Saving Mr. Bell

Chapter One

Rudolf

I turned my head, the bright lights of the nightclub making me blink and reminding me of being on stage. Of sitting there frozen while thousands of people stared at me expectantly. Waiting… Wondering… Trying to work out what was going on with the man they’d paid an exorbitant amount to see.

No! I wasn’t going there. Not tonight. More booze. That was what I needed. Enough to stop me from remembering how badly I’d fucked up a few weeks ago. I’d thought I was drunk, but apparently I wasn’t drunk enough.

Once I reached the closest bar, I slammed my hand down on it, the noise satisfying enough to make me laugh. “Another drink,” I demanded of no one in particular. Fingers hooked around my left biceps to tug me away from the bar, but I planted my feet and refused to be moved. When they didn’t let go, I turned to face whoever was manhandling me.

I’d expected to find Nelson, my bodyguard, but where Nelson was tall, muscular, and wider than any man had a right to be, this guy was thin and willowy, and looked like a strong breeze might blow him over if he wasn’t careful. He had a piercing through his eyebrow and another through his nose, the glint of light from the nose ring momentarily hypnotizing me before I snapped out of it.

“I think you’ve had enough,” Mr. Thin and Willowy said, his brow creased with a concern that seemed unwarranted when I didn’t know who he was.

“Yeah? Well… I don’t.” I flicked my arm hard enough that he had no choice but to let go. Where was Nelson? Why wasn’t he telling this guy to back off? Oh, that’s right. I’d given him the slip at the hotel. I’d pretended to take an early night and then snuck out. “And I don’t know who you are to be telling me what I can and can’t do.”

Hurt immediately blossomed on the guy’s face, extreme enough for guilt to filter through the alcohol. Fuck! Had I spent last night with him? I struggled to recall the previous night, brief snatches coming back to me. Someone’s house. A private party. This guy’s? So much booze and drugs on offer that I couldn’t even remember leaving, never mind what had happened in the hours before my departure. To say it was a blur would be an understatement. If I’d had sex, I’d topped, the lack of any soreness telling me that even if my memory couldn’t.

“Owen,” the guy said, the name meaning nothing to me. If something had happened between us, I either hadn’t known his name or I’d consigned it to the list of things that weren’t important. Which was pretty much everything, more things joining the list with every day that passed.

“Owen,” I said. “Right. Course. I knew that.” I turned back to the bar. “I get to decide when I’ve had enough. No one else. Not you. Not my father. Not even Father bloody Christmas. He can put me on the naughty list for all I care. I think I’ll cope.” I laughed, turning back to see if Owen appreciated the joke. He wasn’t there, nothing but a space where he’d been standing. It didn’t last long, spaces close to the bar as much in demand in this nightclub as they were in any.

I caught the barman’s eye, my wink doing exactly what I intended, and making him bypass whoever should have been next to serve me instead. “A double vodka and Coke,” I requested, “and whatever you’re having.” I fumbled in my pocket for a note, handing it over without bothering to look at what denomination it was, and with little regard for whether I got change. That was one advantage to being famous and the riches that came with it.

I drank my double vodka at the bar and then asked for another. Or maybe it was two. Fuck knows. I sure as hell didn’t. The next two hours were a blur of more booze, dancing—where I had no shortage of willing partners cozying up to me—and conversations that made little sense while I was having them, and that I already knew I wouldn’t recall a single word of the following day.

When the lights came on to signal the end of the evening, I swore. How was it that time already? “Come back to my place,” an accented voice urged. “We can carry the party on there. I have plenty of drink, some drugs, and…” His voice took on a distinctive flirtatious note. “Something else you might be interested in.”

The something else was presumably his cock. I squinted up at him, my drunkenness having reached a level where all his features swam together. It was difficult to get excited at the thought of having sex with someone you couldn’t see properly. “Thanks, but no thanks.” I staggered back a few steps, apologizing when I bumped into someone. I ricocheted off them and into someone else, and then into a Christmas tree. Perhaps I’d had a little too much to drink. Perhaps.

“Rudolf, come back. I’ll call you a cab. Make sure you get safely back to the hotel.”

Same accented voice. What country was I in, anyway? Japan? No, that had been last week. Something beginning with an A. Australia? Azerbaijan? The fucking Antarctic. Probably not the latter. I didn’t think there were many nightclubs there. At least I hoped we weren’t in the Antarctic because I was in for a very rude and very cold surprise once I found my way out of this nightclub, if so. I found a cloakroom ticket in my pocket, leaning gratefully against the wall for support while the attendant went to find my coat.

She was back within a couple of minutes. I struggled into my coat, glad to find that non-drunken me had teamed it with gloves, a scarf and a beanie hat. My luck held when I located my phone in the pocket. I pulled it out, drunkenness rendering the task more difficult than it needed to be as I scrolled through my contacts to find the number I needed. There were missed calls, but I didn’t bother to look who they’d been from.

She answered on the third ring. “Rudolf?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I slurred.

“Where are you? Nelson says you’re not at the hotel.”

“Not his fault,” I said charitably. “Gave him the slip. Wanted to be on my own for a few hours.”

My manager let out a sigh worthy of any soap opera. My father had hired Jade Turner because she had a reputation for running a tight ship and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately, I seemed to be one of those fools. My father had hired everyone involved in my daily routine. Nelson. Jade. My publicist. My driver. My personal assistant. My hairdresser. The list went on and on. “Rudolf, we’ve talked about this time and time again. You can’t just take yourself off whenever you feel like it. It’s not safe. Nelson’s your bodyguard for a reason, and you need to use him as such.”

I closed my eyes against the lecture I’d heard before. “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“I presume you’re drunk?”

I laughed at the censorious note in her voice. “As. A. Skunk.”

“Tell me there’s no press there.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Where are you?”

“At a club.”

“What club?” I shrugged before realizing she couldn’t see it. “Dunno. I don’t even know what country I’m in.”

“Austria, Rudolf. You’re in Austria. You’ve been in Austria for three days. You were meant to take part in a charity concert, remember? Only, after what happened in Germany, we had to tell everyone you were ill. A story which isn’t holding any weight because you’ve done nothing but get pissed and high since then.”

“Right… Austria. I knew that.”

“You can’t keep screwing up like this. We need to sit down and discuss which rehab facility would be best—”

“I’m not going to rehab!”

“I don’t see any alternative. You can’t go on like this. There’s only so many times I can do damage limitation before your name becomes mud and no one will touch you.”

“I’m. Not. Going. To. Rehab.”

“I’ll talk to your father. See what he has to say about it.”

I closed my eyes against the wave of fatigue washing over me. My father would say yes. He and Jade always agreed, and I didn’t get a say, even though it was my life. It had been the same for years. In his eyes, he’d shaped me; he’d hired all the best music teachers; he’d surrounded me with all the things I needed to be an enormous success.

In my eyes, it was a cage. One I couldn’t escape from. All I could do was numb myself against it by whatever means necessary. Drink. Drugs. Sex. None of it helped. Because the merry-go-round my life had become was still there waiting for me when I came out the other side.

“Rudolf!” The sharpness in Jade’s voice told me it wasn’t the first time she’d said my name.

I sighed. “I just need a car to take me back to the hotel. That’s why I called.”

“I can’t send one if I don’t know where to send it, can I? I need something from you, Rudolf. A clue where you are. A smoke signal. Carrier pigeon. Something.”

Snarky bitch. I focused on the neon sign across from me, the letters blurring together until I finally deciphered them, the process giving me a headache. “Lugeck-Alm.” No doubt I’d butchered the pronunciation. Thankfully, she didn’t ask me to spell it or I’d probably have gone for F-U-C-K Y-O-U.

“It’s on its way,” she said after a slight pause. “It’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes sounded good to me. Spotting the restroom, I headed that way, my bladder reminding me that even the most enthusiastic of dancers couldn’t sweat out all the vodka.

“What’s that noise?” Jade asked.

“I’m taking a piss,” I answered honestly.

“Lovely.”

“Don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer.” I left a pause, enjoying the release it gave me to empty my bladder and knowing she wouldn’t hang up. “How much do I pay you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just figure it’s enough that you can put up with this.”

“You don’t pay me. Your father does.”

The surge of anger was immediate. “It’s my money,” I gritted out.

“There’s no point in trying to reason with you when you’re drunk. We’ll talk tomorrow.” And then, as if to prove I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did, she did hang up, leaving me glaring at my phone.

The cold when I spilled out onto the street was biting. It might as well have been the Arctic. Or the Antarctic. Whichever one we were closer to, my geographical knowledge not the best even without the vodka sloshing around in my system. Even more jarring than the cold, though, was the immediate flash of cameras, the burst of light bright enough that I lifted my hand to shade my eyes.

Never had the sight of the car idling at the curb been a more welcome sight, and no doubt Jade—and Veronica, my publicist—would thank me for giving the paparazzi as few drunken pictures as I could manage. At least none of them tried to talk to me, as I almost skidded across the pavement and threw myself into the back of the car.

“Drive,” I said as soon as the door closed. “Get me the fuck out of here.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Something about the way those words were said was off, but I was too busy watching the reporters get smaller in the rearview mirror to give it much more than a passing thought. I relaxed back against the seat, my hangover already making itself known.

“Seatbelt,” the driver demanded.

I rolled my eyes as I pulled it across my chest and clicked it into place. I guess it was understandable that he didn’t want to be immortalized as the driver who killed Rudolf Bell should we crash. I’d give him that one. Even if I did it with attitude. I stared at the back of his head, the light too dim for me to make out his face in the rearview mirror. Back in London, I had Gustav as a driver, my father having vetted him to make sure that the riskiest thing about him was how overgrown his mustache got.

In Austria—now that Jade had reminded me where I was—I’d had the same driver for the entire trip. A man named Dagobert. Dagobert might have long since left his bodybuilding career behind, but there was no getting rid of the tree-trunk like neck it had left him with. This man did not have a neck like a tree trunk. Ergo, he wasn’t Dagobert. See, who needed to be sober for critical thinking? Not me.

Considering it was late, I surmised Dagobert was required elsewhere. I hadn’t asked him whether he had a wife or kids, because I’d be moving on soon. Different day. Different country. So what was the point? But he probably had, so it stood to reason he was needed at home. No need to let my imagination run away with me. If I remembered rightly now I was sobering up, it was less than a fifteen-minute trip to the hotel. I’d be tucked up in bed in twenty minutes. Alone. Probably wishing I had picked someone up from the club. “Was Dagobert not available tonight?”

“Na.”

Austrian German for no. There was no point in asking the guy more if he didn’t speak English. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. When my internal body clock said that close to fifteen minutes had passed, I opened them, expecting to see the bright lights of the district where I’d been staying. My phone rang as I stared out at the encroaching darkness and I pulled it to my ear.

“Where are you, Rudolf? I thought I could at least trust you to get in the car once I sent it. Let me guess, someone threw themselves at you and you just had to go home with them and never thought to inform me?”

Jade. An even more pissed than usual Jade. “I’m in the car.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve had Dagobert hassling me for the last ten minutes. He has a home to go to, you know. He can’t spend all night sitting in front of a nightclub. Not to mention that he’s currently being paid for not driving you. Your father and I were just discussing how to get you to cut down on unnecessary expenses. How I’m supposed to do that, I haven’t got a clue.”

“By sending me to rehab, presumably.”

“Yeah, that.” Jade gave a bitter laugh. “So… just tell me where you are and I’ll send Dagobert to come pick you up.”

“I told you where I am. I’m in the car.”

“What car?”

I didn’t like the confusion in Jade’s voice. It made my palms sweat and my heart race. When you were in the public eye, you always knew you could have a target on your back. That’s why I had a bodyguard. A bodyguard I’d left back in the hotel.

“Rudolf, you’re worrying me.”

Yeah, I was worrying myself. Just who the fuck was I in a car with? And why hadn’t I at least checked when I got in that Jade had sent him? Could I be any more of a fuckup?

I surreptitiously wrapped my fingers around the door handle and tugged.

Locked. Although, what I thought I was going to do if it hadn’t been, I wasn’t sure. Would I really have done a kamikaze roll out of the car? And then what? Run off into the freezing cold? Being kidnapped and ransomed wasn’t my idea of fun, but neither was dying of exposure.

“Hang up the phone.”

I jerked my gaze to the rearview mirror to find eyes on me. No Austrian accent this time. English all the way. Did that make it better or worse? “Jade, you need to call the—”

The car lurched to so sudden a stop that it threw me against the front seat, the impact enough to wind me even with the seatbelt on. I was still shaking my head and trying to work out whether I had a concussion when the phone was snatched out of my hand. Had Jade heard enough to raise the alarm? Probably not. Which meant no one would likely miss me for a few more hours, leaving me at the mercy of some stranger who wanted God knows what. And he hadn’t even had to try that hard to kidnap me. I’d volunteered myself. Fucking idiot.