From Fame to Ruin

Chapter 2

Ricardo Jonson Santos, mostly known as RJ Santos, walked into Heathrow Airport fourteen hours ahead of time. He kept his head lowered, hands tucked inside his pockets, and pondered the wisdom of boarding a commercial flight. He promised the band he’d charter a plane to São Paulo, but the earliest he could find available was for tomorrow afternoon. Ricardo found he couldn’t stomach staying longer than necessary.

Yes, he was aware only sixteen hours separated his flight from a chartered one.

Yes, he was aware if he was recognized, chaos would ensue, especially after his insane trial a few hours earlier.

But he needed to go. He’d never wanted to leave his motherland more than he did today.

The media had been hounding him for months. They crowded him, suffocated him, and Ricardo was an edge away from exploding. Police had to escort him to and from the courthouse, practically beat a path to his rental. One would think every media outlet in the world was parked there in front of the Central London County Courthouse, mindless of the hard downpour and freezing temperatures.

His fans had been there too, holding soggy supportive and encouraging banners, shouting their love and undying devotion. He"d given them a halfhearted wave and driven away, his teeth welded and his grip white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He’d caught some tails but shook them off easily enough. Still, he drove straight to the rental company and exchanged the blue Audi for a black SUV and patted himself on the back for a job well done. But when he neared his hotel, there they were again, sprinkled everywhere like colored confetti.

Some of the more reasonable were parked across the street, waiting inside their vans with black tinted windows. Some clustered in groups under huge umbrellas, smoking or drinking from steaming cardboard cups; others stood, hunched in their coats, rubbing their gloved hands, looking as miserable as Ricardo felt.

He drove past the hotel, past the paparazzi without a sideways glance, and considered booking into a different one. Deciding against it, he headed straight for Heathrow and sat inside the warm cab of the SUV while browsing for the closest available flight to São Paulo. The earliest flight he found was to Rio de Janeiro, so he booked a seat and strolled into the airport. He kept the bill of his baseball cap low—no need to tempt fate. If he were recognized, he’d rent a conference room and wait away the time boxed inside four walls.

He got himself a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun from McDonald’s since he’d skipped breakfast in the morning. His stomach had been too raw for any kind of food. Then he strolled to Terminal 5, sipping and munching. The pretense of normalcy helped more than he’d expected. The tension in his back and the pressure of the past few months slowly unspooled and dissipated. It was refreshing to be amid a crowd and not draw attention. It was a foreign sensation, this feeling of invisibility.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed solitude; his life had been one chaotic rush ever since the release of his first album, Garage Dorm, four years ago. He’d been twenty-one, a law school student, and between his studies and all the tours, he’d yet to pause and take a breath. The band had visited countless countries, giving thousands of autographs during every concert and posing for countless photos. Fans swarmed their website, the lobby of whichever hotel they happened to be in and ran after their limo. It had been all he, Nicolau and Noel wanted—their fantastic dream come true. One that began during their senior high.

Garage DormRicardo cherished those memories, cruising down the clogged, busy streets of São Paulo in his father’s Chevy, while they sang along with the radio. Despite all that, there was this restlessness in Ricardo that had never gone away, never abated.

They’d picked Nelson, the guitarist, during their first year of college. They’d often meet in his parent’s garage, or Nicolau’s garage, doing small gigs in bars and pubs and college dives. By junior year, they’d rented a small, soundproof storage room. By then they were doing nightclubs, parties, and small festivals in and around São Paulo.

When their album hit during their senior year, it hit hard. Because of their rambling schedules, it took Ricardo another three and a half years to finish law school and pass the OAB exams, widely known as The Bar. Hell, he’d just been sworn in the ceremony a few months back. His degree still shone, bright, new, and unused.

The gateway was still empty—and no wonder. No one in their right frame of mind would opt to sit fourteen hours to wait for a flight. He chose a seat at random in the first row, finished his cinnamon bun, and played CSR with the remaining ten percent of his phone’s battery. Once dead, he pocketed the device, sipped the now cool coffee, and people-watched for a good long while. Some strolled, some hurried, others ran.

The place was jammed, the sounds too loud. Yet, no one spared him more than a passing glance. It was thrilling—no, it was nostalgia Ricardo felt, for the anonymity of his youth, something probably forever gone. Ricardo frowned, considering his dark thoughts. He wasn’t a pessimist, never had been. It was leftover stress from the trial, he was sure.

He was still sipping the cold coffee when his wandering eyes spotted her. She moved briskly, her strides purposeful, dragging behind a small suitcase. She had a carry-on looped over one shoulder and a determined air that stated she didn’t take bullshit kindly.

Ricardo would remember later it was the hair, a waterfall of glossy red cascading down her back, that first captured his attention. It made him take stock of the woman, of the way the red contrasted against her porcelain complexion, complimented the pink hue of her high cheekbones. She was dressed in dark dress pants with a matching short jacket, the color offset by the beige camisole she wore underneath. A long black coat dangled from her arm. Her shoes were dark with no heels, and sensible wear for long traveling.

When her tawny eyes, direct and piercing, met his, Ricardo experienced a shocking sensation. Something inside him wiggled and jimmied. The world stopped spinning, all the sounds muted and the crowd faded into the background. Then, his system jolted, and the world resumed its beat. And just like that, Ricardo was aware something in his world changed. It could have been something as small as how he liked women to dress, the way they moved, their hair color, or his preference in general. Whichever was true, Ricardo knew he’d always remember that moment on that frosty day at Heathrow Airport.

* * *

Carol took the seat nearest the window and stared, unseeing, at the first snowflakes falling to the tarmac. Grimly, she pondered the past thirteen years of her life. It wasn’t a great number, but it was more than half the years of her existence. In retrospect, it seemed so little, despite all she’d done. She’d built her life here from nothing, and she’d vowed never to give up what she had, never to return to that sterile, dry reality. She’d told her grandmother as much on her last trip to Brazil three years ago. And here she was, her life packed in carefully labeled boxes, with nothing but memories left behind.

She was going back home.

Home? Was it really that?

She hadn’t lived in the sprawling family mansion since she was a scared eight-year-old, haunting the vast halls, skulking in the shadows, afraid to be seen, but wishing someone would.

Shipping her off to a boarding school across the ocean had been the best thing her family had ever done for her. In the beginning, she’d gone back to Rio for every holiday and extended weekends, then only for the summer and winter breaks, but even that stopped when she’d turned sixteen and realized she had the power to refuse to go back. Her family couldn’t—or wouldn’t—demand her return, and Carol had been happy to oblige. Since then, she’d spent her vacations rotating between three friends. The sense of belonging had never come, but it had been better, way better, than spending her time in a house where even the maid didn’t see her unless ordered to.

She’d lived by her vow, breaking it only once during her freshman year at Oxford, to attend her father’s funeral. That had been three years ago.

And now that her grandmother, her last remaining relative, had kicked the bucket, the burden to keep Montenegro Conglomerate at a steady run had fallen onto Carol’s shoulders.

It wouldn’t have been so bad had her father not left such a mess before he died.

No, not a mess, Carol thought with a mental snort. Mess was such a simple, mundane word for the cluster f**k of chaos her father had left for her to clean.

No, not a mess,According to the attorney, Caesar Dunbar, from Dunbar, Foster & Fonseca, the conglomerate had been falling apart, a deliberate fall, ever since her mother passed away fourteen years ago.

Her father, bless his cold heart, had blamed his wife’s murder on his parents’ refusal to pay her ransom. Carol remembered the grieving man he’d become, but she couldn’t conciliate that image with the man who’d carefully and meticulously plotted and implemented his revenge, slowly bringing on the demise of Montenegro Conglomerate. The knowledge of what her father’s grief had caused the family had come too late to her grandmother, taking its toll on her heart a month ago.

Carol didn’t attend the funeral.

Like a rotten cherry to top it all, her grandmother had claimed Carol’s father to be mentally unstable and sued Elias Trajano, their top competitor, for funneling money off the family business—for thirteen years.

Now that there was no Montenegro left but her, Carol was supposed to return to that empty home in Rio, pick up the Montenegro reins and keep the chariot from plummeting down the cliff.

“Hi.”

Startled from her pity party, Carol glanced around. The airport was packed full of travelers trying to get home for the holiday season, but the gateway was still empty, save for the guy who’d been seated when she’d first arrived.

She gave the man an absent “hi” and checked the time on her phone, relieved there were still eleven hours to go. She’d arrived way too early, but she had nothing to do that she hadn’t already taken care of the previous week when her flight had been originally scheduled. Her life in Europe was over, her friends had left for their winter vacation. She’d given her furniture away and emptied her flat of personal belongings.

She had nothing and no one left here. She’d come close countless times to begging her friends to come with her, and the fact they’d already put their lives on hold for her was the only reason she never voiced her plea. They’d been scheduled to leave the previous week, but Carol had contracted a bacterial infection, and the doctor had told her to postpone her flight until she was well. Livy, Helena, and Joanna had canceled their trip to stay with her, bringing their overnight bag to Livy’s—the only one in their group who owned her flat. They’d fussed and fussed until Carol had had enough, but she was grateful she’d gotten that extra week with them. When the doctor announced she was fit to travel, she’d shooed everyone off. Helena and Joanna had left the previous night. Livy couldn’t find an available flight, so she’d bought a ticket for the noon train to her parents’ estate in Cardiff.

Because staying in the empty flat alone had felt unbearably lonely, Carol had hitched a ride with Livy, since she’d drive near enough to the airport. When she’d gotten a funny look from Livy, she’d claimed she didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. It wasn’t a lie, just an embellished truth. With the snowstorm expected later in the evening that had half of Londoners in a tizzy, traffic would be a nightmare. And now here she was, at the crossroad between two lives: the past she wanted, and the future she did not. Another glance at her phone told her that Livy had boarded, and her last thread to the world she loved stretched thinner. The urge to stand and run until she could no longer think was strong, but she stayed put.

At least, if something happened and she missed this flight, no one could say she didn’t try. She was dropping out of school during the last semester of her senior year, for crying out loud. The thought brought a pang of despair and fear, the latter overwhelming. Her future was an unknown slate and it frightened her to no end, knowing her life had been tossed to the whims of fate.