Page 5 of Vain (Tempest #2)

Chapter Five

AIDEN

The color has bleached from her face. If I didn’t think it might push her over the edge, I’d pick her up and put her in my lap.

I grit my teeth, not wanting to know what happened next but needing to, all the same.

“The set was made to look like an abandoned warehouse. My character had ridden her bike there to hide from the mob chasing her. It was raining, and water was artificially added to the set, but it wasn’t water. It was acid,” she whispers.

It takes me a minute to process, but I freeze solid when I do. “Acid? Someone tried to burn you with fucking acid?” I all but roar.

She blinks but doesn’t pull away. “I was the only actor on the set, but two crew members got hurt. They didn’t have helmets to protect them like I did.

” Her voice drifts off as she thinks back to the pandemonium.

“At first, I didn’t understand what was happening until I realized my arm felt like it was on fire.

By the time the ambulance crew had arrived, I’d passed out and wouldn’t wake up for another two days. ”

She says it with a note of disbelief in her voice, as if she still can’t believe it happened, even though it happened to her.

I let go of her hands and stalk away, pacing backward and forward across the room. I need space to move and think. I should say something, anything, but my rage burns out of control, threatening to swallow us both.

She stands and moves to leave, her head down, likely so I can’t see her fighting back tears. Fuck this.

I walk over, and without conscious thought, I tug her into my arms and hold her tightly to my chest. She freezes, but I won’t let go unless she tells me to.

“I’ve got you now, Tilly. I swear to fucking god, nobody else will hurt you, not on my watch.”

As if someone cut all the strings holding her up, she collapses in my arms as a violent sob tears through her body. I tighten my grip, holding her up and giving her all my strength.

My eyes drift close as I breathe in, feeling something unlock in my chest. I’m not someone who’d usually buy into kooky bullshit like that, but it’s impossible to deny some kind of connection between us.

I felt it the second I laid eyes on her.

I don’t know what I was expecting, someone larger than life perhaps, someone bitchy who believes their own hype.

This isn’t the first time I’ve guarded a celebrity, though she is the most famous.

They all have an air about them. I don’t want to say it’s a sense of entitlement because not all of them were dicks.

But there is detachment between them and us.

I always felt like the hired help—and I’m not saying that’s wrong—but that’s not how I feel here.

I press my lips to the crown of her head, wondering if the feeling is one-sided. I wonder if I’m imagining everything because she sparks something in me, bringing every protective instinct to life.

Fuck, this could get messy. I should back off now. I’m a temporary measure here only to keep her safe. And then I’ll fly back home to my small town, and she’ll stay here rubbing shoulders with the elite.

I pull back as she looks up at me with her pretty eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. My reaction was shit. I hate that some motherfucker did this to you. I want to wrap my hands around their throat and squeeze the fucking life out of them.”

“Threats of murder shouldn’t give me butterflies, should it?”

I can’t help but twitch my lips as I fight back my grin. So fucking adorable. She’s gonna be the death of me; I know it.

“Do you feel up to telling me the rest? I promise I’ll keep my attitude in check.”

“I don’t mind you being mad. I just thought you were mad at me.”

“What? No. Why would I be mad at you?”

“I should have called off the shoot when I found out my hair had been cut. People got hurt because I?—”

“Gonna stop you right there. People got hurt because of some psycho. It had nothing to do with you. And with all due respect, babe, it was the director who should have shut shit down. He had a duty of care to you, not vice versa.”

She sighs before shrugging. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

I lead her back over to the sofa and wait for her to sit again before retaking my seat on the table. “Tell me about Andrew Summers.”

She looks to the window, her face turning pensive. “I don’t really remember him from before the trial. He was a runner on set, so I vaguely recall him handing me a script or bringing me coffee, but nothing beyond that.”

“You don’t remember talking to him?”

“Nothing beyond thanking him.”

“Men like that can build a whole relationship in their head from one word or look alone. They’re seriously messed-up. I read somewhere that he confessed?”

She looks back at me and nods. “He was up on the lighting rig where the water effects were being controlled. He told the police about the Post-it notes, sneaking into my trailer and cutting my hair, and switching out the water for nitric acid.”

“He say why he did it?”

“He wanted me to pay. Wanted me to see that I was nothing special.”

I lean back and rub my jaw. “I have to admit what little I did read about the case made it sound like you were singled out and attacked. The report said you didn’t see your attacker, so I assumed you were alone when it happened.”

“Powerful people can pull a lot of strings when necessary. They didn’t exactly lie.

I was attacked, Andrew did confess, and he is currently serving time in jail for those crimes.

They played down Andrew being an employee, edited out the part about the acid, and as one of the crew affected was a seventeen-year-old intern and still a minor, it gave them the legal loophole to do so. ”

“Sounds like their first thought was to protect themselves,” I huff angrily.

“The movie was set to make millions at the box office. The tours of the studio where we filmed most of it were booked out three years in advance. They didn’t want people to cancel for fear of being attacked. And yeah, they didn’t want to lose money.”

I shake my head but don’t give my opinion on the whole thing. From what I can gather, they left her to deal with the aftermath herself while covering their asses.

“What happened that made you call me in?”

She grimaces. “I started getting Post-it notes with smiley faces on them again.”

I cross my arms, watching her. “Could be someone trying to spook you.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded.”

“What did the police say?”

Her shoulders deflate. “Depends on who you ask. Some think I’m paranoid. Some think I’m leaving notes to myself for attention.”

“Not sure someone who has rarely left the house in years fits the attention-seeker profile. Hold on…where exactly have you been getting these notes?” I tense, waiting for her reply.

“Here. I’ve found one on my front door, one on my rear living room window, and one on the bumper of my car.”

“Shit. I’m glad you trusted your instincts and called for help.”

“You might be the only one. Everyone else thinks I’m losing it. Andrew Summers is in prison, after all.”

“A source told me that you were never convinced he was the guilty party. Why?”

“It just felt wrong. I don’t remember interacting with him beyond what I mentioned. But even if everything he said was true, why—if his motives were all about showing me I wasn’t special—didn’t he attack me in my trailer? Why risk hurting the others?”

“Maybe so he could twist the narrative. In his head, it was your fault they got hurt, not his.”

She chews her lip for a minute. “He never mentioned the incident that hurt my stunt double. He took a plea bargain, but only if the prosecution removed any charges related to that incident. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t an accident.

Inspectors investigated and found the rig had been tampered with.

The issue is Andrew couldn’t have been there before, during, or after it happened because he was on set with us. ”

“So either you have a second perp who has now picked up where Andrew left things or?—”

“Or it was never Andrew. His being on set with us gave him an alibi, proving he couldn’t have done it.

I found out from asking around that Andrew wanted to be famous.

It did not matter how or for what; he just wanted to go down in the history books.

And if he couldn’t achieve fame, he wanted infamy. ”

I whistle. “What a clusterfuck.”

“No kidding. Now, I’m looking for attackers in every face I know, expecting pain from every touch. I don’t know who I can trust anymore. I don’t even trust myself because everyone else is trying to convince me I’m crazy.”

I reach over and slide my hand under her jaw, tipping her head back. “Even if nothing else makes sense, you can trust me. We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” she whispers, her eyes dropping to my lips before they shoot back to my eyes, red blooming across her cheeks.

I feel my dick getting hard and try to think of something, anything to make it go down. But with her scent wrapped around me, I’m dangerously close to saying fuck it, throwing her down, and fucking her.

“What time do you need to be at the studio?”

She glances at the ornate clock on the wall. “In an hour and a half. Depending on traffic, we’ll need to leave in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s fine. I’ll grab my sidearm and credentials. Will I have an issue getting on set while I’m armed?”

“Not while you’re with me. They owe me and know it, so they’re playing nice.”

“Okay, good. We’ll take my rental. Nobody will pay it a lick of attention.”

“That’s fine by me. I’m going to head upstairs and touch up my makeup, if you want to talk to the MIB. Ugh, you got me calling them that now.”

“It fits. Where did you find them?” I chuckle, helping her to her feet.

“The studio hired them when everything started to go down. I’ve had Daniel and a couple of others who rotate through on me since then. But since the Post-it notes, Daniel’s brought more guys in.”.

“So the studio pays them?”

“They did, but I took over a few months ago. I needed them to answer to me, not the studio. Nobody seemed put out by that, and the studio was happy enough to save their money.”

“So you have the power to hire and fire them?”

She nods.

“Good. Something tells me I might need to remind them of that.”