Chapter 4

“People don’t ever fucking learn. Goddammit! Which part of ‘I DON’T FUCKING TAKE MY FUCKING CLOTHING OFF IN FRONT OF THE MOTHERFUCKING, COCKSUCKING, SHITEATING CAMERA’ do you not understand, you skanky crack-ho bitch from HELL? Did you not even bother to read the contract that you signed, you steaming pile of PUKESHIT?”

“You are going to go up there and do the scene the way it is written, or you are out of this project! Do you read me, princess?”

“Go fuck yourself, Conrad. No, seriously. GO FUCK YOURSELF. Preferably with a rough-cut, unsanded two-by-four. I have a no nudity clause in EVERY contract I sign for EVERY project I do. It has been vetted in the courts, and upheld on appeal. Your lawyers knew about it. Your writers knew about it. Your director knew about it. Even you knew about it. How do I know this? Because MY lawyer was required to read it out loud to YOU in a face-to-face meeting with you when YOUR lawyer was present. After what Nesta tried to pull a few years ago, I can never be too careful.

“Are you going to tell me that you don’t remember? Because that portion of the meeting was recorded on video, with your foreknowledge and signed, notarized consent before we started the meeting. Additionally, a copy of the recording, verified by legal witnesses, including an administrative law judge who signed off on its authenticity before passing the copy to your lawyer personally, is also a part of the contract for my participation in this project.”

Corinne paused for a moment, to get herself under control. What is it with these morons? Everyone in Hollywood was convinced they would get her to completely strip and simulate fucking on camera. And every person in the world who knew who she was, was convinced that she was fucking anything with a dick, and for some, anything with a pulse west of the Nevada border.

“Now—” She started to speak again, before being interrupted by the producer across the table from her once more.

She listened to Conrad rant for a while, but after the first few sentences of him trying to convince God-only-knew-who that he was right and she was going to do the sex scene that had not been in the original draft of the screenplay when she’d read and approved the role, she tuned him out. Instead, she pulled out her cell phone and tapped a message to her lawyer. Then she stood, and turned to walk out of the conference room in the studio while still fiddling with her phone. She got as far as the door before she felt a hand grab her shoulder and pull her back, trying to force her back around and into the punch she didn’t see coming until the last second.

“You little bitch! You don’t get to walk away from me when I am talking to you!”

She managed to drop her shoulder and turn her head slightly to roll with the punch, but the impact still hurt. She set her phone on the ledge at the bottom of the whiteboard with the back towards the room, and turned back to the producer that had attacked her, taking a step closer into the room and forcing him to back up a step.

“Why did you hit me? What makes you think it is acceptable to hit anyone, ever? Do you really think you have the right to be violent towards people that disagree with you? What kind of man area you that you think hitting a girl half your size is acceptable?”

“I’ll hit anyone I think needs to get their head on straight. Want me to hit you again?” He took another swing at her, and made contact with her once more, this time on her left cheekbone below her eye. She rolled with the punch once more, this time much more effectively, but the impact was clearly visible on the video recording her phone was making.

“Last chance to come back and make the movie, or I will end your career, you little skank! Why not fuck on screen? Everyone does it! Even Halle Berry did it for real in Monster’s Ball a few years ago! What makes you so much more important than her that you won’t even show your tits to the camera?”

“And if I say no, are you going to beat me up until I agree? I know that you hit Lacey White last year until she agreed to do your stupid scene. She paid for it, too. She is out of the industry now because you showed her body off on camera like you did.”

“So I hit her. What of it? She had it coming. Nobody tells me how to run my projects! Not, Lacey, not you, not anyone! She got what she deserved. If I tell you to, if I so much as snap my fingers at you, you will go out there and fuck anyone I put in the scene for you, just like anyone else who works on my movies. I don’t care who you are or what awards you won! You are the same as any other pathetic, trashy little whore of an actress sleeping their way through anyone they think will help their pathetic little career!”

“Fuck you, asshole. You’re nothing but a piece of gutter trash with delusions of grandeur. I mean, seriously, how the fuck you ever convinced someone to give you money to make the pig manure you are turning out is beyond comprehension. And with your penchant for beating up women, you should be castrated, you fucking pussy.” The words were low and full of contempt and malice, but loud enough to be heard on the smartphone on the whiteboard...

“You little bitch!” was quickly followed by a bodily rush and swinging of fists. It didn’t end well. For Corinne or Conrad. Especially Conrad.

The difference between someone who liked to fight and someone who knew how to fight quickly became apparent to anyone who’d ever trained who saw the footage later on. Conrad threw punch after punch, and while a few landed glancing blows to Corinne’s face as she twisted and turned and rolled while working to block and counter each strike, she found her footing and quickly began to work towards the offensive. The tide turned as the fight raged, and after nearly a minute of furious flailing, Corinne’s training came fully to the fore and ended the fight.

A hard punch to the center of Conrad’s chest threw him back on his heels, and when he tried to catch his missing breath, a leaping front kick shattered his jaw and knocked him, unconscious, to land on his back onto the conference room table. He didn’t stop there, though, as he fell across the other side to a hard landing in a heap on the cold hard cement floor in a pile of chairs.