Chapter 63
“That’s not love,” Maggie finally mutters.
“Love is not keeping someone’s talent so tightly under your thumb that they can’t breathe.
It’s not taking from them, appropriating their story because you can.
It’s not making someone prove their total loyalty to you before you will help them.
” She lifts her eyes slowly to Ingrid’s. “That’s a prison.”
Ingrid turns, hiding her face.
“You didn’t mentor me,” Maggie continues. “You took from me. You stole the one thing in the world that was all mine—my love for writing.”
Ingrid laughs.
“You really think if you had any confidence, any vision as a writer, I’d be able to take it from you? All you had were some hollow words strung together by a pretty face.”
Something in Maggie cracks. Maggie lunges toward Ingrid and shoves her. Ingrid stumbles, but it’s not enough to make her fall down the stairs.
Ingrid throws her a wild look. “You gonna push me down the stairs now?”
In that moment, Maggie realizes she could shove Ingrid right down the stairs and no one would know.
The stairwell is empty. She looks around—there are no cameras.
She could easily say Ingrid fell. That she’d had too much to drink.
Everyone saw her with the martini in her hand before she came in here with her.
She’d be freeing every future writer from Ingrid’s wrath forever.
As Ingrid’s mocking laugh rings through her head, she plays it out—Ingrid landing at the bottom.
The blood pooling from her skull. Maggie running out and telling Jack that Ingrid fell while trying to pick up the papers that flew all over the staircase.
What’s he going to do? Not believe her? Say one of his clients killed another one of his clients?
Kyle and Cassie would believe her. Everyone would believe her.
There would be a funeral. All of Hollywood would turn out. Ingrid would finally be remembered as the badass producer she so desperately wants to be. It would be the best ending to their story. The only ending that makes sense.
Even Ingrid would agree.