My Bully’s Crush, Vol.1

Chapter 30

*Ryder*

Oh shit, there is no freaking way kids did this. There was a whole shitstorm playing out on social media in such a way that even I had never seen before, and I have been at the wrong end of a social media blitz many times in the past. It was a well-orchestrated attack, or maybe I could see it because I’d been forewarned and knew what was going on.

These kids, if they really were kids, surprised even me, and I was given a heads up about what was coming, but they’d gone in a whole other direction than I’d expected. I thought Janie, Noel, and Nicole were their targets, at least that’s what I was led to believe, but they went straight for the head of the snake.

They went after Mary, something I would’ve shook in my boots to do even if I had an army behind me. The woman is vicious, and she has some kind of power over the elite in L.A. that transcends anything anyone could imagine who’s not a part of it. I guess it helps that these kids, whoever they are, aren’t part of the Hollywood elite and don’t give a damn, apparently. But they’ve got some balls all the same.

In the time that I’d been asleep, there was a website set up with millions of followers already. I was almost tempted to believe that bots had been bought to pad the numbers, but at first glance, it didn’t look like it. When I ran through some of the names, they were old accounts, not those new ones with one or two followers that spell bot, with a million numbers after their names instead of actual names.

I read the first headline over and over again, not quite able to take it all in. Three ten-year-olds had just called Mary Hudson nothing more than a madam who pimped out her own kids for fame on the Internet, and they had receipts. The fuck! It was a lot to take in, but people were invested.

It wasn’t only on the website, though; they’d taken the story to social media, and it was being shared like wildfire. Now, that’s all anyone could talk about, and from what little I read in the comments, not many people seemed surprised at this revelation though some were dumbfounded.

For the next few hours, I watched the war being played out online, and it was astronomical. Mary, never one to sit on her laurels, was already doing damage control, but each time she came up with something, username MengeLiNi hit back with facts that, if anyone took the time to investigate, could not be refuted. And it seemed like there were a lot of sleuths on the internet today. I guess it helped that the website offered links to follow to verify every word.

At one point, I got seriously scared for those kids, whoever they are, because of the shit that they were revealing, things I’m sure Mary and her ilk would kill to keep hidden, but then I remembered the Saunders kid and figured if they were ordering him around not one fuck was about to happen to them, not on his watch. I didn’t realize when he said that everyone involved had been compromised that he meant her as well, though.

Some of the things they were posting were screenshots of conversations that had been grabbed from her personal devices, and let’s just say that by the end of the day, she was going to have some pretty serious enemies. She might even face some court time as well because some of the shit they’d exposed was downright criminal. There was nothing about me and my situation as yet, though, but I’m sure that will be coming. I just don’t know when.

The thing that stuck out for me was the fact that MengeLiNi didn’t respond to any comments from fans or other bystanders, but each time Mary, one of her daughters, or someone from her PR team commented or came out with a rebuttal, MengeLiNi came back with another scintillating post that sent the Internet into another feeding frenzy.

I hadn’t felt this excited in a long time, but seeing that family getting dragged all over social media made me feel more alive than I had in way too long. It was as though people had been waiting for someone else to open the tap because it only took about three hours before the floodgates opened up, and all hell broke loose.

These little girls were vicious as shit, too, and had no chill. They talked about Noel’s clothing line that was made by underpaid kids in a third-world country, something Mary had gone to great lengths to keep hidden from the public, and then they went on a personal attack filled with all the truths most people wished they could say.

Like the fact that neither Mary nor any of her talentless daughters had anything to offer other than their manufactured bodies, things got really heated when they started posting photos of Elena when she was a teen and comparing them to images of the Hudson girls and Janie at the same age, it was brutal.

At one point, they broke the internet; it was a blitzkrieg, plain and simple, from someone who obviously didn’t give a fuck. At some point, Mary and her people must’ve recognized the signs that the more they spoke out, the more information was forthcoming from the enemy, so they backed down for now. I had a sneaking suspicion that that wasn’t going to stop those little girls. I had the feeling that they had only just begun.

The last thing Mary did was to threaten legal action, which is something she always does because she’d stolen enough money over the years to keep anyone in litigation for as long as they lived. MengeLiNi simply answered with another detail about Mary’s unscrupulous nature before she conned the world into thinking that she was mother of the decade. It was at this point that she stopped with the threats and just went radio silent.

In the midst of all this, I still had a song to write, and for some reason, it was much easier to get the words out than it had been for the last couple of days. I finished cleaning it up in an hour and was in a hurry to get back to the studio, but I had to wait for the call from Saunders telling me that it was okay to head back to L.A.

I have to remember to give Reggie a fat bonus because had it not been for his digging catching the attention of Mr. Saunders, this wouldn’t be happening, and I wouldn’t be getting help from a most unexpected place. It was starting to feel like a second chance all around, and my only hope was that I get a second chance from the one who mattered most.

I spent the rest of that day planning for my return and trying my best to find an actor inside of me that was never there before. The thought of being in the same house with these people, having to pretend for two months tops that I didn’t want to slit their throats for what they had done to my life, was hard, but because it was for Elena, I knew that no matter what, I would do it. I was also worried about the other stuff that Saunders hadn’t shared because what he’d shared so far was horrible.

Later that night, I went through my nighttime routine after my shower, where I talked to her in the mirror as if she were here, saying all the things I wished I could say to her in person while hoping that I get the chance soon. I slept better that night than I had in years and woke to more drama.

The ten-year-olds had left the internet in an uproar with a final message to Mary sometime after I had gone to bed. It simply said, “Every battle is won before it is fought. ‘Sun Tzu.’ If you know what this means, put down your weapons and retreat. Leave Elena Gianni alone, give her back what you took from her, or you will suffer the consequences.”

Of course, the whole internet wanted to know what was going on; this was the first time anyone had mentioned Mary’s involvement with any of it. Her daughters were known to be Janie’s friends, sure, and everyone knew that they had a hand in the bullying of Elena, but no one so far had put together the fact that a woman in her seventies had taken part in the teenage high school bullshit, or that it was a concentrated attack against Elena orchestrated by her. I myself had only just started piecing it all together.

But it didn’t take some very enterprising denizens too long to start putting the pieces together, and that’s where the fun began. People were digging up old posts, interviews, and things that happened in the last ten years that I barely remembered or even recognized.

Somehow, the tide had turned, and it was no longer about Elena being shamed. Everyone’s focus had shifted to Mary and her family, which is a big no-no back in L.A. It was mid-afternoon on the third day when I got the call that it was time to go home, and ten minutes later, the news broke that I had a movie deal with the Saunders group. This took the internet in a whole new direction as well.

They’d called Scott, my manager, and fed him the story that we were going with. That I’d left the tour because of a call from Mr. Saunders, who had warned me not to tell anyone where I was going. Supposedly he was a fan and had seen my downward spiral and wanted to help, and that was his reason for getting involved.

My fans loved it, and if anyone was skeptical about the story, no one dared mention their suspicions because no one who values their career in Hollywood would dare cross the Saunders family. Scott was warned that he wouldn’t be able to talk to me just yet and that I would be home soon because my phone had been turned off as part of my healing. They’d thought of everything.

An hour later, there were two men at my door who were there to take me to the private airstrip to board one of Saunders’s private planes.

I was going home, I’d be close to her again, and maybe I’d even get a chance to see her, but first, I had a song to record.

***

*Janie*

I should’ve known she would show up here. I’m surprised it took her this long to tell the truth. I dug my nails into my palms to stay calm and not give away the fact that Mary Hudson makes me very uncomfortable. The effects of the lines of coke I’d just done wore off at the sight of her face as I watched her walk toward me. She didn’t even knock, and no one even told me that she was there.

Her snobbish sense of entitlement made me want to gag, and I did a good job of hiding my inner thoughts by keeping a blank expression on my face. Inside though, I was jumping for joy that she and her family were finally getting their comeuppance.

It was so sweet watching them get dogged out on the world stage that I almost forgot that I, too, was under attack from these unknown people who came out of nowhere to stick their noses in. But even my annoyance at the fact that yet another person was once again protecting Elena was overshadowed by the fact that they were destroying the Hudsons in the process.

Mary was in a rage, which I was sure she was, but doing a very good job of hiding it was a very scary thing. I’ve seen her destroy someone with her tongue one minute and praise them the next. The fact that the only reason I hated her was because she’s never accepted me, never treated me like one of them, even though I married a man with lots of money, was neither here nor there.

She’d made all these promises in the beginning, when all I wanted was Ryder, and she seemed like the only one who could help me fulfill that dream, but I’ve since come to learn that it was all a fairy tale. What she wanted was control; I still didn’t care, though, as long as I got to keep Ryder and make that bitch Elena suffer.

I bit back the moan of distress at the thought of her name and the idea that my husband could very well be by her side at this very moment since it had been months since I’d seen or heard from him. That’s why this whole fiasco couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was hard keeping track, let alone keep up with him, and only the coke and the pills I took were helping me get through the days and nights.

Why is this all happening? I thought things would be perfect once we got married. Ryder was always so high that he barely knew what day it was, but even as drugged up as he was, he somehow always remembered that he hated me. Something I didn’t know until after we were married.

He seemed to blame me because he couldn’t be with her. He has no memory of the things he screams out to me in his sleep or how heartbreaking it is to hear your husband, the man who was supposed to be yours for a lifetime according to the elders, calling out for another woman in his sleep while tears roll down his cheeks.

I’ve endured that hell for five years, and there’s no way that I’ll let anyone else have Ryder. Not to mention the embarrassment that I’d suffer if this should happen; everyone would laugh at me, not that they aren’t already, but that would be the final nail in my coffin.

I knew that if Ryder were in his right senses, he wouldn’t be here, and that is what bothers me most of all. If he wasn’t here where I could keep an eye on him, making sure he gets his daily dose of drugs to keep him unaware of what was going on around him, I might lose all the control I’d fought so hard to gain over him.

Mary had come through there as well. She knew people who knew things, who knew how to get things done. And these people were even better than my mom, who had played a big part in helping me get here. All it had taken was a photo of Ryder and the sweat from his palm when he shook my dad’s hand that first time so many years ago.

She’d done some other stuff as well back then, but it had been years since it all came to fruition, so I’m not so clear on all of it anymore. I just remember it being hell for my twelve-year-old self to wait to grow up so I could have what I wanted, what I’ve always wanted. Ryder.

Now things were out of control, and my dad was calling me every second, while this one had shown up looking for blood, no doubt. People like her never do anything without expecting something in return; another thing I’d learned too late is pity.

No matter what she says here today, though, I won’t let anyone take Ryder away from me. So, if she’s here once again to threaten to have him leave me and marry one of her daughters, I’ll just have to remind her that the whole world was now watching, and she and her daughters were no longer as they’d been a week ago.

The fact that they were losing ground fast and people were literally turning against them every second emboldened me, and for the first time, I felt ready to face her down. I would’ve done more coke, though, had I known that she was coming.