Page 53 of From Angel to Rogue

“Hey, Colette,” I replied, stifling a groan.

Ever sincethat night, I had taken a hiatus from all my high society friends, not like they missed me or I missed them. It seemed to be moot to be in that circle of serpents. I had lost my Lan anyway.

“Katy, I’m calling you about that banquet at the Beverly Park. I need the place this weekend, but they say they are fully booked. But I know you can pull some strings and make it happen.”

The one good thing that came with my job and all that saccharine pretending I did was the number of contacts I gathered throughout the years. I knew almost everyone important in this city, and I knew I could make it happen. But Colette was a stiff bitch who used to look down on me once upon a time, and she only called when she needed something. Right now, I was too tired to be the people-pleasing Katy.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered, not even waiting for her answer as I cut the call and blocked her number for good measure.

Maybe this was the first step I needed to take; block everyone unnecessary out of my life.

I dragged my day-old hoodie and sweatpants self to the massive bed in my presidential suite.

I sipped on my vitamin water, huddling up in the center of my bed on a mountain of pillows while I thumbed through every contact in my phone, blocking most of them as I scrolled through.

I only had fifteen contacts left in the end, and all of them were my friends and family and my assistant, Chris, who handled almost all of my work calls. I didn’t know why, but clearing up my phone in turn cleared some of the fog in my head.

But it still didn’t fill the gap of missing him.

Lines creased the corners of my eyes when I landed on a text chain from an unknown number from months ago that I failed to open. I hardly got any spam since all our devices were firewalled with high security, so whoever it was had to have known my number.

Terror crippled me when I thumbed open the message and saw myself from another point of view. There was no doubt that it was fromthat night.I was wearing the same pink dress, which crawled up so high that the lace end of my panties was visible. My sad form looked dead to the world, the position making my cleavage spill out of my small partying number.

It felt violating and disgusting.

I felt violated and disgusted.

This only confirmed my worst fear—that night wasn’t just me dragging my drunken self and crashing into a hotel room because I was too exhausted to call a taxi home.

Something else had happened, something that I didn’t remember.

And someone else knew the truth.

Someone who took these pictures and had the liberty to send them to me with a note calling me a FAKE.

I recognized the truth of that label, but it still didn’t make me feel any better.

A lick of trepidation thudded my heart. If someone was there in that room with me, then did something else happen? Did something that shouldn’t have happened happen?

That thought made nausea lurch up my chest.

It didn’t matter how many times I tried to wreck my mind to just remember something; it seemed impossible.

But everything else from that day I remembered in vivid colors, except for what happened after. It was a Saturday, the night our society girls gather every week at the Fairmount in LA, a time of my life when I was good at pretending and faking the life I lived.

It was just like any other party, the drinks flowing with the air filled with hot gossip and expensive dresses, so I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. But the last thing I remembered was clinking my glasses with Ava and Helen on our third round of drinks at around seven p.m., and then everything was pitch black.

That was until I woke up later that night with my heart at my throat, right at 3 a.m.

My dress was in a disarray in a room at the same hotel, booked under my own name, charged with my own card, and no one had a clue what happened to me.

Conveniently, none of the cameras worked that day, and the hotel staff wasn’t able to help much, and neither were my so-called friends.

It was the fear of what happened that night, the fear so shrill, so cold that I stumbled and kept stumbling. I was so stricken with the terror of the unknown that I had a nervous breakdown in front of Lan and lost everything I held tight in a matter of minutes.

I knew it was all because of me, but then it all started because of that night.

The more I stared at those pictures, the more the nausea riddled my gut, and I just couldn’t take it anymore as I dashed to the bathroom.

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