husband could very well be by her side at this very moment since it had been months since I’d seen or heard from him. That’s why this whole fiasco couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was hard keeping track, let alone keep up with him, and only the coke and the pills I took were helping me get through the days and nights.
Why is this all happening? I thought things would be perfect once we got married. Ryder was always so high that he barely knew what day it was, but even as drugged up as he was, he somehow always remembered that he hated me. Something I didn’t know until after we were married.
He seemed to blame me because he couldn’t be with her. He has no memory of the things he screams out to me in his sleep or how heartbreaking it is to hear your husband, the man who was supposed to be yours for a lifetime according to the elders, calling out for another woman in his sleep while tears roll down his cheeks.
I’ve endured that hell for five years, and there’s no way that I’ll let anyone else have Ryder. Not to mention the embarrassment that I’d suffer if this should happen; everyone would laugh at me, not that they aren’t already, but that would be the final nail in my coffin.
I knew that if Ryder were in his right senses, he wouldn’t be here, and that is what bothers me most of all. If he wasn’t here where I could keep an eye on him, making sure he gets his daily dose of drugs to keep him unaware of what was going on around him, I might lose all the control I’d fought so hard to gain over him.
Mary had come through there as well. She knew people who knew things, who knew how to get things done. And these people were even better than my mom, who had played a big part in helping me get here. All it had taken was a photo of Ryder and the sweat from his palm when he shook my dad’s hand that first time so many years ago.