Seven years earlier…

My brother’s eyes were feral, and blood stained his hands. He stood, immobile, staring at me as if he were looking through me.

“Fuck, Ty. What have you done?”

“I didn’t mean it, Jer. I meant to go over and scare him a little. I never thought…”

“Who? What?”

“That rapist Harley Massey. The police let him go. They fucking let him go!”

“Slow down, bro. What do you mean they let him go?”

“Not enough evidence. No probable cause to make an arrest. He can just rape my girlfriend, cause her suicide, and not even get a slap on the wrist. What the hell is wrong with our society, man?”

“Ty, it’s Renee’s word against his.”

He advanced toward me. “You calling Renee a liar?”

I held up my hand, stopping him. “No. Of course not.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway. He admitted it to me. Said she had a hot little cunt. Goddamnit!” Tyler’s fist landed on the oak desk he’d made for me.

“He could be lying. Just trying to bait you.”

“He baited me, all right.”

My neck prickled. My brother was manic right now. More manic than I’d seen him in a long time. “Where’s your piece, Ty?”

“It’s in the car.”

“Man. All right. You stay here.”

I hurried out to my brother’s car and grabbed the gun from the passenger seat. It was cold, thank God. I breathed in relief as I brought it in.

“You didn’t use the gun. That’s good.”

“Never took it in.”

“Good. That’s good, man. But you’ve got”—I gulped—“blood on your hands.”

“It’s my own. The fucker bit me.”

Thank God! More relief surged through me. “You can press charges. Assault charges.”

“But I went to his place.”

“So? Did he let you in?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Then he had no right to attack you. I’m calling the cops.”

Tyler walked toward me and grabbed the cell phone from my hands, throwing it across the room. “You can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Harley’s dead.”

Images came crashing back. Forcing my brother into the shower. Then him crying in my arms as he described how he’d strangled Harley Massey with his bare hands. Then my interrogation.

Was Harley alone? Did anyone see you go into his place? Did anyone see you leave?

Yes.

No.

No. I don’t think so.

He was going to get away with it. With raping Renee. With causing her death. I couldn’t let it happen, Jer. I just couldn’t.

Mom had come home soon after, and the two of us devised a plan.

I’d been home alone all evening. That much was true. What wasn’t true was that Tyler had been with me.

But he was my big brother. A good guy, if a little impulsive. He was prone to manic attacks, so I made a deal with him and my mother.

Harley Massey was a scumbag with a drug and domestic violence record. No one would miss him. My brother was a mentally ill man but a creative genius. I’d give Tyler an alibi, and in exchange, he’d go into therapy for as long as it took to get his head on straight. Mom agreed to keep our secret.

My brother was as good as his word. With therapy and medication, his erratic behavior ceased, and he began to make something of himself. He grieved Renee, and he healed. After a year and a half, with him and Mom taken care of, I left for LA.

Zane and I had considered LA before, but I’d always begged out at the last minute. After the turmoil at home, though, and with Mom and Tyler doing well, I finally told Zane yes.

I needed a change.

So we went to LA.

And at a party, I met Alicia Hopkins.

The woman who created Jett Draconis and Zane Michaels.

The woman who held the fate of my family in her hands.

And now I had to tell them the truth.

“What is all this about, Jeremy?” my mother asked again.

“That anonymous call you got, Mom. It was a threat. Just not for you or Tyler. It was a threat for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

I sank my head into my hands, fighting back tears. How could I tell them I’d prostituted myself for fame and fortune? Made a deal with the devil to rise to the top, and if I reneged, we’d all go down?

“Hey, man,” Ty said. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. We’ve been through worse, God knows.”

My brother was intelligent, but he had no idea what deep shit we were all in. Tyler could be tried for murder, and Mom and I could be tried as accessories after the fact.

What a fucking mess.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to regret saving my brother that day. I regarded him now, mentally and physically fit, a business owner, an artist.

A damned good man.

He didn’t deserve to be caught up in this mess I had created.

“Did you ever wonder how I made it in rock and roll so quickly?”

“Of course not,” my mom said. “You made it because you’re so talented.”

Always a mom. Always singing my praises. “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate that.”

“She’s not blowing smoke up your ass, Jer,” Ty said. “Your voice is amazing. It always has been. I used to be jealous as hell of you.”

He wouldn’t be jealous for long. Pretty soon my big brother would hate me.

“Thanks, Ty. But there are thousands of vocalists in LA, many more talented than I am, who never make it.”

“So you got lucky,” Mom said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that. But believe me, what happened with Zeb and me isn’t that simple.” I heaved a sigh. “I met a woman. An heiress. You’ve probably heard of her. Alicia Hopkins.”

“Of course we’ve heard of her. You were splashed all over the tabloids with her a few years ago. We’d have to be blind not to have noticed.”

“Just so you know, there’s nothing between Alicia and me.” Nothing except nasty sex. Which to me was nothing. Nothing at all.

“Of course, Jeremy,” Mom said. “She’s way too old for you.”

“Too much of a catty bitch for you too,” Ty agreed.

How he knew that I had no idea, and I wasn’t about to ask questions. Not when I was about to destroy his life.

I cleared my throat. “Zeb and I met up with her and she made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. She funded our entrance into rock and roll, made us into stars, but she asked something in return.”

They both stared at me blankly. How could I say this to my mother?

“We had to be at her beck and call for…sex. Whenever she wanted. For as long as she wanted. We could be with whoever we wanted as long as we were there when Alicia called. Which meant we could never fall in love.”

My mother went pale.

Tyler touched her arm. “This is not a big deal, Mom. He’s talking about LA.”

“He’s talking about selling his body, Tyler.”

I hadn’t expected her to take this well. She was my mother, after all. But the worst was yet to come.

“That’s the least of it,” I said. “She seemed to like me better than Zeb, and she got kind of possessive. When I tried to pull away from our original agreement, she found a way to make sure I never strayed.”

“Did she blackmail you?” Tyler asked.

“She did.”

“What did she have on you?”

Though I squeezed my eyes shut, a tear ran down my left cheek anyway. Fucking pansy. “She did some digging. She found out about you and Harley Massey, and that I was your alibi. So she dug some more, and she got some high-priced PI to find evidence that you were at Harley’s that night.”

“What evidence?”

“A hair that was found at the scene. A blond hair.”

“She’s lying, of course,” my mother said.

I shook my head. “She’s not. That’s not how Alicia operates. I saw the hair strands, and she let me take one of them to a lab for DNA analysis. I gave the lab a lock of my own hair, and asked if the blond hair came from my sibling. I don’t need to tell you what the results were.”

“She could still be lying. She could have gotten Ty’s hair from somewhere else and paid the PI to tell you it was found at Harley’s. Wouldn’t they have tested the hair after the…incident?”

“No. They wouldn’t have thought twice about it because I had an alibi,” Tyler said, shaking his head. “None of this is your fault, Jer.”

My level-headed brother was a far cry from the crazy-eyed maniac I’d found the night of Harley’s death. I’d done the right thing, damn it. I’d given my brother a chance at the life he deserved. He was a good man.

“Ty, I’m not going to let you go down for this. I’m not going to let any of us go down for that piece of sludge Harley Massey. If you hadn’t killed him, someone else would have.”

“Don’t say it like that,” my mother said, biting her lip.

She never could use the word kill, or murder, instead calling that night “the incident.” My poor mother was about to get a heavy dose of reality if Alicia Hopkins had her way.

“The phone call you got was a warning to me, Mom. A warning to me to stick to my agreement with Alicia, or she’d make the evidence she has public.”

They both stared at me, eyes wide, faces pale.

The next words were difficult to say.

“She seems to think I might default. That I won’t be her puppet any longer.”

“Why would she think that?” my mother asked.

I sighed. “I’ve met a woman.”