11. Sebastian
11
SEBASTIAN
“ S o,” I said as I pulled my ancient leather jacket from the post by the door and swung into it with old familiarity. “What is so important that you’re sweeping me out from under Savannah today?”
His chuckle was almost a cough. “And risk her wrath, you mean? Yes, my wife does have a foul temper. It’s convenient then that she usually gets her way.”
“I can’t imagine saying no to her,” I admitted as he opened the door for me, and I walked into the fresh, cool air of a London morning.
Adam hummed as we fell into step together across the cobblestones to the car parked to the left of the house. The sleek vintage hunter-green Aston Martin DB6 Volante suited Adam to a T.
The jangle of keys caught my attention, and I held out my hand for them, more than eager to drive such a gorgeous beast.
Only Adam laughed at my gesture and clucked his tongue as he opened the car with the remote and flipped the driver’s door open. “No one drives this car but me, Sebastian.”
“I’m the driver,” I said redundantly. “Why else would you want me with you today?”
“The company?” he suggested blandly as he sank into the leather interior, and I crossed to the passenger side albeit reluctantly. When I entered the leather-scented interior, he looked at me, brow arched. “The visual appeal, perhaps.”
My mouth curled into a smile unbidden. “Flattery won’t get you far with me. I’ve been told I’m handsome all my life.”
“I’ll have to be more inventive, then,” Adam declared as though I’d challenged him. “Has anyone ever told you that you have eyes the colour of sunlight caught in amber?”
I blinked.
But he didn’t wait for a response, checking his mirror and pulling the car deftly out of the small courtyard and through the gates into the street.
I continued to stare at him as he easily navigated the car through the chaos of early morning London traffic. Questions bubbled up my throat and lodged like gravel at the back of my tongue. I wanted to ask why me ? How did I get so lucky to catch the eye of one of the most famous actors in the world? What did he see in me that made him take the risk to bring me into his home and bed?
“You’re being awfully loud over there,” he said after an indeterminable period of time.
“I have some questions.”
His laugh was low and smooth. He flipped open a pair of Gucci sunglasses and pushed them on to his face, obscuring those expressive green eyes I relied on to read him. “Well, we have about forty minutes before we reach our destination, and at my own behest, we’re trapped in a car together so, feel free to ask.”
“Anything?” My heart pounded harder behind my breastbone at the thought of limitless access.
I didn’t know why I was like this, so hungry for invasion, so eager to dig deeper and deeper like a tick burrowing beneath the skin. But I wanted to know everything about the people who intrigued me, the ones I might one day love or love still. No detail was too minute or trivial for my interest.
And here was Adam Meyers, my boyhood idol, offering himself up on an Aston Martin platter.
He hummed. “I reserve the right to refuse to answer, but there’s no harm in asking. Savannah said you signed the NDA when you began driving for her.”
A little reminder I wasn’t to share anything I learned.
“Okay, then.” I settled comfortably into the supple leather seat, spreading my thighs wide and cracking my knuckles in a way that made Adam smile. “Let’s start easy. Where are we going?”
“Pinewood Studios.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate so I said, “And that would be for what reason?”
A flash of a grin. “You said flattery wouldn’t get me far with you, so really, I’d rather not say.”
“Adam.”
“Sebastian.”
“Come on,” I said with a laugh. “I take back what I said then; tell me why you’ve asked me to go to a production lot with you.”
I could feel his gaze slide to me for a second behind the dark lenses of his glasses. “You know, I read your script.”
My entire body froze at once, breath arrested mid-inhale in my lungs, thick as syrup, joints locked, molecules suspended. I’d known there was more in this “arrangement” for me than just the promise of passion, that Savannah wanted to launch me the way Helen had launched a thousand ships on Troy.
But the idea of Adam reading my script, a project I’d laboured over for the last three years, one built on the dreams and terrors and idols of a young man growing up under the oppressive gaze of the Mafia in impoverished Naples, made my spine seize.
It was so vulnerable .
A kind of… assault on my confidence and my soul I hadn’t been braced for.
Vaguely, I recalled that he’d already told me about reading my script, but in the heat and bewilderment of that first confrontation at Finborough Theatre, I hadn’t really grasped it.
When Savannah had forced me to leave the town car so she could read my words, I’d been in a state of shock, but also in a space without stakes. She wasn’t in the industry and in my ignorance, I hadn’t assumed she had any stock or say in it. So it’d been a pretty woman, a wonderful woman I lusted after voraciously, reading my script. Uncomfortable, yes, but not paralyzing.
Not like the idea of your actor idol reading your heart poured onto so many pages.
Suddenly, I was desperate to get out of the car, as feral as a trapped animal in a metal cage.
A strong hand gripping my knee jerked me back to reality and I flinched, pushing myself against the car door.
“Hey, hey,” Adam murmured, coaxing me like a spooked stallion, only it didn’t work. He was too handsome and otherworldly sitting in his Aston Martin driving to the biggest production studio in London. “Sebastian, look at me.”
“I am,” I gritted out, but didn’t add that’s the problem .
“No,” he said, driving competently, not looking at me but tilting his chin to invite my study. “Look at me. Tell me what you see.”
“You,” I told him, too earnest, embarrassing myself by exposing how much that simple “you” enchanted me. “Adam Meyers.”
“And who is Adam Meyers to you?”
There was something in his tone, a grim kind of warning, but I didn’t know how to be anything but honest.
“The first time I saw you on screen was in Joseph’s Courage . Your mama was crying in the foreground being comforted by your father and sister, but the camera was focused on you by the window. It was dark but the candlelight caught the side of your face and turned you to bronze, something lovely but cold and unfeeling. I’d never thought a man could be so beautiful until that moment. And then you turned, just a little, toward the camera, and a single tear track down your cheek made a mockery of the audience’s first judgement of you.”
I paused, remembering the scene so vividly I felt that same keen sadness now that I had then.
Inelegantly, I shrugged. “I followed your career after that. Everything you were ever in.”
“And you have a favourite?”
Warmth worked its way into my cheeks, and I was grateful he couldn’t see my blush beneath the olive of my skin. “ Antony .”
“Ah, ‘ eternity was in our lips and in our eyes .’ Very romantic.”
“It helped you were oiled and bare-chested, probably. Even though I’m only realizing that now,” I admitted.
That wrought a real laugh from the actor. “Well, I’m happy to hear it, then. People usually say it’s the Jonathon Cross trilogy or Object of Desire .”
“It was a good action series,” I agreed. “One of the best, for sure. And you were brilliant in Object of Desire , but it was too disturbing to be a favourite. I’ll never forget that scene with the bodies hung in the trees and you standing beneath them in a bloody rain.”
Adam’s smile was a slice of red across his face, wound-like and very much like the expression he wore as Alistair Flare in the film. “It’s one of the highest-rated films on IMDb, you know.”
“I know.” Again, I shrugged. “I liked you as Antony, Byron, Heathcliff, and Hamlet best. The classics. It’s the films that leave you with a feeling of having your chest carved out and what remains of your insides rearranged that I love.”
“And that’s the kind of screenplay you’ve written,” Adam said, a little smug at bringing the conversation back to his original point. “I read it in one sleepless night before I met you. Savannah didn’t say a word when she handed the pages over. She just looked me in the eye with an excitement I’ve only seen a handful of times when she found projects that were as near perfection as they could get. Projects like Object of Desire . I missed an interview with Graham Norton reading Blood Oath , Sebastian, and an entire night of sleep.”
He paused as he pulled off the road into a massive car park and swerved too fast into an empty spot near the studio.
When he turned to me, his face was solemn with gravitas. “When I finished, I felt I’d never breathe right again. It’s that same feeling, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I breathed because that same vulnerability I’d feared minutes ago was stripping me raw again. Only this time, Adam was there to soothe the raw nerves. It was to inexplicably show that he understood my screenplay, maybe even that he understood a little bit about me for having written it.
“I called Andrea that morning.”
“Andrea…” My breath stuck in my throat for one dangerous second when I almost choked and died. “Andrea Felice?”
Adam’s grin was a slight curling of one side of his full mouth. “The same. It had to be an Italian director, of course.”
“Of course,” I breathed, struck dumb.
“We can discuss the particulars with him now.”
I watched mutely as Adam alighted from the car, his smart leather shoes clicking on the pavement as he rounded the Aston and opened my door for me. When I didn’t move, still too busy processing the miracle that was currently actually happening to me, he reached down, gripped my forearm, and hauled me into the open air. One palm pressed to the center of my chest, pushing me to the side of the door as he closed it and then pinning me to the metal.
He examined me, not too close, and I knew it was so that if anyone were watching, we’d only look like two men engaged in an intense conversation and not two almost lovers taking another step down the path of intimacy.
“Why me?” I blurted, my heart beating too hard and too fast like it was going to escape the confines of my chest and knock straight into his hand. “Why are you doing all of this for me?”
Adam cocked his head slightly, and even though dark lenses obscured his gaze, I could feel the sharpness of that gaze on my skin like a razor’s edge.
“Why me?” he echoed. “I suppose it’s the same thing you experienced watching me on the screen. I liked the look of you the moment I saw you, costumed in a dirty soldier’s garb with muck on your face and a spotlight turning those yellow eyes to pure gold. And then, when I read your words, I had a sense of you that hooked me through the ribs and tugged me toward you. All the best actors have an aura, this magnetic quality that speaks to the audience like a promise. You had that up there on that stage, and having read Blood Oath , I knew that promise had real potential.”
He paused, dramatic as only an actor could be.
“Shall we see just how much?” he suggested, knocking his fist against my chest lightly as though testing it for durability.
I swallowed thickly, resisting the urge to grab that hand like an anchor, fighting the keen instinct welling up inside me to pour my astounded gratitude for him into a passionate, public kiss.
“You look terrified,” Adam noted. “Don’t be, we’ll do it all together.”
“I hate to repeat myself, but why? I just can’t fathom why you’d spend time on me and this project like this.”
“I’ve been acting for nearly a decade now, Sebastian. I have an eye for talent and scripts that have the potential to win awards. Count the golden statues on my mantel and tell me you don’t believe that.”
“I believe in you, obviously,” I said with an eye roll. “It’s me that I’m unsure about.”
“Well, let me be sure enough for us both. And if that isn’t enough, remember that my wife was the one to spot the merit in you first. Savannah may be many things, but wrong is rarely one of them.” He shot me a wink and turned on his heel, overcoat flapping open behind him as he set off at a brisk pace into the maze of warehouse buildings.
“And in a moment, you’ll have the opinion of the great Andrea Felice to add to that arsenal against your silly self-doubts, hmm?”
I shook myself as I pushed off the car and strode after him. Andrea Felice was one of the best Hollywood directors of his generation, right up there with Nolan, Scorsese, and Spielberg. The idea of meeting him, let alone working with him on a script I’d first started as a sixteen-year-old, was too mind-boggling to process.
“Is it true he doesn’t let anyone use the bathroom while filming?” I asked because it was the easiest thing to focus on in this series of spectacular events.
Adam didn’t pause in his quick pace, but he looked at me for a second before grinning widely, all those lovely white teeth on display. “It’s true. There are bathroom breaks at eleven and six o’clock. He expects his actors to drink accordingly.”
I laughed. “I can understand that a little. When I write, I do not like to be interrupted by anything, even my own bodily urges.”
“Hmm,” he practically purred as he shot me a sidelong look while leading us down a narrow corridor between buildings. “I’ll have to see if I can test that one day.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I muttered because I had no doubt he’d break my concentration in seconds.
But Adam didn’t hear me; he was too busy greeting a man wearing a headset and holding a tablet before ushering us both into the wide mouth of a warehouse entryway.
Inside, everything was dim but for a collection of gear and people milling around a single corner of the cavernous space. I’d never filmed a movie before, but I recognized the accoutrement of a working set: the lights and rails for the steady cameras and the chaos at the fringes where assistants and makeup artists waited for instructions and touch-ups. The set itself was constructed to look like a bedroom at night, only illuminated by the glow of a bedside table and the artificial beams of moonlight spilling through an opened window. Two actors stood beside the bed, marking out the scene and speaking quietly. I couldn’t recognize them from so far away, but if they were in an Andrea Felice film, I had no doubt they were A-list.
“This looks like a closed set, Adam,” I murmured to him, clutching his shoulder to stop him from barrelling right into the shot.
“Hush.” He brushed my hand off with a roll of his shoulder and stalked forward to a man sitting in a chair marked “Director” who was speaking tersely in Italian into a cell phone.
“Andrea,” he greeted.
Che cavolo .
I was about to meet Andrea fucking Felice, and Adam fucking Meyers was going to be the one introducing me.
How did I get here?
Oh right, I’d tried to seduce a married woman.
So much for karma being a bitch. It seemed to me she was Lady Luck herself.
Andrea let out a booming laugh that echoed through the warehouse as he stood and jerked Adam into a hug before gripping his shoulders and exuberantly kissing each cheek.
“ Ragazzo ,” he said in that big voice, shaking Adam by the shoulders. “It’s good to see your miserable face.”
“Yours too,” Adam assured him with that genuine grin I’d also seen in the car park. “I’ve brought you another face to look at today, though this one is much handsomer than either of our old mugs.”
On my cue, I walked forward to take my place beside Adam. Only years of acting allowed me to look at Andrea without my mouth hanging open in wonder.
“Signor Felice,” I greeted in Italian. “I’m Sebastian Lombardi. It’s a pleasure to meet you after admiring you for so long.”
Andrea could have been an actor himself if he hadn’t had the vision and talent of a natural-born director. He was handsome in the way of Italians from the south, short and muscular with wiry dark hair and eyes like gleaming cocoa beans beneath thick brows and lashes. His hawkish nose suited his large features and made him look somehow intellectual. He was only in his late thirties, but the creases beside his mouth and eyes gave him character.
Or maybe it was that I knew him to be one of the brightest minds in cinema.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, knowing there is a sharp mind behind such a beautiful face,” he responded in Italian before shooting a roguish grin at Adam and switching to English. “You certainly know how to find them, Meyers.”
Adam shrugged blithely. “One of my many talents.”
“Savannah would argue it’s her talent, I think, that found me,” I quipped, just to deflate what I was coming to understand was false bravado, a very finely honed mask Adam wore even when he was offstage and out of sight from the cameras.
Andrea laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “ Si , too right. You are lucky she isn’t here to dress you down in front of an audience, Adamo.”
Adam’s only response was a rakishly raised eyebrow that made me visualize that exact scene in a much too intimate way.
The director just clucked his tongue and turned his attention back to me, pushing me down into his own chair so he could stand before me with his hands held wide, face glowing with excitement.
“We only have ten minutes for the toilet break but let me tell you how I envision this. Opening, the streets of New York in the early twenties, wide lens, filled with bustling bodies all in drab colours like the drabness of the dirty streets. It zooms in slowly, so slowly you cannot really mark the transition, onto a single man moving against the majority of the crowd, shoving into shoulders, ducking packages, but remaining strong and proud in posture. He is wearing a hat, one of those newsboy caps, so you can’t see his face. When the gunshot rings out, everyone screams and scrambles, shocked and scared, but the man only looks up directly into the camera, completely unafraid. Cue the title in bold block letters.” He mapped out the transitions with his hands in big gestures. “ Blood Oath !”
Behind him, Adam clapped and was joined by the two actors on set who had wandered closer along with a handful of film crew.
“Sounds intriguing,” the female actress who I recognized uneasily as the up-and-coming starlet Willa Trombley drawled. “Any roles for me in there, Andrea?”
He waved his hand dismissively her way, his eyes still fixed on mine. “Well, what do you think?”
“It sounds perfect,” I admitted. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this already.”
“ Assolutamente s i. Adam and I have spoken about this almost every day for the past ten days.” He nodded the entire time he spoke, hands still moving, and I realized he was so fantastic at capturing movement on film because he was hardly ever still himself. Unbidden, I remembered the young woman by the pool last night, Linnea Kai, and her quicksilver changes of position.
“Andrea and I even banded about casting ideas for certain roles and who might work well as the cinematography director.”
“Music too is so important in an epic film like this,” Andrea added seamlessly, like they’d had this exact conversation before. “Hans just retired, such a shame. But we can get Marguerite Fischer. She worked on Thorn and Bluegrass Blues . Both scores are…” He closed his eyes and hummed a few pretty notes.
“We think it could attract some serious attention with the right leads,” Adam continued, his passion brightening his dark green eyes to shining emeralds. “Antonio Carozza would be an interesting idea for Roberto, and even though Ric Ashton is only of Italian heritage through a grandfather, he’s an incredible actor who would do the job justice.”
“Well,” Andrea demanded, “what do you think of it all? As you can see, you have successfully lit a fire in our bellies.”
“I’m honoured,” I told him after a moment, and I was.
But I was also… annoyed?
If I was allowed to be annoyed that a world-famous actor and director were so interested in my script. It was just that this was my proverbial baby. Something I’d quite literally poured my blood, sweat, and tears into for the past three years. The sleepless nights, the agony and distress that trying to tell a story properly could wreck on the human body. I’d endured it all happily because I’d been possessed by this story and the character of Roberto D’Amato, the immigrant Italian who arrives in New York and is instantly press-ganged into joining one of the local Mafia families.
It was a story that was too close to my heart in many ways. Roberto’s struggles mimicked my own as a boy with a gambling drunkard for a father, three beautiful sisters, and a struggling mother at home in need of my help and protection. There had been no one to protect me from the local Camorra’s attentions, just like there was no one to help Roberto in New York.
Both our tales of survival were achieved by the skin of our very own teeth.
And maybe because of that, I wasn’t willing to let even an inch of this story go to someone else’s power and control.
Even Andrea Felice and Adam Meyers.
What did they know of Roberto and his struggles?
What did they know of me ?
I’d been quiet too long. Andrea’s face fell slightly, and he shared a look with Adam that started to clear the space before the former even said, “Leave us. Take an extra ten and come back with more energy than you gave me before.”
Obediently, almost everyone who’d lingered on set for their break dispersed to the outer edges or elsewhere entirely. Those who remained made themselves busy enough to maintain an aura of privacy.
“What’s wrong, Sebastian?” Adam asked, gently pushing Andrea out of the way with a bump of his shoulder so he could bend down to look in my eyes and grasp my shoulder. The feel of his hand on me was grounding.
I realized my grip on the wood chair handles was white-knuckled and slowly unpeeled my fingers. Andrea noticed and cocked a brow at the behaviour.
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful for your enthusiasm…” I spoke slowly, enunciating so carefully I almost eradicated the last traces of my Italian accent. “But this script isn’t just an idea I had one night that I thought could make good cinema. I wrote a part of my own soul, of my own history into that script. The ink might as well have been blood let from my own veins. As much as I love the idea of the great Andrea Felice and Adam Meyers spearheading this project, it just isn’t possible for me to hand it over for a fee and wash my hands of Roberto D’Amato and his story.”
I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth and looked up into Adam’s face and then Andrea’s behind him. “I’m sorry to disappoint you when I’m frankly shocked and overjoyed to have two men I’ve admired most of my life take an interest in my words, but I can’t compromise on this project. It would be like compromising a part of my soul.”
In the wake of my impassioned speech, both of them stared at me through a long silence. I fought the urge to squirm under the scrutiny and instead tipped my chin higher the way my sister Elena was apt to do in the face of adversity.
I could find another way to make my dreams come true , I assured myself as panic soured my stomach and made me want to puke.
“Well, he’s got the dramatics of an actor, doesn’t he?” Andrea said blandly, planting his hands on his hips and shifting his weight onto one foot.
Adam sighed. “You should know the combination of Italian genes and acting chops makes for an intense marriage.”
I blinked at them. “Are you… teasing me?”
Adam’s stern face broke into that wide grin I was becoming addicted to. “Why yes, Sebastian, I believe we are.”
Andrea laughed and stepped closer to clap a hand on my shoulder and give me a bit of a shake. “We had to see the passion, uh? If you have the fire in the pit of your belly to see this thing through all the obstacles and chaos of filmmaking from beginning to end. You gave birth to this story, si, and it is a beautiful one, of course. But before I made my offer, I wanted to see if you have the forza to bring Roberto to life.”
“I have it,” I told him, somewhat redundantly, but excitement flourished in my once rancid gut, and a kind of giddiness I’d rarely felt in my life was taking hold. It was the sensation, I thought, of being on the precipice of your dreams coming true. “You’re serious? You want to work on Blood Oath with me?”
Even though I’m a no one , I thought but didn’t say.
Andrea grinned, the same slightly maniacal grin echoed on Adam’s face. “ Certamente .”
When I looked at Adam, he opened his palms in faux innocence. “I’d like a producer credit, if you don’t mind, but otherwise, this is your baby, Sebastian. I only wanted to give you the tools to see it through. Though, if I may, I think it’s obvious the only right person to play Roberto D’Amato is you .”
The small seed of self-confidence I’d always kept zealously protected in the heart of my chest took root and burrowed deep into my gut.
“He’s a complicated character,” I said, but it was almost a question.
Adam shrugged, but there were stars in his eyes meant only for me. “Who better to play him, then, than a complicated man?”
I nodded slightly as I digested the turn of events and then let the giddiness in my belly show on my face. “Well then, Andrea, I think this calls for a celebratory drink in the two minutes you have left of the restroom break. You don’t have any grappa on hand, do you?”
Andrea scoffed. “I’m an Italian.” He pulled a flask out of the side pocket of his chair, prompting Adam and me to laugh at his efficacy.
“ Salute !” Andrea toasted me and then took a swig before handing it to me.
I mimicked him but locked eyes with Adam as I took the burning liquid down my throat. Something hooked through my ribs and vibrated at the line stretched taut to its anchor beneath Adam’s own breastbone. The space between us throbbed with its beat, like the heart in my chest and the cock between my thighs that twitched at the sight of Adam’s own darkened gaze. When I handed the flask off to him, his fingers rubbed over my own, and he maintained our intense stare as he took a long, hard pull of the grappa.
“To you,” he murmured instead of the Italian cheers . “To your future.”
And at that moment, I might have fallen just a little bit in love with Adam Meyers.