“No, though it’s not for lack of trying.” It still rankled that they hadn’t even approached her yet. How could she destroy them if they weren’t giving her the time of day? “Envision approaches people to become members, not the other way around. I have to wait until they contact me.”
She let out a short breath. “When my parents were first killed, I was too young to really understand what had happened. There wasn’t any family who could take me in, so another couple, some friends of my parents, did. I didn’t discover until later that they were the same friends who had ordered their deaths.”
His voice was tight. “Did they…hurt you?”
The words were so reminiscent of their first conversation, when she was faking a foot injury, that she almost smiled. He was always the protector, always wanted to slay dragons for her, and right any wrong that had occurred.
“In a sense. I was too lost in grief to understand what was happening. They kept questioning me about things I knew nothing about, insisted I read specific books or listen while they read to me, forced me to listen to a certain piece of music or watch certain video clips. I was only five at the time.”
“They were brainwashing you.”
“Trying to. They didn’t succeed, mostly because I knew something was wrong and only pretended to pay attention while they were trying to ‘teach’ me. People never give kids enough credit and assume they’re stupid. Kids notice everything.” She certainly had, even at five.
“You were a great actress, even then.”
She smiled at the compliment. She was a great actress; it was fact, regardless of when she’d actually started acting. “The problems for them started when social services came to the house to check on me. I was only there as a foster child, but the couple wanted to adopt me. Envision has accomplices not just in Vollywood but all over—in government offices, elected positions, banks, even the police. Most larger city police departments—including the one for Vollywood—have their own film and television unit to manage security for shoots. It would make sense for them to have accomplices in the government to approve shooting permits, in banks to approve loans for films, even in the police to manage any ‘issues’ that might come up.”
“The social service employee was an Envision accomplice? Why would they even need someone in social services?”
“She—Luna—was actually an agent of the VIA who had already infiltrated Envision. From the information gathered from her and other agents who have managed to get in over the years, one of their goals is to have accomplices in as many public offices and branches of the government as possible, in case they ever need to take advantage of a situation in order to gain more power.”
She took a deep breath; it was always hard to talk about Luna. “Luna was on one of the lower branches of Envision. It’s set up like a sort of hierarchy, and most everyone starts at the bottom and has to work their way up. Some actors, the ones who always seem to do well at the box office and never seem to have a failure or bad press, they’re near the top and any indiscretions are hushed up, and fast. Everyone is supposed to defer to them and their needs.”
“You do well at the box office.”
She shook her head. “Not always, and there are Envision-related reasons for that, too. Sometimes Envision is punishing the director, or producer, or another actor on the movie, so they’ll find ways to shrink the marketing or do some small thing to sabotage it. I became famous on my own—sort of, the VIA actually helped me with that—so there’s only so much Envision can do if I’m connected to a film. Fans love me and, at some point, fan popularity—something Envision can’t control, or something which they haven’t figured out yet how to control—becomes more powerful than anything they can do. Fans will keep me popular but, if the movie doesn’t live up to expectations, fans will lash out, and that feeds Envision’s control.”
He nodded, the distant look in his eyes telling her that he was trying to process everything she’d revealed so far. Yet, there was so much more—so much worse—yet to come.
“When Luna visited my foster home as part of her ‘surprise visit’, she apparently planted bugs in the house. She picked a good time to do it, because there was a dinner party that evening.”
“Good timing.”
“Planned timing, I found out later. The VIA knew it was happening and they wanted an in. I was that in. I didn’t realize what the couple’s plans were until I was forced to attend the dinner wearing a ridiculous puffy dress that they’d picked out for me. It was an ugly dress and I hated it.”
He tilted his head. “You never wear anything remotely, er, poofy now. Is it because of that one dress you wore so long ago?”
He would notice something like that. “Partly. Do you want to see me wear—”
“I’d rather you wear nothing at all, but if you have to wear a dress, I prefer your taste. Form-fitting, slinky, and sexy as fuck.”
She got annoyed because she didn’t want to get aroused at that moment, not when there was still so much story to tell, and his words always stoked her fire faster than the flip of a switch. “Don’t turn me on right now,” she snapped.
He chuckled and kissed her hand. “All right, my Anda. The dinner?”
A part of her settled at his term of endearment. He always seemed to settle her when she needed it most. “The dinner. Right. Well, it wasn’t a normal dinner party. I found out later that most of Envision’s leadership was there, which was mostly older, white males.”
Anger flashed in his eyes and he sat up straighter, seemed to brace himself. “Are you telling me that they—”
“No. They weren’t trying to…no. Nothing like that. When I grew up, I was to become one of their wives. Some of those older ‘December’ actors you see married to younger ‘May’ brides, it’s all arranged like this apparently. Power plays and politics…Maybe you’ve seen some of it as a royal, but you’ve never seen anything like this. At that dinner, I knew something was wrong and I knew I wasn’t safe. But I didn’t know who to turn to.”
“Did Luna get you out?”
“Yes. They told me a distant family member had claims on me and removed me from the home. Envision did not like that. They tried to get me back, probably used their influence to do it, too. It all came to a head when I was kidnapped.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Yeah.” It had been a goddamn motherfucking hell, but she’d survived it. “They didn’t get far, and the VIA easily found me. Apparently, there was a tracker in the kid’s watch I always wore at the time; it had been a gift from my parents, so I wore it often and always kept it close after their death. Again, the tracker was something else I didn’t find out about until later, and it was something Luna had embedded in my watch during her visit. After the VIA found me, I was taken to a police station but only Luna spoke to me. I was six by then and she said I was young, but if I wanted to know the truth, she’d tell me.”
