The Rise, page 11
Mirren pressed play.
The image wasn’t the best quality, but good enough to make it quite clear what was happening. A bedroom. High class. Expensive. A hotel. Brochures sitting on the black slate coffee table, in front of an angular black leather sofa. Behind it, a bed, glossy ebony frame, silver bedding. Rich. Opulent. Chris Brown’s ‘Don’t Wake Me Up’ playing in the background.
On the bed, Chloe, in just a tiny vest and panties, her red curls matted and wild, her eyes alive, wide, giggling as she snorted a line off a ten-inch-square mirror that she held up to her nose.
The camera jerked as it scanned the room, then went still, as a guy came round in front of it.
‘OK, baby, it’s on,’ he told her.
Back to the bed, to Chloe, beckoning him towards her. The guy – Mirren could only see him from the neck down – came into shot as he stepped towards the bed, the muscles on his naked torso rippling as he moved.
The voices in Mirren’s head screamed, Don’t touch my baby. Don’t you fucking dare touch my baby. He wasn’t listening.
Chloe pushed herself downwards until she was lying flat, then sprinkled a line of white powder in a straight line from the middle of her breasts down past her belly button.
‘Come down here, baby,’ the girl on the bed begged, her voice whiny and insistent. It wasn’t Chloe any more. It was someone else, someone who looked like her. It had to be. The same face, the same body, the same birthmark, a little brown circle at the top of her right thigh. But that couldn’t be her baby. It couldn’t be.
Only the back of the guy’s head was in view as he leaned down, produced a rolled-up note from the palm of his hand and snorted all the way from the top to the bottom.
Chloe grabbed his hair and pulled him back up towards her, kissing him, laughing.
The coke became a sex toy, Chloe sprinkling it where she wanted to be licked, kissed, nudged, until… Mirren’s eyes wouldn’t stay open. They squeezed shut, tears pushing through her lids, but her ears couldn’t block out the sound of Chloe’s moans, becoming even more insistent, demanding, ordering him to never stop.
No. Oh God, no. Mirren was whimpering now, rocking back and forwards, desperate to turn it off, yet absolutely unable to.
When the voices stopped for a second, Mirren opened her eyes to see the man moving to the bottom of the bed, his back to the camera, but sadly not blocking out the sight of Chloe’s salacious grin as she watched him.
It didn’t matter. Mirren knew exactly who it was. She recognized the hair, the broad shoulders, the laugh, the voice, and most of all she recognized the expression on her daughter’s face, the one that she saved just for him. She recognized the voice her daughter was using, the same one she used when she was calling him for the tenth time in a day. The one that she was using now to call the shots.
‘Come on baby, time to make me happy,’ Chloe teased, as she beckoned him towards her. He climbed on top of her, then…
Cut to black.
At exactly the same moment as Mirren died inside. The message that accompanied the clip was almost irrelevant:
$100k.
That was all it said.
It didn’t matter. No amount of money was going to make that go away. No amount of money was going to save her girl.
Only Mirren could do that. Or die trying.
Trembling, she slipped the phone into her pocket. She’d worry about Chloe’s reaction later.
As she passed the rehab specialist in the other room, she popped her head in. Long grey hair, tied back, a shirt and tie under his medical jacket, he was a survivor of the 1970s rock scene, reinvented as a substance-abuse expert and had come highly recommended as one of the best in town. Mirren couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t that good if he hadn’t discovered Chloe’s stash. She tossed the bag of powder to him, saying nothing.
He nodded as if it was exactly what he’d expected.
‘They’re addicts, Mrs Gore. They find ways.’
‘And I’m paying you ten thousand dollars a day to make sure you’re better at finding them than she is at concealing them.’
He had the temerity to look offended. Mirren had never cared less.
‘I’m putting some more security downstairs. I’ve taken her phone and she’s going to kick off—’
‘Mrs Gore, I’d strongly advise against that. It demonstrates a lack of trust and could be detrimental to—’
‘I don’t give a damn. I’ll be back in an hour. Call me if you can’t cope.’
In the kitchen, she grabbed her phone and pressed number one on the speed dial.
‘Hey, sister, what’s going on?’
‘I need help, Lou.’
Her friend didn’t even pause to ask why. ‘Shoot.’
‘Jordan Lang.’
‘Son of a bitch. Is Chloe still hanging out with that vile piece of crap? I was hoping he’d disappear after his daddy cut off the cash supply.’
‘When did that happen?’
Lou immediately switched into information mode.
‘Last weekend. Word is, he emptied his trust fund of half a mill and sold one of Granny’s rocks. Kent Lang went nuts, threw him out, told him to fuck off, disinherited him.’
The demand for cash suddenly made sense.
‘I know it’s a long shot, but any idea where he is today?’
‘Give me five minutes.’
The phone clicked and Mirren used the wait to get prepared. In her study, she flipped open the panel behind the portrait of the kids, taken at the beach when they were about five and six. It was her favourite image of them, excitement and love radiating from them as they ran back to her, the surf in the background.
They’d thrown themselves upon her, sand kicking up everywhere, and they’d all shrieked with glee as she’d tickled them until they couldn’t breathe.
It took less than a second to punch in the code; then the steel door opened and she extracted what she needed.
She was already in the car, completely confident in Lou’s ability to deliver, when her phone rang.
‘He’s at the Combrian, room 456.’
The Combrian. Made sense. Five star, but famous for its long history of rock stars ejecting the contents of their rooms via the windows, including, last year, a high-class escort who died on impact when she landed on the roof of a Rolls-Royce Phantom down below.
The lead singer of the band was out on bail before her mother in Nebraska knew she was dead.
The door was answered on the second knock, right after she shouted, ‘Room service.’ Idiots didn’t even have the sense to check the peephole.
A guy she didn’t recognize eyed her quizzically, but she burst past him, giving no time for his wasted brain to catch up. As soon as she was inside, she recognized it as the room from the video. If she’d had any doubt about what she was about to do, she had none now.
Jordan Lang lay on the bed, his tanned, athletic body adorned with nothing more than a pair of tight white boxers, his thumbs flicking the buttons on the Xbox controller he held with two hands. To his left, a square mirror on the bedside table sat next to a bag of powder and a tiny silver spoon.
Two cronies she didn’t recognize lounged on the sofa, eyes fixed on the screen, watching two cars race while gunshots crackled from the sidelines.
Lang didn’t even flinch or take his eyes from the TV screen when she entered. Hard to say if that was because he was high or an arrogant prick. Actually, there was no debate. He was both.
No reaction from the sidekicks either. The one that had answered the door just ambled over and joined his two buddies on the couch. It struck Mirren that they looked like clones: all early twenties, all in jeans that dipped beneath their asses, vests, chains round their necks, baseball caps. What the fuck were grown adults doing wearing baseball caps backwards and trousers that showed their underwear? Pathetic, yet something in their screwed-up DNA made them think it was cool.
Time to take their dangling crotches somewhere else. Mirren calmly crossed to the TV and flicked the off switch.
‘Hey…’
‘Glad I’ve got your attention.’
For a second there was a glimmer of confusion on Lang’s face, before it switched straight to anger.
‘What the fuck—?’
Mirren switched focus to the trio on the couch. ‘You three, time to go.’
‘Fuck off,’ one of them spat back.
Ah, the power of educated speech.
She held up her phone, demonstrating that it was on a video call. ‘Right now I’m connected to a very nice friend of mine at LAPD.’ She wasn’t. But they didn’t need to know that.
She scanned the room with the phone, ensuring it captured each of their faces, before saying, ‘Combrian, room 456,’ into the speaker.
The three of them looked at Lang for guidance.
‘Don’t look at him, look at me,’ Mirren told them, with absolutely no emotion in her voice. ‘And I’m the one saying that it’ll probably be best for your future criminal record if you don’t say a word on your way out the door.’
Over on the bed, Jordan Lang nodded slightly and the trio were through the door before being told for a third time. Mirren disconnected her phone and put it in her back pocket.
‘I’m Chloe Gore’s mother.’
‘I know who you are.’
The bravado and arrogance made her teeth grind. Oh, Chloe, how could you choose this one? For a second she wavered, desperate to go, to get his face out of her brain and make it stop polluting her thoughts. But an image of him with his hands on her daughter’s body, touching her…
She opened her purse, took out the clear bag of wrapped notes and threw it on the bed.
‘A hundred grand,’ she told him. ‘Just in case you can’t count that high.’
No fear, no concern on his face, just a smile of satisfaction there now.
‘Good to know that Chloe’s got a mother who’s onside.’
‘Where’s the original video?’
‘On my phone.’
‘Give it to me.’
He grinned as he leaned forward, picked up the cash and whistled.
‘That’s not the deal. The deal is that you give me this, I make sure it never hits the tabloids. They’d pay a hundred grand for it, but this way no one finds out what your girl likes to do when she’s having fun.’
Mirren kept her voice cold, unemotional. ‘No. The deal is that you give me the original. Right now. End of story.’
His hands pushed back through his shoulder-length black hair as he made his amusement clear.
‘Like I said, that’s not how it works.’
Only once before in her life, a long, long time ago, had she been this desperate to use violence to remove a smug smile from someone’s face.
And this time she knew how.
Her actions were almost matter of fact as she opened her Chanel tote, extracted her fully licensed handgun and pointed it at his face.
That got his attention.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he said. Almost dared her.
‘Oh, I so would,’ she answered, voice absolutely calm and absolutely deadly.
The anxiety caused by hearing herself say those words in her mind, by feeling those feelings again, snapped Mirren back to the present, to the safety and security of her bedroom on a sleepless night.
She swapped the water for the mug of her husband’s obscenely expensive champagne. She was going to need more alcohol if her mind was going to drift back to that night again and revisit what happened next.
18
‘NOTHING’ – THE SCRIPT
On the scale of disturbing experiences, this night had been somewhere between the time Zander had left Elton John’s Oscar party, spent three hours in a nightclub snorting coke from the cleavage of a supermodel and then wrapped his Aston Martin round a lamp post on Beverly Drive, and the time he spent the night in LA County jail after the altercation with the reality-TV tosser. And he couldn’t even remember that prick’s name.
‘How did you find me?’ he’d asked as she’d strutted past him into his apartment, arrogance exploding from every pore, only the fact that she couldn’t walk in a straight line giving her a layer of vulnerability.
‘I’m Mirren McLean’s daughter. There’s nothing I can’t find out.’ Her slur had been barely decipherable. There was no arguing with her logic, though. It would only take one call to a publicist, who’d call another publicist, who’d call a secretary in an agency, who’d call a friend who worked at a car service, and the address would be delivered via text in minutes.
It was difficult to say whether Chloe had plumped down onto the sofa or her legs had given way and it was just good fortune that there was a soft landing. Her skin was grey, her eyes barely open. Life Reborn might want to consider their success strike rate. So far, in this room alone, they were zero for two.
Zander had closed the door, headed to the kitchen and grabbed a bucket from under the sink. Hollie had put it there after she’d replaced the rug in the bedroom for the third time. Chloe had barely noticed when he’d slipped it in front of her.
‘Hey, Zander Leith,’ she’d purred. ‘Zander Leith. Za-n-der Leith.’
Each syllable of his name was more protracted with each repetition. This had seemed to amuse her. Difficult to believe that this was the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the most important power couples in the industry. Spielbergs. Hanks. Gores.
Now she was sitting here, in denim cut-offs, Diesel boots and a white vest that fell off one pale white shoulder, completely wasted.
Still he added nothing to the conversation.
‘So tell me, Za-n-der Leith, what’s the story?’
‘The story?’
‘About my mother. I hate her, y’know. So perfect. She’s so fricking perfect. She took everything away from me. Do you know that? Fucking everything.’
Zander closed his eyes. Never had he needed a drink more than now. He reached over to the unit under the TV, pulled out a stack of screeners from the bottom shelf and liberated a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that was hidden behind them.
‘C’mon, Chloe…’ He sat on the coffee table in front of her, ready to catch her if she fell forward.
‘Hey, you know my name,’ she said with a giggle. ‘Zander Leith knows my name.’
Her gesticulating hand landed on his thigh, then teasingly crept towards his crotch.
He removed it.
‘Doncha want me?’ she purred, a teasing lilt creeping into her voice, followed by a mischievous snigger as she pulled her top over her head, exposing her naked breasts.
‘Chloe, put that back on. Now.’ He was on his feet. Pacing. Face turned away. ‘Please, come on. Put your vest back on.’ Jesus, this was excruciating. He turned to see if she’d complied, but nope, still half-naked.
‘Chloe, come on. Stop. Look, you put your top back on or I leave.’ The finality and strength in his voice covered up for a heart that was racing with horror. Young women had never been his thing. Even in his most stoned of days, he’d never touched anyone who couldn’t pass for at least twenty-five. But it wasn’t just that. This was so much worse than just a young naked woman coming on to him. This was different. So different it hurt somewhere deep down in his guts.
She was Mirren McLean’s daughter. She had no idea what had happened between him and her mother. She could never know. What they’d had belonged in the past and—
‘So did you fuck her, then?’ Chloe interrupted his panic, her voice petulant as she pulled her top back on. ‘My mother. Did you fuck her?’
Taking a slug of Jack Daniel’s saved him from answering. God bless the bottle.
‘Did you?’ Chloe repeated. ‘I think you did. She won’t watch a movie if you’re in it. I think it’s because you fucked her.’ Another giggle.
He had nothing. Nothing to say, nowhere to go with this.
This was pain. Gut-wrenching pain.
How hard had he worked to forget? How many years had he blocked it out, denied it? And now it was back. There were so many thoughts in his head that the trauma, not the Jack Daniel’s, had taken his speech.
The sensible thing would be to get her out of here. How could he ever explain her being here to Mirren? Would she believe him? After everything?
Even if he wanted to tell her mother, he didn’t have Mirren’s number, and calling Life Reborn was out of the question. Her detention was court-ordered, and if she’d blown that off, he wasn’t going to be the one to turn her in.
But he couldn’t let her stay here. Anyone could have seen her come in. There could be a crowd of paps outside right now timing their meeting, waiting to catch a walk-of-shame shot when they left the next morning. Or there could be one on the beach with a long lens. That one took a minute to percolate before he jumped up, closed the balcony door and pressed the button that made the windows opaque.
‘Chloe, is there somewhere you can go?’
‘Not goin’ back.’
‘I know. But the cops will come for you if you don’t.’
‘Nooooo.’ It was almost animalistic. ‘Not going back there. Hate them all.’
He drained his glass. Jack Daniel’s wasn’t going to solve this, but it couldn’t make it any worse.
‘That’s why I came here,’ she slurred again. ‘I knew you hated it there as much as me. I know my mother hates you and you don’t speak, so you wouldn’t send me back to her. And I knew you wouldn’t try to fuck me. You passed the test.’
She might be wrecked, but he couldn’t argue with her logic. She was almost right on all counts. Almost.
Just at that moment, she lurched forward and Zander grabbed the bucket. Not a scene he’d ever anticipated dealing with. He was one of the biggest box-office stars in the world and he was here, at night, with a half-naked woman, fully expecting to be vomited on at any second.
There must have been some seriously scary shit decisions to get him to this point in his life.
‘Need to pee.’
Oh Christ.
He helped her up, supported her to the bathroom and then guided her in. Etiquette? He had no idea, so backing out and closing the door seemed like the best option.
