Scandalous - Michael B Jordan

chapter 23

i stare at the contents of the four suitcases i emptied on the bed. i was missing something. how could a chick not have one single fucking clue about who the hell she was or where she would go? i knew her bio. the grandparents who raised her in kansas were dead.

no other family, no other friends according to the shit she told me in the hospital. and her ex-agent and ex-publicist were holed up at the same hotel as cruz. the same hotel she left hours ago after seeing cruz.

impatient, i called azul. i'll ask him to hack into the hotel security feeds to see what he could find and run a background check just in case. but that was thirty minutes ago.

"i'm still working on it," he answers, preempting my question. "but the hotel security cameras only showed her walking out with another blonde. i wasn't even able to capture a face shot, both of them had their heads down. they walked toward the public beach parking, then i lost them. there's no cameras on that lot. by the way, teddy is on his way over."

"what the fuck for?"

"backup."

"for a hundred-pound actress?"

"she's gone through two of my men. she's a goddamn elephant in my book."

"she didn't go through me." i growled.

"around, through, behind your back, same thing—she gave you the slip. what you find at the house?"

azul pissed me the hell off with his statement, but he was right. "i went through the shit she left behind, but there's nothing."

"what do you mean nothing?"

exactly what i fucking said. "no personal items." all her shit was here, but it was as if she was a void. no prescriptions, no jewelry, no papers except screenplays, or whatever the fuck you called the print version of movie scripts. there wasn't even a single piece of paper with a sample of her handwriting on it.

"mierda." azul sighed. "so far, i've got nothing too. her lawyer hasn't heard from her. her agent and publicist say they haven't seen her, and neither had a clue about where she would go. her license has the studio listed as her address. she's got no property listed under her name, no living relatives according to her bio, and no vehicles registered to her. how can a famous actress be a ghost?"

no fucking clue. "i need something." i needed to fucking find her.

"working on it." i heard typing. "but we may need to call this one."

"fuck that." she fucking threw my rep and azul's. "i'm finding her and she's gonna retract what she said."

"to what end?"

"what the fuck? what do you mean to what end?" what she did was bullshit.

azul exhaled tiredly. "look, i'm the first to admit i'm pissed as hell. mostly at myself for not seeing what a loose cannon she was. but the damage is already done. fallout happened. we'll fucking adjust."

"i'm going after her," i warned. azul didn't say shit.
"what?" i demanded after a few seconds.

"why do you wanna go after her? real answer."

fucking hell. "first steelo, then me, then your company. she fucked us over." what the hell? "you need more reasons?"

"no, but it sounds like you got more reasons you're not letting on to."

what the actual fuck? "like being accused of being a sadist on national television?"

"are you?"

"jesus christ." if i hadn't served with him, i would've been beating his ass right now.

azul didn't let it go. "did you handcuff her?"

"not when i fucked her." i snapped. silence. "that what you wanna know? anything else, boss?"

"jesucristo, jordan." azul let out a string of curse words in spanish. "do i need to call our fucking lawyer?"

"for what?"

"did you handcuff her?" he asked, incredulous. "because i'm not getting my ass sued for wrongful imprisonment, or whatever the fuck you did to her."

"i'm gonna pretend you didn't just insinuate i had nonconsensual sex."

"well, did you?"

"fuck you." adrenaline pumping, livid, my head a goddamn mess, i walked back out to the front hall and pulled up the video footage again.

"tell me to fuck off all you want, i wasn't the one handcuffing and fucking a client."

"for the record, those events weren't simultaneous." i was a grown-ass man, i wasn't gonna explain shit to him. "not that it's any of your business." i scrolled through the footage of her leaving, hoping to see something i missed the first ten times i watched it. but all i accomplished was watching her ass running away from me again.

"none of my business? you fucked her on my payroll." azul practically yelled.

"just get me a lead. i'll find her."

"which brings us right back to where we started."

the front door opened and teddy walks in. "yo!"
i nodded at him and walked back to her bedroom. "call her lawyer again, see if he knows if she has a permanent address." that was the best i had. i was out of ideas.

teddy followed me into the bedroom and whistled low at the mess. "girl's got more clothes than a damn mall."

azul snorted. "her lawyer isn't gonna tell me shit. he gets paid not to."

ted bent over by the bed and snatched something off the floor. "damn. this isn't a bleeder," he muttered, holding up an old photo. "this is trouble."

even more jaded about women than me, ted categorized women into two types, bleeders and trouble. the sick fuck said bleeders were women who bled your checkbook dry, but i suspected his nickname was twofold. the other category was trouble, which he classified as a whole new level of living hell.

i snatched the photo out of his hand. "azul, hold up." i stared at the picture. it was her on a horse at full gallop. she was young in the picture, ten, twelve maybe, but she looked almost the same. her long hazel hair was blowing behind her, her smile was unguarded, and she looked like a younger version of the woman i had in my bed. the one without makeup or pretenses.

teddy pointed at the top left of the photo. "what's that say?"

my gaze cut to the background. there was a street sign. oak. the road part was faded out. or lane, or street. i didn't fucking care. how many dirt roads called oak could there be in kansas?

"we got a lead." i told azul.