The song ends and the only sound is muted chatter from her groupie wannabes outside who she ignores. I know, because I’m one of them.
Or, she thinks I am.
I slink outside as the power for the building fails on cue. And when it comes back, I’m just me, all over again, my tool tucked away for a rainy day.
CHAPTER ONE
DRAKE
Cha Cha Min’s dressing room looks like a tornado ripped through it. Costuming scatters every surface, and makeup is scattered across her tables in a spray of colored powders. An arrangement of stuffies with her branding plastered across their rainbow paws decorates one wall. The last few dangles sadly, as though someone purposefully yanked them from their display.
Everything had been set up before she arrived for her final show in LA. From what I know about the K-pop superstar, her social anxiety drives tantrums the size of Mauna Loa, and just as volatile. Everything in Cha Cha’s dressing room tells me that today’s preconcert attitude held true to form.
Except for the threat written out on the shattered spiderweb that reflects my face back to me in a million angles. Her manager stares down at me in horror through those same shattered pieces of mirror, and I return his stare.
“Bring her in here.”
“Fuck no. She can’t see this. It will spike her temper?—’
“So you want to leave her out there with whoever did this? Because I promise you, they’re still around.” My thighs scream as I rise from my crouch, and take in the rest of the room with a fresh eye. “Was it this bad before?”
“Before she left…” Shayne's mouth hangs open, his expression slack.
I resist the urge to snap my fingers in his face, or slap him. “Before the concert,” I bark. “Was her room this bad, or has someone ramped up the damage while she was on stage?”
Comprehension dawns, and Shayne backs up a step. Glass crunches beneath his heel. He winces. “No. No one’s been in here. Right. Right?” He casts a worried glance at me then over his shoulder to where her little clan of entourage peer curiously into her the dressing room they’ve likely never been allowed inside before, unless sone of them are fucking her.
“Right,” they all chorus like so many pastel birdies perched on a sofa, each slung around the other. A pair that were making out detach from each other’s faces for long enough to shrug in tandem.
“I mean, the lights went out just before intermission," someone yawns in the back and I spot pink and white hair that bobbles around as the man talks. “But other than that the whole waiting thing was boring.”
Someone elbows him, muttering about entitlement, and he shuts up.
I close my eyes, refocusing on my job and will myself not to eject Team Groupie from the building. “The lights went out? Just in this room?”
Eight sets of eyes blink at me. “It’s where we’ve been the whole time,” another white latex suited kid answers me.
“Like, sure. Where else would we be?” This one is dressed in powder blue lace.
Shit, they look like custom made dolls off the shelf, ready for a photo shoot. Maybe that’s the point.
“Where else?” I echo, and glance across at Shayne. “Uh?—”
He shrugs. “They’ll piss in a bottle if it means holding the need for twelve hours for a glimpse of Cha Cha. The sasaeng fans club is the cream of the cream. Cha Cha took hers and turned them into her personal toy box for giggles. She even wrote a song about them.La La for Cha Cha.They’re free marketing, and she gifts them clothes from there. These are the most obsessed people on the planet. They’ll do anything to get close to her, but she never lets them.”
And you wonder why she needs a bodyguard because someone is trying to infiltrate themselves into her life?
A wave of nausea slams me. “Alright. Get her in here. Now,” I bark at Shayne, who jumps faster than he’s moved all fucking night.
My new client needs a break. Away from spot lights and groupies and marketing. She needs time to reset her creative juices. I can’t protect her from the nightmare she and her team have created in a toxic environment like this.
Cha Cha Min is going on holidays, and she doesn’t get a damn choice about our destination.
This is ridiculous.
I don’t want to go.
Who the hell are you, anyway?
