Free Falling Star (Beautiful Chaos #2) by Arianne Richmonde Page A

woman who had it all: wealth, power, beauty, a happy family, and didn’t need this film the way I did. Didn’t need Star the way I did. She was probably just trying to placate me. Make me feel as if everything would be hunky-dory when I knew we were heading into some sort of nightmare.
    Because it had suddenly dawned on me: Star Davis is a megastar . What if some bastard had kidnapped her? Then I thought of Leo and I ruled that possibility out. No, he could have passed for one of her bodyguards and was a protective type; he wouldn’t have let anyone near her. Nothing made sense.
    Nothing made any fucking sense.

I LAY HUDDLED in Leo’s arms, never having needed a man so much in my entire life. After going to the bathroom, we dozed off together—the drug was doing that to us—knocking us out again soon after we woke up. At least we felt comfort in the rhythm of our breaths, glad not to be in this horror alone. Somehow, I felt safe with Leo, although I knew I wasn’t.

    I WOKE UP, I don’t know how much later, and the first thing I did was massage the bruise on my neck where the needle had been jabbed in, hoping to God that Travis hadn’t injected me with some sort of lethal virus used for chemical warfare, or some crazy shit like that—if it really was Travis—I still couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. Had we been kidnapped by some other nut-job? It was a possibility.
    Leo sat up, looking less pale than a while earlier. He squinted his eyes. The neon-light was still on.
    “You really think your own brother would pull something like this?”
    I stretched out my arms above my head. “He hates me, Leo.”
    “How could anyone hate their own sister? Impossible, no?”
    “Jealousy. He feels like his life came to an end when his dad met my mom. He had a complex about being a freckly redhead. He was also asthmatic. I was already acting. He was dyslexic and couldn’t learn lines. He tried. My agent took him on but it didn’t work out. He couldn’t act to save his life. I was the breadwinner. I got good grades in school; he sucked. It was a lot of things.”
    “Yeah, but . . . you’re grown-ups now. Get life.”
    “Get a life?” I laughed at Leo’s accent, always missing pronouns. He was cute when he spoke.
    “I’m starving,” he said. “Feel like shit. Headache still.”
    “Me too.” I managed to stand and made my way over to the trash can, led by the smell of hummus and pita bread. I picked the take-out bag out of the trash and smelled it. “Fuck him.”
    “What?”
    “He’s poured bleach on the food. Yeah, it’s Travis alright who’s abducted us—just the kind of thing he’d do.” A memory came back to me of how he’d pissed on my birthday cake once. Urinated on my birthday cake ! That’s how screwed up he was. I looked around the square room that had obviously once been some sort of office. The bed was empty except for the sheets. Our clothes were nowhere to be seen. Our cell phones gone. Leo’s watch: gone. I shuffled over to one of the blacked-out windows, feeling a little exposed in just my bra, panties, and thigh-highs. “There’s thick tape all over this. Are you able to get up and help me?”
    Leo staggered to his feet, his large, muscled frame swaying, trying to find balance. He gripped his head with his hands. “Feel like someone smashed me on head with baseball bat.”
    “Well, at least we didn’t wake up wrapped in cellophane like mummies, with a knife at our cheek.”
    “ What ?”
    “ Dexter . You watch that show?”
    “Oh yeah, once or twice. I hope your brother isn’t serial killer.”
    “No, just a cereal eater and a crazed psycho.”
    “Yeah, well, if it is him who’s done this to us, he must be pretty fucked up. I need a drink.” Leo lurched off to the bathroom, and I heard him frantically drink from the faucet. The drug had dehydrated us both, obviously.
    I clawed my nails into the edges of the shiny gray duct tape, picked at it and tried to pull it off.