“I’m sure you have,” Riley countered. “Although the grapevine seems too high up for someone like you; I’d have thought you get all your gossip from the gutter.”
Alex shrugged off the insult. “A little bird told me that your acting career is about to take a nice leap,” he said, dropping his voice a little lower. He inclined his head towards her, his eyes gleaming.
Riley’s heart skipped a beat in her chest and she stared at him in surprise. She’d been so careful to avoid giving anyone details about her upcoming gig—at most, she’d told friends that she had landed an acting job and that it was going to be months of filming. Who the hell told him? Quick on that thought was the corollary that if someone had told Alex about her part, she might be the one to take the fall; she’d signed a twenty-page non-disclosure agreement before the production company had even given her access to the parts of the filming script that were relevant to her role. If someone thought she’d blabbed, they could decide she was in breach—and kick her off of the project.
“Tell me exactly what you’ve heard,” Riley said sharply.
Alex grinned at the shock and consternation on her face, sitting back on the other side of the booth.
“I really should make you beg for it,” Alex said, shaking his head. He reached up to the breast pocket on his suit and plucked an ornate, gilded fountain pen out of it, flourishing it for a moment before he grabbed a cocktail napkin and scrawled a quick note on it.
Alex slid the napkin across the tabletop towards her, face down, and Riley picked it up, turning it over to see the two words written on it: Galaxy Wars. She half-gasped, her heart beating even faster in her chest as dread began to weigh down her stomach.
She tore her gaze away from the napkin and looked at Alex, wishing that she could incinerate him with a glance. “What do you know? How did you find out? Who told you?”
Alex looked to be truly enjoying her flurry of panic, taking a sip of his dirty martini and setting the glass down on the table with a clink.
“Keep your voice down; you don’t want to torch a perfectly good opportunity,” he said in a low voice.
Riley took a quick, deep breath, pressing her lips together to conquer the impulse to throw her drink in his face and slap him. Instead she finished her cocktail in a few hard gulps, setting the glass down and exhaling sharply.
“Okay, tell me what the story is,” Riley said more quietly.
“Let me order another round,” Alex told her, raising a hand to hail one of the bar staff.
Riley hesitated, wishing that she could just walk away from the conversation; but until she knew what information Alex had and how he’d gotten it she couldn’t tear herself away. She took her phone out of her purse and, as Alex ordered another round of drinks, sent a quick text to her friends. Sorry guys, something came up and I’m not going to be able to make it out. We’ll celebrate next time I have a day off though! She sighed as the bar waiter left to grab their drinks.
“Okay, Alex—enough. Talk already,” Riley said, keeping her voice low.
Alex smiled, knocking back the last of his martini. “Once you get to a certain level in this business, it becomes a very small town,” he explained. The condescending tone of his voice irritated Riley, but she knew better than to give into the impulse to deliver a quick comeback.
“So I’ve heard,” she said. Their second round of drinks arrived and Riley tried to steady her nerves. Lord, give me patience, she thought without enthusiasm.
“I’ve come up a bit through the ranks, and now that I’m Talent Relations Manager at Empire State Production, it’s just part of my job to make sure I get the earliest news about any up-and-coming talent.”
“It sounds like you’re doing very well for yourself,” Riley said, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
“You can imagine how surprised I was when your name came up in a meeting the other day.” Riley raised an eyebrow. “Word on the street is that you were hand-picked by the executive producer.”
Riley felt a wave of exaltation; she had been flattered to think that she’d done a good enough job to stand out to the casting team—but to be so good that the executive producer wanted her for the role?
“That’s good to hear,” Riley said.
“Apparently he went over the heads of the casting team; they wanted someone else for the part but he insisted.” Alex gave her a long look. “I wonder what inspired him.”
“My performance,” Riley said firmly.
Alex shrugged. When he spoke again, his tone changed; he wasn’t the silky, slick mover-and-shaker—he looked shrewd.
“Don’t get it twisted, honey,” he told her. “You’ve got about five of your fifteen minutes of fame left. They’ll make you give your all for this movie and when you’re all dried out you can expect to go right back to fighting tooth and nail with all the other wannabes, just to wind up playing the mom in infomercials for cough medicine.”
Riley’s hand tightened on her glass and she scowled. “You know, I think I’ve missed this aspect of your personality most of all,” she said drily.
“I can offer you something better,” Alex told her. “If you agree to pass information to Empire State, I have a role ready for you when filming is over—a role that no one is going to forget about as soon as they leave the theatre.”
Riley stared at him in confusion for a long moment. “How in the world would information from me do anything for your production company?” She shook her head in disbelief, taking another quick sip of her cocktail.
Alex smiled slowly, leaning in closer and lowering his voice to a near whisper. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Empire State is one of the biggest production companies in the industry,” he explained. “And part of how they got to be where they are is by carefully timing their film releases.”
Riley shrugged; that made sense, but she still couldn’t think of how information about the filming of Galaxy Wars 3 would help.
“There’s an Empire State flick scheduled for release in the same week as your project, and the word from above is that Galaxy Wars needs to flop.”
“Okay…but I’m still not getting how me telling you anything about filming would make that happen,” Riley said.
“The director has a temper,” Alex said with a shrug. “One of those brilliant but tempestuous directors who takes offense if you suggest he shave off ten seconds of a scene. If enough information gets out, we predict he goes postal and cancels filming—or at least throws enough of a tantrum that the release goes off-schedule.”
Riley stared at Alex in shock. She had never so much as gotten a parking ticket in her life; not only would what he was suggesting be a breach of contract, but she thought there were probably laws against it. More to the point, if word got out about her sabotaging the first ever major production she was lucky enough to be involved in, her Hollywood career would be over before it even started.