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  Fade To Black

  The Bright Lights Dark Secrets Collection

  Nolon King

  Copyright © 2020 by Sterling & Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Want to read the collection?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  StoryStacks Thriller Insider

  What to read next

  A Quick Favor …

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  About the Author

  Introduction

  Nolon King’s Bright Lights Dark Secrets is an unforgettable series of fast-paced psychological thrillers set in the glitzy world of entertainment’s power players, exploring the lies we tell ourselves as we chase our ambitions and the sacrifices we make for success.

  A writer tricked into a deadly affair by a psychotic stalker fan …

  A serial killer expert taunted by her latest bloodthirsty subject …

  An actor whose success could destroy everyone he loves…

  A mother driven to prostitution by her husband's poor decisions …

  A celebrity chef stalked by a former lover who threatens her career …

  A filmmaker hounded by the sexual predator who obliterated her childhood ...

  King writes driven, complex heroes and heroines whose families are torn apart by secrets, in a world where unruly passion gives birth to violence.

  Want to read the collection?

  If you love thrillers that center around secrets and lies, you’ll love the Bright Lights Dark Secrets Collection by Nolon King. Get the box set for one conveniently low price, or read for free in Kindle Unlimited.

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  Chapter One

  Sloane

  How do pedophiles live with the brutal truth of what they’ve done?

  How do survivors like Sloane Alexander live without it?

  Sloane had no fucking clue.

  Those thoughts, and the harsh reality of what happened to her twenty years ago, had been driving her life in one way or another ever since. At least now they were finally taking her somewhere.

  She should be looking at the dailies, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the nanny-cam, showing her the inside of what her daughter, Jolie, kept calling the “babysitting trailer.” The life she had longed for was finally here. Not just for her, but for Jolie. Sloane’s baby girl had never looked happier, and despite the day one footage still awaiting her review — more specifically, a yay or nay on her accent — she wanted to soak up her daughter’s wide smile while she could.

  “Sloane?” Lila asked. “Are you okay?”

  She looked over at her assistant director and smiled. “Yeah, great. Sorry. I guess I just got lost for a second there.”

  “Your kid is playing with Orson Beck’s kid.” Lila smiled back. “Who could blame you?”

  Sloane did have a big job to do, but Lila had an indisputable point. Orson Beck was one of the world’s biggest movie stars. Right now his son, Connor, had an arm around her daughter while the two of them were sharing a book and taking turns flipping the pages.

  Adorable for sure, but work beckoned. She turned her attention from the nanny-cam to the scene in question. “Can you play it back without sound this time?”

  “Without sound? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose.”

  Sloane shook her head. “I want to see if her expression bothers me if I can’t hear the accent.”

  “Ah. Got it.” Lila dragged a finger back across the footage before pressing Play.

  Though watching the scene, she wasn’t paying attention. Too many emotions warred inside her. This was the first day of her dream come true. She wanted to soak it all in, take none of the wonder for granted. But her will was competing with the need to get the job done, on if not ahead of schedule.

  Still, her new reality deserved a moment of reverence. Sloane had worked long and hard to make this happen. She was finally back in the states, filming a script she had written. Poured her heart and soul into, really. The film had a cast and crew that was better than anything she could have ever assembled on her own. Thanks to Dominic and Melinda, of course.

  She owed the Shellys everything, same as she always had.

  West Hollywood Sunset hadn’t been shot yet, and it was already a movie full of miracles. Sloane hadn’t even told the Shellys she’d been working on a draft because she didn’t want them to see it as her indulging a hobby or airing her diary in the guise of a potential indie darling. She didn’t breathe a word about the potential film until the script was finished, at which point she sent a hard copy across the pond without preamble. Even the subject line had been a whisper.

  Check it out and let me know what you think!

  They loved West Hollywood Sunset, both as a story and as a mission. Neither Dominic nor Melinda ever made promises they couldn’t keep, so when the Shellys vowed to both support the movie and “fully back its potential,” Sloane knew the results could be explosive.

  Of course, they had their reasons. But still, Orson Beck?

  He was only taking a supporting role, playing a young version of Dominic Shelly. Despite Dominic adoring the casting for obvious reasons, the role was far enough below Orson’s industry status to render his casting impossible. His involvement in the film smelled like a favor to Sloane. That wouldn’t surprise her in the least — it seemed like half of Hollywood owed the Shellys something.

  While the other half were indebted to her enemy.

  Any other producers would have required, or at least requested, that Sloane cast a known actress in the lead. But that was the opposite of what Sloane wanted for West Hollywood Sunset, and the Shellys not only respected her wishes but encouraged her vision.

  That’s why Cassidy Cavalli had been cast as the stand-in for Sloane Alexander’s pre-adolescent self. The thirteen-year-old actress had been in a few BBC productions but was unknown in America. An unproven lead, one of the biggest movies stars in the world taking a small part at scale, and still the Shellys were willing to let her hire Miles Dupont for sixty-percent of his typically handsome fee.

  Miles would have been happy to also work at scale, of course. He and Sloane shared a daughter, but the Shellys saw anything less than sixty-percent as either an insult or a potential negative for their director. Hiring a world-renowned cinematographer — and Jolie’s father — was yet another example of how hard the producers had worked to make their newest director fall in love with everything about working on the project from pre-production on.

  The footage ended.

  Lila turned and looked at Sloane expectantly. “So?”

  “Can you play i
t one more time?” She really hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Sure thing.”

  Sloane’s life was finally coming together. The Shellys were going to make this film a hit. But even better than any potential box office or streaming success, she was eager for the vindication. Dominic and Melinda had always been her saviors, even back then, when few people were even willing to hear her accusations, when doing so was considered an indulgence.

  But not only did the Shellys listen to Sloane, they believed her. Encouraged Sloane to speak her truth, aloud and at the top of her lungs if need be, despite the expense to themselves.

  Not that it had mattered. The Shellys couldn’t really do anything for her back then.

  Thanks to Nicole Everett denying every word. Maybe Sloane should never have—

  No. She needed to stop that.

  Return to the present. Keep her eyes and mind on the footage. This was now, not then.

  She didn’t need to be thinking about how vicious Wentz had been in his attempts to discredit her.

  Dominic and Melinda had been there for her then, and they were here for her now. They had helped her to steer clear of his vengeance by negotiating the breaking of her contracts with minimal penalties and helping her move to London.

  Now they were funding Sloane’s revenge against the man who had ruined her life.

  Yes, West Hollywood Sunset would help her break back into Hollywood, but the producers were also designing her film as a dirty bomb, destined to obliterate one of the world’s worst destroyers of childhoods.

  She had no interest in making a documentary, since documentaries were the broccoli of film, nor was she pitching her movie as the truth. Still, Hollywood was familiar with her story, and once word got out that the Shellys were making a movie written and directed by Sloane Alexander about a sexual predator preying on a pair of underage actresses, feathers would be ruffled, then war declared.

  But like what Tarantino did with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or Inglorious Basterds, Sloane would be revising history to give both herself and Nicole a happier ending. The sexual predator would be destroyed, and the young girl who accuses her could finally save her friend she had lost.

  Maybe there was a parallel universe where good things had happened, and Sloane didn’t have to spend so much time wondering how Nicole was doing. She landed a few more roles after the scandal, but the transition from child actor to adult roles was always rough. Not everyone could make it, regardless of promises made by people at the top. Nicole wasn’t one of them, and since her old friend wasn’t on LiveLyfe or any other social platform, Sloane didn’t have any means in which she could easily cyberstalk her.

  The footage ended again.

  “Did you get it that time?” Lila asked.

  Her assistant had to know she was spacing it. “Last time. I promise.”

  Lila was already reaching for the screen, ready to rewind it yet again.

  This time, Sloane really did watch.

  Onscreen, Cassidy’s character, Daisy, was trying to convince her friend and fellow actress, Jennifer, to tell a grownup about how Oliver, their producer, kept inappropriately touching her. It was a tough scene, but Sloane wanted to tackle it on day one because she believed it would anchor Cassidy’s emotions and make her character easier to access for the rest of the shoot.

  Despite Cassidy’s earnest delivery, Sloane couldn’t help but feel that there was something off about the scene. Cassidy’s British accent was peeking through the dialogue, and Sloane thought that might be diluting the performance. She wanted to watch her face sans audio to see if the accent still bothered her. After three months with a dialect coach, it shouldn’t be.

  Sloane leaned ever so slightly forward as the scene neared its conclusion. She loved everything, right up until that final moment.

  “You can do it,” said Cassidy, onscreen as Daisy, speaking to her good friend. The sound was still down, so Sloane read her lips. Not that she needed to; she knew the script by heart, because hers was the open wound that birthed it. “You just can’t do it alone.”

  Daisy’s eyes went glassy as she took a pregnant breath and let the moment steep before she finished her thought. “We’ll go together.”

  “We’ll go together,” Jennifer repeated.

  And scene.

  “Now with sound.”

  Lila complied, starting the scene at the beginning for the fourth time, now with Cassidy’s hint of an accent perfectly audible.

  Her expressions and posture were perfect, as was the emotion in her delivery. But the word together sounded like it came from someone who was born and raised in Manchester, England before moving to Southern California. If Cassidy was doing an impression of thirty-two-year-old Sloane, it worked. But as twelve-year-old Daisy, it didn’t.

  She hated that the last line needed a reshoot, especially since everything else was so perfect. But that was a director’s job, and Sloane felt grateful she was getting the chance to do it.

  Sloane looked over and saw that Lila was studying her face.

  “You don’t hear it?”

  Lila shrugged. “Seriously, I bet you’re the only one who will ever hear it.”

  “Maybe. Can we watch it again?”

  “You’re the boss.” Lila scrubbed back and pressed Play.

  Perhaps it wasn’t the footage bothering her.

  Could be the memories that felt like a falling piano.

  Her eyes were burning. She kept blinking, but they watered anyway. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. No, it was covered in sweat. Same for her palms and her wrists, and — what the hell? — the nooks of her elbows. Her mouth was dry, and her spine suddenly felt like someone might snap it like a twig underfoot. She felt agitated for no reason, and wanted to lash out at Lila. Yell at the poor girl for something she didn’t even do. Or better, Sloane could get out of here, hit the nearest bar, and drink herself stupid. Jolie could keep on playing with Connor. She needed to be alone. Just like she’d been—

  “Are you okay?” Lila cut off her memory.

  “Yeah, I’m—” She screamed as a crash interrupted her.

  But at least that time Sloane wasn’t alone.

  Lila had yelped a little, too, and looked wildly around until her gaze settled on something not too far away.

  “What was it?” Sloane was thinking a hundred uncomfortable thoughts, both connected and wildly askew.

  “Looks like a light kit fell over.” Lila pointed.

  “Do you think anyone was hurt?” Sloane worried about anyone who might have been injured but also considered what the accident might mean for her insurance. That was followed immediately by guilt for having what she supposed might be a mercenary thought.

  “I’ll go see.” Lila left Sloane wringing her hands.

  Turned out she didn’t need an assistant to play the footage. She watched it without paying much attention another two times. At the end of the second viewing, Sloane decided there wasn’t anything wrong with Cassidy’s delivery and the scene could stay as-is.

  “Anyone hurt?” Sloane asked when she saw Lila approaching.

  A light nod. “Sasha got sprayed with a few shards of glass and has a couple of superficial cuts. Abel is taking care of her.”

  Sloane nodded, distracted.

  “Just a scare,” Lila said.

  Sloane kept nodding, not wanting to believe this was what she suddenly thought it might be. An omen at the very least; her worst fears, coming true ahead of schedule.

  No. She was just being silly. She was a bit shook before the lights fell, was all. It would be foolish to let the old delusions get the best of her.

  But paranoia made a powerful argument.

  “I’m going to take a look around, anyway,” Sloane said.

  Chapter Two

  Sloane

  Sloane intended to investigate the crash immediately, but she ran to the restroom instead.

  It was dumb, letting all the stupid paranoia swallow her up like that, but
curbing those biological responses had always been hard. Given the reality of her work, of course the old emotions would return to haunt her. She did manage to keep herself from vomiting, sitting on the toilet lid while working to control her breath, slowly inhaling and exhaling enough times for things to start feeling almost regular again.

  Shooting had just started. It would be a big mistake to let her worst fears start driving her emotions or her behavior. And an even bigger mistake to allow the cast or crew to see their director at anything less than her best.

  She washed her face, glancing in the mirror and anticipating the battery of questions Lila would surely be asking her. The AD was probably waiting on the other side of the bathroom door.

  Once she was satisfied with her appearance, she left the bathroom. As expected, her AD was waiting for her. She walked past Lila without a glance and, anticipating the question, said, “I’m fine.”

  “Someone should tell your face.”

  Sloane stopped walking and looked at her. That had been a bold thing to say, and she would have normally appreciated the candor, but right now she was frazzled and agitated, in that order. The first emotion came courtesy of that fallen light kit, and the second was a direct result of the accident.

  “It was just one of those things,” Lila added. “They happen all the time.”

  “I know.” Sloane was already walking again. “And I’m not worried. I was just deep in thought when it fell, so the accident startled me more than it should have.”