Break the Girl

Chapter 1

Her head throbbing and mouth dry, Raine Dennison took a deep breath to stop her hands from shaking as she walked toward the reception desk. At one time, she’d loved coming to the offices at Crushed Velvet Records. Today was a different story.

It didn’t help that she was late.

From her vantage point, she found it strange that it looked like just any other corporate building—gray walls, lots of polished steel and glass at the front, a floor of white marble.

There weren’t any prints of the artists they represented or album covers on the walls in the lobby.

..nothing to indicate who they were, other than their name and logo on the wall behind the reception desk.

As she crossed the room to the desk, the young woman with curly red hair and bright red lipstick looked up and Raine could see the recognition in her sharp green eyes.

Raine’s voice was a little raspy when she spoke. “I’m here for a meeting with—”

“Yes, Raine. We’ve been expecting you. They’re in the Elvis Conference Room. Just head down the hall and take the second door on the left.”

It would have been hard to miss. After all, she’d been there before.

The label named all their rooms after artists gone by, and the Elvis room was covered with prints of the rock-and-roll legend.

Crushed Velvet hadn’t even been in business when Elvis was alive, but maybe they hoped to channel his greatness and inspire new artists.

While Raine loved Elvis, her music was nothing like that of the King of Rock and Roll.

As she approached, she noticed the door to the room was ajar and, as soon as she heard her name, she paused. They’d obviously started the meeting without her, even though she wasn’t that late. But she hoped to get a sense of the mood of the room before walking in.

“Look, we tried. But this was one step too far.” That man’s voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t figure out who it was.

Were they talking about her? And about what happened last night? Why was last night too much after everything else she’d done during her short career?

A woman’s voice replied, “She’s become too much of a liability. We can’t afford to—”

“I know the optics look bad, but we should be able to spin them like we have in the past. It’s this kind of thing Raine’s fans love her for.” Raine knew that voice for certain. It was Malachi Storm, her manager.

Jesus fucking Christ. They were talking about her—but they were so wrong about it all.

“No. We’ve risked enough at this point. There are plenty of other artists with less drama who can perform and earn without leaving destruction constantly in their wake.”

Jesus. That was what they thought of her? Drama? Destruction?

Swallowing, even though her throat felt like sandpaper, Raine reached out with her slender hand partially covered with the sleeve of the black hoodie she wore and pushed the door open.

There were five suits already seated around the polished wooden table.

On the wall directly in front of her hung a huge black-and-white print of Elvis covered in black leather, holding a mic as several women in the crowd behind him looked up with eager star-struck eyes, and Raine wondered if he’d ever had to deal with shit like this.

Oh, she knew he’d had his share of problems…but had the people working with him ever treated him like an unruly child?

As she entered, they stopped talking, their eyes boring into hers—but she wasn’t going to apologize for being late or interrupting their conversation.

The expressions on the faces of the label executives as she took them in, making her way to the empty chair, were those of people attending a funeral—dry-eyed but somber, as if they didn’t really care about the person in the coffin but had attended out of duty.

Maybe it was apropos.

Some of the faces she recognized—one was a higher up executive, a man other girls might consider a silver fox, but he was far too strait-laced for Raine to get excited over him.

The only woman in the room other than herself had a pale face and dark hair that was coiled in a tight bun at the back of her head, and she was a person Raine had never met before.

Raine’s chair was next to Mal, her manager, who looked at her with expressionless ice blue eyes.

In fact, she couldn’t really get a sense of any sort of emotion from anyone now that she was in front of them, but the air felt cool.

When she noticed a full pot of coffee in the corner, she considered getting up again to fill a cup—but thought better of it.

No one was drinking it…or anything else, as far as she could tell.

The man across from her, short blond hair in a gray suit, had his phone upside down… and a sheet of paper in front of him.

Then she noticed the same paper in front of Mal—and it had her name on it near the top.

Judgmental assholes. They had no fucking idea what she’d been dealing with and, worse, she knew they didn’t care. But she’d be damned if she’d apologize to any one of these fuckers, least of all Mal.

The worst part was that, despite how much she despised Mal, he was good at his job.

Too good. She wouldn’t have thought it with everything that happened with and before her first album, but by the time her star had begun to rise, he’d managed to get the label to agree to more and more of her demands without so much as a blink, including more money.

And, whether she liked it or not, Mal knew her, understood her.

She didn’t have to spend a lot of time translating her thoughts or explaining what she’d meant by something.

Like it or not, she was stuck with him—but at least she could keep him at a distance nowadays.

Placing her hands on the table, Raine focused on them, hoping to quell the monster inside her trying to wake up again.

She knew she was out of place with the chipped black nail polish and thin pale hands poking out of the arms of the black hoodie—but what rattled her was how her hands were still trembling.

Clasping them together, she took another deep breath and focused through the exhaustion that hung on her shoulders like a winter coat.

The coffee she’d pounded earlier had her nerves on edge, but it couldn’t take away the weary feeling deep inside.

The monster was peeking out its head, rising in her chest, the beast that fueled her lyrics and caused her to perform all the behaviors these people referred to as “stunts.”

That same monster had her fuck up royally on stage sometimes on purpose, but never as bad as last night. And that was why she was here instead of packing her bags to get back on the tour bus.

But she pushed it all down, because she didn’t dare say a word. Anything she said could potentially make this situation worse than it already was.

Finally, the bald man wearing a dark suit sitting directly across from Mal said to her, “Glad you could make time in your busy schedule to join us.”

Mal glanced at her briefly, his cold blue eyes almost dismissing her.

Turning to the silver-haired man, his voice had a chill she’d heard only once or twice before.

“Look…this is Raine we’re talking about.

You know as well as I do that last night was just a blip on the screen.

Her fans expect her to pull stunts like that.

Ultimately, though, you know she delivers the goods.

Last night,” he said, turning to Raine and nearly boring a hole through her eye sockets, “will not happen again. And wasn’t it you,” he continued, turning his head to face the blond-haired man.

“who said there’s no such thing as bad publicity? ”

The blond-haired guy didn’t respond, instead looking like he’d rather be anywhere than in that room. Not only did the man refuse to speak, but he looked down at the paper in front of him as if to say to Mal, Don’t pull me into this.

But the silver-haired man in the dark suit, the one who seemed to be running the show, said, “Have you happened to look at any of the comments online?”

“That’s what I mean,” Mal insisted. “People are talking about her. It makes her relevant and current and keeps people curious. You just can’t buy that kind of publicity.

” She didn’t know if Mal was right, but, as usual, he was doing his best to convince everyone that he was.

She risked another glance at him. At one time, she’d found him good looking, with his dark hair slicked back and the way he always wore a dark blazer atop a snug long-sleeved t-shirt to show off the work he’d put into his pecs.

All he was missing here in Los Angeles was the sunglasses.

But she no longer found the man attractive. At times, she found him repugnant—but at least right now he was fighting for her future.

Raine found she was having a hard time concentrating, because they weren’t asking her what she thought should happen.

As usual, they were making decisions about her and for her without any regard as to what she wanted, as if she wasn’t even in the same goddamned room—and, as they continued talking, Raine clenched her fists so tightly that the knuckles grew white.

And then, as the meeting continued, she felt like she couldn’t even feel anything anymore, almost as if she were having an out-of-body experience.

It was strange how calm she became in that moment.

It allowed her to focus.

A thin man wearing glasses at the end of the table nearest her slid a copy of the paper that everyone else had been looking at.

What the fuck was this?