Prologue
Reid
The blood rushed to my head as a chill traveled down my spine. My heart all but flat-lined as my hand rested on the shiny, golden doorknob. I twisted it slightly, swallowing my fear, and when I opened the door, I could feel the unhinged cages on my heart closing and locking with each breath that escaped my mouth.
Several months ago, I brushed off her disappearance as one of her stupid games—those games she liked to play and then later say, “I just wanted you to know what it was like to miss me as much as I miss you when you’re on the road.” After that first month had passed, I was pissed. I was pissed, and the only thought in my head was, This isn’t worth it. So, I did what any other man would do—I ended it. I called her voicemail, hearing her flirty voice on the other end, and told her I was done. It was a freeing feeling, although it stung a bit, too. I mean, we were together for a little while—longer than I’d been with anyone else—but I just couldn’t deal with the bullshit anymore. She finally ended up calling me and begging me to take her back. She apologized and gave me every excuse under the sun, rambling on about someone named Lori whom she was with the entire time, but I was too busy focusing on my music and the upcoming tour to truly let her words affect me. Distraction at its finest.
The phone calls were endless there for a couple of weeks. I usually brushed them off, ignored them, irritated that she was acting so hung up on me when just a few months ago she acted as if I were some annoying fly swarming over her untouched food.
It was always a cat-and-mouse game with Angelina. When I’d catch her, I’d feel like I could truly see myself with her—maybe even love her—but then, when she’d slip out of my grasp, I’d have to take a step back and ask myself if she was even worth the chase.
The second month after our breakup, I hadn’t heard from her. The tabloids had died down a bit; they stopped speculating about what had happened between Reid King and his up-and-coming model girlfriend. Things seemed to even out. But I couldn’t help the unusual feeling that slithered through my veins when I’d think about how she basically dropped off the face of the earth. I didn’t hear a single peep from her. The late-night voicemails had stopped, the abundance of text messages faded, and I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a little lighter without her constantly trying to get back with me, but it was strange for her to just stop.
And then her parents called me.
I’d actually never met her parents. Angelina and I weren’t a traditional couple in the slightest. I’d met her a year prior, through some friends who I’d consider “up-and-coming,” just like Angelina with her modeling career. She and I never did much of anything in the beginning, except have sex, but then she started accompanying me to red carpet events, hanging off my arm like a bronzed beauty with her dazzling smile—she lived for those things. The woman I met a year prior was replaced by someone who had stars in her eyes as she gazed at flashing cameras and famous people.
When her parents had called, I realized that they had come to me as a last resort, looking for their daughter who apparently had also stopped talking to them. No one had heard from her since our breakup, and that didn’t sit well with me.
At first, I chalked it up to typical Angelina behavior, but something inside of me began to fester. The irritation and annoyance of her behavior was replaced with worry and fear.
I realized that I might have cared for her a little more than I thought, because I truly was fearful that something had happened. It wasn’t often that I grew close with someone, and that was simply because I’d been burned so badly in the past. Anyone that I’d ever loved in my life had disappeared within a flash, which is why I’d kept her at arm’s length at all times.
Angelina had been in my life for several months—close to a year—and now I was standing here looking down at her as she began to disappear, too.
Right in front of my very eyes.
A strangled noise sounded from my mouth, and those hinged-up cages around my heart weren’t only locking, but the key was being thrown into the Pacific Ocean, floating down to the sandy bottom, salt water eroding the metal. Every wall that I had unknowingly let down rebuilt itself as fast as the blood was pooling out of her stomach.
I rushed over to Angelina’s lifeless body and held back my vomit. Sweat coated my forehead, my dark hair sticking to the skin. My head bodyguard came flying into the hotel bathroom after finally catching up to me, and his eyes grew wide as he watched my hand press firmly on the open wound in Angelina’s torso. It was sliced open, bright red blood seeping through my fingers.
Frank grabbed his phone, his jaw locked and loaded, and called for help. My teeth clenched as I applied pressure to her tiny stomach, my mind reeling with questions. I kept thinking back to when she’d called twenty minutes ago.
She finally called as I was about to step my foot onto the stage, the crowd roaring so loud that I could hear them all the way into my dressing room. I instantly began to reprimand her. I kept my voice at a neutral level, but with every word that came out of my mouth, a bitterness was clipped onto it.
“Your parents are worried sick about you! Where have you been? These disappearing acts have to stop, Angelina.”
Then, she started to sob, and the words that came out of her mouth were enough to make me run in the other direction to the hotel I was just occupying hours before.
“Reid!” Frank yelled, pulling me from my panicked trance. I quickly took my eyes off the slowing blood and stared at his worried face. He hurried over and kicked the knife out of Angelina’s unmoving hand. “Move.”
I shook my head gruffly.