Page 3 of Fallen Starboy

Chapter

One

ARISTA

Sometimes,murder seemed a justifiable option in the heat of the moment.

Like right now, in this fucking meeting with the worst boss to grace the halls of kNight Records.

I forced a fake smile to my lips and swallowed thickly, hating the fabric of my expensive pantsuit even though I was the one who picked it out. It was too rough on the inside. A suit this expensive should have been lined in silk or satin, maybe even high-thread count cotton. But the inside of my secondhand straightjacket from hell felt like cheap fake wool: rough to the touch, too hot, and itchy.

And that didn’t help the anxiety rolling through my body right now.

Danielle Steele stared down the table at her upper echelon, her eyes piercing each of our souls in turn as she moved from one end of the lineup, like a coach preparing to cut players right before the end of the season.

“I’m unhappy with this quarter’s margins. We’re small, but to compete with the big dogs here in Nocturna Beach, we’re going to need more.” She turned to Richard, our acquisitions officer,and smiled in a way that felt more like a threat than a gesture of happiness. “Rich tells me we have several new options for the roster, looking to sing with anyone who will have them.”

I didn’t like the way that sounded–anyone who will have them.Made them sound like a dangerous gamble, and likely blacklisted in other countries, possibly even our own. Of course, that was the type of client we specialized in.

kNight Records was part of a bigger agency–Nocturna Beach’s kNight Rising Entertainment. At its inception three years ago, Danielle Steele, the co-founder and forward-facing public image of the music side of things, made the bold claim that her company’s purpose was to give those wrongfully left with no other option another chance at stardom. She even fucking quoted the damn Statue Of Liberty inscription, with a twist–give me your misbehaved, your unhireable, your irredeemable clients, all yearning for the same dream–stardom.Fame. Infamy, in most cases.

She hadn’t been kidding, either. Her first hire had been a movie star from Britain who’d been involved in several cheating scandals while married. Turned out, it was the wife who’d been stepping out—and she’d been leaking the press fake rumors about his unfaithfulness to cover her own ass. But that didn’t stop her from using the allegations to demand half of his assets on the divorce table. When his agent dropped him, Danielle sent one of ours in and snapped him up quick.

Her next two hires were twin girls from Singapore who were arrested for stabbing the man who raped them in their own home.

I couldn’t blame them. Their talent agency, however, did. And when they went abroad looking for new opportunities, Ms. Steele lured them in with promises of a new life, and now they earned the company—and themselves—a steady six figures with all their appearances in movies and television shows.

She had a vision, and she made it work for her. In the three years since, kNight Rising Entertainment had earned its reputation. We now fielded more interest than we had time to hire on. Talent was slipping through our hands, and unless we started taking on more clients, we’d never shatter that glass ceiling.

As a fellow driven career woman, I wanted nothing more than to shatter that fucker.

Okay, well, that, and forget.

“Are you with us, Miss Simmons?”

My attention jerked back to the present, and I blinked rapidly, trying to back-process whatever the fuck she’d said before I zoned out.

I shook my head when it became apparent I wouldn’t be able to fake this one. “Ah, sorry, Ms. Steele, I was distracted.”

Her pin-straight golden hair fell over her shoulders in waves as she shook her head. “Shame. You know, I had such high hopes for you once upon a time.”

I let that one roll off me. Arguing with the boss when you were caught daydreaming in a quarterly meeting wasn’t the way to climb the corporate ladder. “My apologies, Ms. Steele. I was just reviewing my talking points for the meeting to be more prepared.”

“Talking points?” Her head tipped to the side as she regarded me cooly, almost mockingly. “And what talking points do you bring to the table today, Rizzo?”

I flipped through my brain for a split second, latching onto the first thing I could think of. “We haven’t recruited talent from abroad in a year now. Most of our new clients last year came from this continent, and I think we’re missing a huge market of opportunity. With Asian media and celebrities rising in popularity on a global level, we would be stupid not to searchthe talent pool for someone specifically suited to our company’s core practices.”

All corporate jargon forhire a foreign talent or three, you moron.

“I see.” Those hawk-like eyes slowly slid from me to the man on my left: Richard.Sorry, buddy. Better you than me.

“Rich mentioned he planned to send an agent over today to sign our newest acquisition. They’re from the K-pop scene. You’re familiar with that market, correct?”

Asking me if I was familiar with the Korean pop scene was like asking a fish if it had ever swam before. “Ah, yes, ma’am, I am.” After all, I had flown all the way to Korea seven years ago as a foreign exchange student my first year in college to intern with one of the biggest names in the entertainment scene. I immersed myself in the atmosphere, even learning Korean in my free time to communicate with coworkers who didn’t speak English. After all, they weren’t about to talk trash in a language I could understand.

So yeah, I was familiar with the market in question.

Ms. Steele must’ve seen something she liked in my eyes because she nodded to herself and flicked a finger at her assistant, Tobias. He held out a folder containing a contract with a copy in English and another in Korean. “The client expects us to bring the contract for negotiation and signing today before seven. They’ll be landing in an hour, and we’ve already prepared a driver to pick them up, take them to check in at their hotel, and then meet us in the executive boardrooms when they’re finished.” Her fingers tapped against the upper portion of her crossed arms as she regarded me coolly. “You can serve as our interim assistant and translator, perhaps smooth the way between the new client and our employees. We have a distinct lack of available translators for foreign stars, especially thosefrom Asian communities, and as we search for an adequate one, perhaps you could fill the role?”

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