Page 1 of Sing Sweet Nightingale

Prologue – Lottie

My black Prada boot cracks the glass windowpane and splinters into a spider web pattern across the surface.Good. That’ll irritate my mother when she has to get it fixed.You’d think being a twenty-five-year-old adult would deter me from throwing a tantrum. You’d be wrong. It’s the only way to vent my frustration at the woman who’s taken control of my life like a blonde Hitler in stilettos.

Cracking a window so that she has to deal with it as my overlord is the least I can do to pay her back for the atrocity that is my life. Okay, maybe not an atrocity, but definitely indentured servitude.

This is not what I expected when I signed that stupid contract. I thought hiring my mom as my manager would be great. It would be easy. She knows me, knows my style, my music, my voice. She’ll look out for me; I am her daughter, after all. Silly me, forgetting she doesn’t see me as her daughter and never spent time getting to know who I am or asking what I want.

All she wanted was a cash cow, a golden goose, Midas’s golden touch. She wanted someone to support her and give her the lifeshealways wanted. Not the life I wanted.

And now I’m stuck with her. At least until the contract expires. Which couldn’t come soon enough. I know she’ll try to get me to sign a new one, but no way that’s going to happen. I already gave her the last ten years of my life. I wrote and recorded music the label wanted, touring and performing according to their schedule. Bending over fucking backward to fulfill my “duties” according to the contract I signed.

“I hate her! I hate him! I fucking hate them all!” I scream, ripping my other boot off my foot and throwing it towards a second window creating a matching spiderweb crack.

“What did she do this time?” Luna, my ever-present bodyguard and only real friend, asks.

Standing at attention at the entrance to the sitting room attached to my private quarters, Luna watches on in amused concern as I pace back and forth, stomping around like a petulant child. It’s well warranted this time. It is every time. The things she does are cruel and selfish. But from the outside, people don’t see that. They see a loving, doting mother who helped create a world-famous pop star. Barf.

Picking up a throw pillow from the couch, I swing it like a baseball bat against the cushions, screaming out my frustrations. When I feel a bit of my anger dying out, I stand straight and face Luna breathing heavily.

“You remember myboyfriend?” I spit out the word like acid.

“The pretty boy who didn’t know when to quit flirting with me until I almost broke his fingers? Yeah. What about him?” she replies snarkily. She never liked him as much as I did.

“Well, you were right about him. Not only was he a relentless flirt, but it turns out he didn’t even like me.”

“Explain.” Luna’s voice turns harsh and feral, as I’ve noticed it does whenever there’s a threat to me. She really is the best bodyguard.

“My oh-so-benevolent mother and managerhiredhim to be my boyfriend. She paid him in publicity and cash to play the part. Our chance meeting? Arranged. He knew who I was, thought I was hot, but had no real feelings for me.”

I continue my angry pacing. Not only mad at my mother but also mad at the ass face I thought cared for me.

“You want to know how I found out? Cause it’s a doozy.” I don’t wait for Luna to reply. I know she’s listeningveryintently. “I found him with his pants around his ankles and balls deep, pounding away into one of my backup dancers. Yeah, that’s right.Mybackup dancer. The one who’s supposed to be loyal to me. Like he was supposed to be loyal to me. Apparently, he’s gone through most of them while I was on tour. Because apparently fucking a pop star to ride her coattails to fame wasn’t enough. He needed to bang his way through the other wannabes, too. Promising them their fifteen minutes of fame because he’s my boyfriend and can do that sort of thing. What a complete douche canoe. I knew he was a horndog, but I at least thought he was a monogamous horndog. I mean, for fuck’s sake, we did it like twice a day when he was traveling with me on tour.”

I growl out a loud exhale and plop down onto the couch, exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster I just rode.

This is not how I planned to spend my first day home after months away on the international leg of my tour. I just returned home to Los Angeles for a short break before starting the six-month-long American leg of the tour. The lastleg of the tour, thank fuck. Tours are exhausting. They used to be fun back in the beginning. Now I feel like a robot doing as I’m told. Rehearsal, fittings, hair, makeup, perform, sleep, travel, repeat. No more fun. Only the money-making machine they’ve turned me into. For once, I wish my music wouldn’t sell so well. Then maybe I could take a vacation. A little time to myself.

“Where is he now?”

I tilt my head back to glance over at Luna, who is still standing where she normally is, when she watches over me. Luna’s been my bodyguard for about five years now. My mother was skeptical about hiring a female to guard me, but I made sure she knew Luna was more than capable of doing the job and doing it better than a man. If I were going to be with this person, nearly twenty-four-seven, having a female instead of a male would have made me far more comfortable being myself in private.

Luna is tall and stunning, with a muscular physique I envy. I may be fit, thanks to the forced workout regime and custom-tailored meal plan, but she’s ripped—six-pack and all. She could probably hold me over her head and snap me in half without breaking a sweat, which is why I trust her to keep the weirdos away.

Her dark brown hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail, revealing rows of gold earrings lining the entirety of the shell of her ear. She wears a tiny earpiece that’s nearly invisible when communicating with other members of my security team. But in private, only Luna is present. Striking gold eyes stare back at me from tawny bronze skin, lids lowered in a menacing glare.

“Why? Are you going to kill him?” I ask seriously. Shit like that happens all the time. It wouldn’t surprise me if she did.

“Not personally,” she states flatly.

“Okay then. I have no idea. After he chastised me for interrupting him and not letting him ‘express himself sexually,’” I say in a mocking tone using air quotes, because, yes, he actually said that. “Then, telling me he was tired of playing the part of loving boyfriend, which my mother hadhiredhim to do, I left. So, he’s either still fucking my now ex-back-up dancer on his kitchen island or who the fuck knows where.”

Normally, Luna would have been with me as my primary guard, but occasionally, she does rotate with others. She has alife, too; I can’t take up all of it. I have no doubt in my mind that if she were with me, she would have beat the crap out of Asshat, as I’m now referring to him.

She nods and lifts her wrist to speak into the microphone there. “Remove Mr. Lewis from the approved list of guests for Alexandria.”

I really wish I didn’t have to go by that name in private as well as public. But it’s not like my security staff knows my real name. Not that Alexandria isn’t my real name. It’s just my middle name. My mother and the record label thought Charlotte was too sweet and too southern, and that’s not the image they were going for. They wanted mainstream, sparkly, fashionable “it” pop girl. So, Charlotte was out, and Alexandria was in. I think they wanted me to be like Cher or Madonna with just one name, and they succeeded.

There are always people out there who are so obsessed with me that they try to discover my real name. Thankfully my team has suppressed that info like the plague. The public world only knows me as Alexandria the singing sensation, not Charlotte Pickle the little girl with a guitar and a voice too big for her body.

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