One Filthy Kiss (The Sabatelli Empire #1)

Chapter 1 Megan

MEGAN

“How do I look, Meg?”

“Wow.” I blink at my best friend. Plenty of comments spring to mind while I figure out how best to word my response. “You look…”

“Like someone else?” Nikki peers down at her black Capri pants, flat black pumps, and crisp white shirt. “Or like a waitress in a back-street diner?”

I chew my bottom lip. I know what she wants to hear, but we’ve always been honest with each other, and right now, she doesn’t even look like the girl I’ve known since our first day in primary school. “Both?”

“Okay, stop being diplomatic and hit me with the truth.”

Two men walk past discussing props and lighting, their general American accents making us sound even more noticeably British. I follow them with my eyes as if they have magnets attached to the back of their heads.

“I still can’t believe I’m here, Nik.” I turn back to my friend, my entire body emitting a silent squeal.

Here is a film studio set in LA.

LA! As in Los Angeles, California, USA.

I’d never been further than Cornwall until I came here.

My passport, unused, still carried a photograph of sixteen-year-old Megan Walsh with her hair tied back into a high ponytail and clear braces on her teeth.

The Customs Officers at London Gatwick Airport and LAX eyed me and the passport suspiciously, and I’d experienced fleeting moments of sheer panic that I’d be hauled away by Airport Security and locked up in a cell for identity theft.

But here I am. Thanks to Nikki’s parents.

When Nikki landed herself a tiny role in a movie being made by a new production company in LA, she’d begged me to come with her.

“You deserve a vacation, Meg. Sunshine, Venice Beach, the famous Hollywood sign.”

I was tempted, of course I was. But there was the small matter of paying for the vacation, not easy on the wage of a wannabe cake designer currently working in a boutique bakery in East London.

“Timothee Chalamet. Austin Abrams. Every other hot actor you’ve ever dreamed about.” Nikki waggled a finger in my face. “Go on, say yes, Meg. I’ll help pay for your flights. Maybe the production company will let you stay with me.”

The next day, Nikki’s parents surprised me with an email confirming my round trip flights from London to Los Angeles.

Nikki shakes her head and smiles. “You’ve been here three days and you’re still acting like the hottest kid in high school just asked you on a date.”

“How does anyone ever get used to this?”

I peer around the busy film set, eyes saucer-wide, and finally settle on a guy in a pinstripe silver suit and pale-blue turtleneck sweater, raven-black hair swept away from dark swoon-worthy eyes.

“Jesus-fucking-Christ-on-a-bike,” I whisper under my breath.

The guy is an actual demi-god in a city filled with demi-gods.

When Nikki tried persuading me with the promise of sunshine, golden sand, and famous signs, she failed to mention that everyone here is sculpted from marble and bestowed with the kind of brazenly healthy beauty that would sink a thousand ships. Or launch them. I’m not sure which.

Nikki laughs out loud. She crouches in front of my little sister Amber and tucks a stray golden curl behind the five-year-old’s ear. “Okay, kiddo, while your sister is fangirling over every actor she spies, how about you and I have a little chat, eh?”

Amber gives her a shy smile and slides her hand into mine; I squeeze it reassuringly.

Since she started school, Amber has been coming out of her shell a little, but her confidence is something I’m still working on.

Amber has lived with me since our mom died.

She was only a baby, so I’m all she has, but I know what we’ve lost, and I worry that my overprotectiveness isn’t helping. But I refuse to lose her too.

“Woman-to-woman,” Nikki continues, “do I look different-bad or different-good?”

“Different-good?” Amber’s voice curls upward like a cat’s tail.

“You look beautiful, Nik.” I rest my other hand on my little sister’s shoulder.

“You’ll smash this role and get offered another part, and then we’ll never see you again.

One day, we’ll be watching one of your movies at the cinema, and I’ll say to Amber, ‘Do you remember Auntie Nikki?’ and she’ll say, ‘Auntie who?’”

We both laugh.

Nikki’s tone turns serious. “Yeah, that’s never gonna happen. Do you have any idea how long I spent in makeup to look like this?”

I know how badly Nikki wants this. She has wanted it since she was five-and-a-half and starred as Snow White in her first school Christmas production.

She could act then—the teachers recognized it and cast her in every production thereafter—and she can act now.

But being talented has never been enough to land her the break she so desperately craves.

Until now.

“Nik, you don’t need makeup to make you look gorgeous because you’re already beautiful.”

Nikki’s eyes grow large with tears. “Ah, don’t make me cry, or they’ll force me to sit through that torture all over again.” She dabs at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips.

“Sorry.” I study her face.

Her eyes keep darting back and forth between me and the set which has been designed to look like the inside of a diner like the one from Grease with black-and-white checkered floor covering and chrome stools with red padded seats.

Some extras are already in place in the booths, and I keep expecting a John Travolta lookalike to appear any moment now and start singing ‘Sandy’ while he combs back his gelled quiff.

Nikki is nervous—understandably—there’s a lot riding on this. It’s her first trip to LA, and she doesn’t want to blow it.

So, I do what best friends always do.

I remind her of her favorite Audrey Hepburn quote. “Beauty is being the best possible version of yourself, inside and out, remember. You have nothing to worry about, Nik. You could’ve gone on set without a scrap of makeup and everyone else would see what I’ve seen every day of my life.”

Nikki nods once, then she leans down and kisses the top of Amber’s head. “Have you and your sister been watching cheesy Hallmark movies in the middle of the year again?”

“No.” Amber peers up at me to check that she gave the right answer, and I smile.

“Nikki, you’re on.” A wiry young woman wearing an open-necked shirt, black-rimmed spectacles, and a headset comes up behind Nikki and gestures to the set.

“Eek!” Nikki swallows hard. “Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it. But good luck.”

I watch her follow the woman onto the set and take her position in front of the diner counter with a notepad in her hand and a pencil tucked behind her ear.

Her role is a small one. She’s playing the part of a young woman who escaped a toxic relationship in the UK and ended up in a small town in America’s midwest, where she changed her name and started a new life.

This scene involves one of the main characters, a young Black guy who is engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart but has realized that he is in love with the shy waitress in the local diner.

My pulse races. I could never be an actor; I get nervous just watching Nikki whenever she’s on stage.

But one glance at her face all lit up when she sees her love interest, and I know my anxiety is misplaced.

She’s a natural. I just pray that this role will open up the kind of doors that she wants to walk through.

“So, what do you think?” I lean down and whisper to Amber before the cameras start rolling.

I know that we’re not supposed to be here, but somehow, Nikki pulled a few strings to get us studio passes. I’m glad that she did. This is an experience that Amber and I will never forget.

“I want to be an actor when I grow up.” Amber’s smile melts my heart as she yawns, and tired tears make her eyes grow huge.

One day, I’ll have to tell her what happened to our mom, so that she can make up her own mind about what to do with the information.

But for now, I smile and encourage her to be whatever she wants to be.

I won’t be the one to take her dreams away from her.

There are plenty of other people out there who will try to knock her down as she gets older; all I can do is teach her to fight back.

“You’ll be an amazing actor, Amber.”

“Like Auntie Nikki?” Her wide brown eyes lock onto mine.

So innocent. So filled with hopes and dreams and curiosity that I wish I could escape to a deserted island with her and spend the rest of our lives off-grid.

Knowing that, one day, I’ll have to let her go, already fills me with a sickly sense of dread.

Which is why we do everything together. It’s what our mom would’ve wanted.

Nurture over nature.

“Three… Two… One… Action.” The clapperboard sounds, jolting me back to the moment.

I straighten. Aside from the fact that I can’t believe they use a real-live clapperboard just like in the movies, my best friend never fails to impress me when she’s in character. I spend far too much time in my own head to ever pretend to be someone else convincingly.

My lips stretch into such a wide smile as I watch the cameras move in on Nikki and Arthur, her co-star, that my cheeks are already aching. Nikki falters when she sees him, does a double-take, and her eyes gleam when they meet his.

They actually fucking gleam.

I mean, how do actors do this? How do they look at someone who they know is pretending to be someone else and make their eyes shine with love and affection?

I’m not sure I could ever pull it off, getting so in-character that I end up believing everything I say.

Even the script has been written by someone else for God’s sake.

Arthur moves closer to Nikki. He’s so tall that she has to literally tilt her head back and peer up at him, and I can feel everything that she’s feeling. My lips part in anticipation. Arthur has come to the diner to tell Nikki’s onscreen character that he is going to call off his wedding.

“Can we go somewhere private to talk?” His voice is husky with emotion.