Page 6 of Song Bird Hearts (Green River Hearts #4)

Valerie

I find a corner where I can talk without the music drowning my voice out.

It’s loud in here, so I have to leave the main area and end up in one of the single corners not occupied by couples making out or someone snorting cocaine.

Seriously, why is it so hard to just chill at a party?

Though I suppose when there are waiters walking around with a selection of drugs on their silver trays, it’s part of the entertainment.

The moment the phone is recording, I plaster on a smile, watching as the viewer number immediately starts to tick up. My few million followers would have gotten the notification that I’m live, and like clockwork, they start to show up. My fans are everything to me, so I smile and wave.

“Hey y’all! You’ll never believe the party I’m at after winning Best New Artist at the CMAs!” For the camera, I pretend to be excited. it feels so fake, it makes my throat thick. “I figured I’d go live to show it off. Let me show you what’s happening.”

I’m careful not to point the camera at any of the drug users, only showing those dancing and moving to the beat.

I mostly keep the camera on me, swaying to the music and pretending like I’m having the time of my life.

It’s not hard to pretend. I know what it’s supposed to look like.

The problem is, the longer I’m here, the more I have to pretend.

I used to be so carefree. Now I feel chained, but that isn’t my fans’ fault.

They deserve happy Val. Not sad, rich Val.

I laugh when someone comes up and preens like a peacock for the camera, but the sound is hollow. Is that really how I sound now?

This isn’t what I thought fame would be. The higher my view number goes up, the lonelier I feel. But this is what I asked for. I’ll do the song and dance because it’s expected. It’s both amazing and. . . soul-crushing. Can they see me wilting like Wolf did?

I refuse to let it crush me though. Things can change. Once I get more control of my work, it’ll be different.

“Let me show you how insane this house is,” I tell the livestream.

“Seriously sick. We’re in the middle of nowhere, up high on a mountain.

This view!” I step out on the balcony, muting the party inside, as I turn the camera and show off the view.

It’s pretty. “You can’t get this every day,” I tell the livestream.

Except I can at home. The mountains around the Green River Basin are breathtaking.

I took it for granted before, but I miss it now.

For a moment, I forget I’m livestreaming, letting the camera linger too long on my face. I snap out of it and shake my head.

“Anyways, let’s get going with the tour. You guys should see the pool,” I say, holding the camera in front of my face.

Comments begin pouring in, hearts and likes filling the screen. I can’t answer them all—there are too many—but I try my best to answer questions as they fly across my screen.

“I haven’t been on this side of the house,” I tell my fans. “Maybe there’s something cool like a Picasso or something in here.”

I push open the door to the other side of the house.

I figure it’ll lead back inside the same area I left since the doors are so close together, but the moment I open the door, I find myself inside a large white pillared room instead.

Large paintings hang on the walls just like I expect, so I step inside and close the door behind me.

“Look at those,” I whisper on instinct. “I bet those are someone famous. I flunked art history. Someone comment and tell me what painter these are.”

I zoom in on the nearest painting, prepared to read the comments to see if someone knows anything about it, but before I can get any closer, I’m startled by what sounds like a guttural scream.

It echoes around the marble room, making me jump in surprise, my fingers tightening on my phone.

I can’t even hear the music in here from the party, but that scream is loud.

That sound was full of pain, like someone is being tortured.

I go on high alert, wondering if this is one of those times I should intervene.

I go into stealth mode on instinct, taking slow soft steps so my boot heels don’t make a sound on the marble floor.

There’s an open doorway ahead of me that I creep toward.

Warm light spills from the doorway, golden, as if a mask for the terrible sounds that start tumbling out of the room.

Carefully, I peek around the corner, barely leaning out in case it’s trouble I find.

Sure enough, I find that trouble I’ve been avoiding.

A circle of well-dressed men stand in a circle, each of them looking down.

Another well-dressed older man walks around the edges, his eyes hard on whatever it is the other men are looking at.

I follow their gazes to the man kneeling on the floor, his arm held across his chest awkwardly.

Tears stream down his face, soft whimpers slipping from his lips as he holds what’s clearly a broken arm.

I’m startled to realize I recognize the man on the floor, though I’ve never met him before.

He’s an up and coming pop star, the kind of artist who sings songs that people add to their sex playlist. His newest song is catchy, very party worthy.

Hell, I think they played his song at the party not even fifteen minutes ago.

“I think we understand each other, do we not?” the man walking around the edge asks.

“I didn’t know she was your wife,” the man whimpers. “She hit on me and?—”

The man steps forward dangerously. “Are you suggesting my wife cheats on me?”

The man hesitates despite his pain. “No, of course not. It was all my mistake.”

The leader shakes his head. “This isn’t our first meeting, Jeremy. Unfortunately, you’re beginning to cause too much trouble for the Foundation. It seems we may have picked the wrong person to make famous.”

“No,” Jeremy says. “Please, it won’t happen again. It’s just a learning curve?—”

“You slept with my wife!” the man snarls. “And then bragged about it online. The time for learning is done.”

Jeremy begins to cry, blubbering like a baby on the floor. I watch, wide-eyed, not sure what I can do to help. Turns out, I wait too long. The leader pulls out a gun, and the man on the floor begins to wail and beg.

“Please! I’ll tell everyone it was a joke, that I was mistaken. Please, I’ll do anything. Anything you ask!”

“You should have thought about that before you wet your dick in my wife,” the man says. “And here I’d hoped you weren’t a one hit wonder, Jeremy. Such a shame you gave into the drugs so soon.”

The man on the floor looks anything but on drugs, but I hear the lie for what it is.

I don’t have time to react, to figure out the words.

The man points the gun at Jeremy and pulls the trigger.

The sound is loud in the marble room. I’m no stranger to shooting guns, but in the room, the echo makes me wince.

I gasp in both pain and shock, not sure what I just witnessed. That’s my mistake.

I must make a sound, because a man appears in front of me, his eyes hard as he takes me in. “What the fuck are you doing in here?” he snarls, and then his eyes drop to the phone in my hand.

Where I’d been livestreaming.

Where I’m still livestreaming.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck!

“Umm. . . I was looking for a bathroom,” I lie, tucking my phone in my back pocket without turning it off. “I really have to pee,” I whine, pretending like I hadn’t just witnessed a murder. “Can you show me where it’s at?”

He pulls a gun from his hip and I don’t waste time pretending any longer.

I grab the nearest thing to me—a vase that probably costs more than my savings—and throw it as hard as I can at his face.

It shatters and he grunts in pain, immediately reaching up to his face when he starts to gush blood from where the broken ceramic cuts him.

I don’t wait for him to recover. I turn and run, sprinting toward the door I’d come in through.

Someone grabs me by my ankle and I go down hard, my arm screaming in pain when I land on it slightly wrong.

I grunt and kick back at the man holding me, more of them coming from the room.

I know I have literal seconds to get out of here.

If they all get into this room, I’m as good as dead, another cover story in the newspaper that says I overdosed on a drug I’ve never touched in my life.

The leader had mentioned the Foundation.

I’m not stupid enough to dismiss that claim.

I’m also not stupid enough to stick around and try and convince them I didn’t just livestream their business out to the internet. They’re gonna find out soon enough.

I struggle, kicking as hard as I can at the man holding me.

Thank God for wooden heeled cowgirl boots.

He lets go with a shout of pain and I scramble to my feet, slamming my way through the door and out onto the balcony again.

I immediately rush toward the party, crashing through that door.

A few eyes look over at me, but when they see the men following behind, they look away quickly.

Owned. Controlled. Ignored.

I’m in big fucking trouble.

I scramble through the party, rushing toward the front door and trying to push my way through the crowd, but it’s too thick. I’m not gonna be able to make it. It’s almost like these people are purposedly holding me back. They probably are.

And then my reprieve comes. He appears like a guardian angel wearing a wolf mask, his hand wrapping around my elbow and pulling me through the crowd.

“What are you?—”

“Trust me,” he says, and his eyes flicker behind his mask. “I’ve got you, little star.”

He pulls me through the crowd, who move out of the way happily for him when they wouldn’t for me. He drags me toward a small door, and when he opens it, I get a perfect view of the outside driveway where my driver waits for me with everyone else’s.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

“Don’t thank me,” he says. “Now, it’s best you run.” He presses a kiss to the back of my hand. “I’ll find you, little star. No matter where you go.”

It feels like a threat, but one I’ll take over the threat of the people chasing me. I throw my arms around him in a rushed, hard hug, and then turn away, sprinting toward where Perry, my driver, had told me he’d be waiting.

When I find the blue car in the middle of the large circular driveway, I find Perry leaning against the car, waiting for me.

I hadn’t planned to be here long, so there’d been no use of him going somewhere else.

He’s smoking a cigarette but when I come rushing up to him, he immediately straightens and puts it out.

“We need to go right now!” I shout at him. “Get in the car, Perry!”

“What’s going on?” he asks, rushing to open my door.

I shove him away toward the driver seat. “Not right now. Just get in the fucking car!”

He scrambles to do what I say, running around the front of the car. The moment he’s inside, he’s turning the key and immediately dropping it in drive before pulling out of the driveway. I look out the back window as the men funnel out of the house, looking after me, but they don’t pursue us.

I immediately reach for the phone in my pocket and pull it back out.

It’s still livestreaming, still recording and posting.

I realize suddenly this may be the only thing that keeps my alive in this instance, this dirt I have on them.

I turn the camera to my face. The comments are rolling in rapidly, too fast to read, but I catch a few of them.

OMG, are you okay?

What’s going on?

That looks sketchy af. That guy just shot another guy.

Anyone call the cops?

Tell us you’re okay, Val!

“I’m alive,” I say, looking out the back window even though I can no longer see them.

“I’m alive,” I repeat. I stare at the camera, not sure what to do, so I let instincts kick in.

“To whom it may concern,” I rasp, “I am not suicidal. I don’t have plans to harm myself.

If I die, know that it was not by accident.

Know that I did not kill myself.” I dip my chin and take a deep, shaking breath.

“If something happens to me. . .” My phone buzzes with a text message from an unknown number.

Valerie Decatur. It seems we made a mistake with our choice.

My eyes widen and I look wildly out the window, searching if we’re being followed but I see nothing. That doesn’t mean I’m safe. That doesn’t mean I’m safe at all.

“If something happens to me,” I repeat, staring into the camera. “Know that it was the 27 Foundation who killed me.” I don’t look away from the camera for long seconds, letting my words sink in.

And then I cut the livestream.