Illustrious

(Quantum Series, Book 9)

By Marie Force

Chapter 1

Max

I start the day before my fiftieth wedding anniversary the same way I have for the past sixty years—with the industry trades that keep me up to date on the latest Hollywood news and gossip. I’ve never outgrown my desire to know everything that goes on in this town. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are the two weeklies I never miss in print. My tech-savvy kids make fun of me for preferring the print, but I’m old school that way. I like the feel of paper in my hands as I enjoy my morning coffee. I’m not a complete dinosaur, however, as I also subscribe to the online versions, mostly to get the daily updates and alerts when something big happens.

Show business has two speeds: molasses when you’re trying to get a project green-lighted and lightning when the shit hits the fan. I’m perusing the latest issue of Variety when I see it, a small piece about Vivian Stevens publishing a memoir in which she’ll share her “deepest, darkest secrets.”

My heartbeat slows to a crawl, and I nearly choke on my coffee.

At least one of her deepest, darkest secrets is also mine.

She wouldn’t dare write about me, would she?

As if a trapdoor has opened under me, I’m hurled fifty-four years into a past I buried so deeply, even my beloved wife knows nothing about it.

Dear Christ in heaven…

This weekend, Stella and I will celebrate our golden anniversary, first with a family dinner tomorrow night and then with five hundred of our family and friends on Saturday. Then we’re headed to Saint George, Utah, for Christmas with the family I value beyond all the professional accolades, above the fame, the fortune and the many perks of celebrity. My wife, children, grandchildren and tight-knit group of friends are my whole world, and the possibility of anything threatening my marriage or family is a nuclear-level concern to me.

After Christmas, we’re spending ten days in Mexico with the family and the huge posse of friends who are like family. We’ve been looking forward to these next few weeks for months, and the thought of none of it happening because of me and my fifty-four-year-old secret is unbearable.

I’m as rattled as I’ve been in years when I pick up the phone to call my son, Flynn, who’s also my closest friend. His celebrity has eclipsed mine and his mother’s many times over, and not only am I incredibly proud of him, I love him deeply and respect his opinion. He’s street-smart and savvy in a way I’ll never be, which is what I need right now.

After three rings, the call goes to voicemail.

“Flynn, it’s Dad. I need to see you. Immediately. Call me.”

I can’t believe the way my hands tremble as I set down the phone. While I wait for him to call me back, I force myself to read the item about Vivian’s upcoming memoir.

Star of Screen and Stage Vivian Stevens to ‘Spill the Tea’ on Costars, Husbands and Lovers in Highly Anticipated Memoir

Superstar Vivian Stevens will soon publish a memoir spanning her more than fifty-year career in movies and television. Known for her sultry beauty as much as her six husbands, Stevens won her first Best Actress Oscar in 1983 for her performance in the revival of Funny Girl. She went on to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar ten years later in Marlon Jacobs’s tour-de-force film Santana, which swept awards season that year.

She’s also a three-time Emmy award winner for her longtime role as the formidable matriarch Tess Lawson on Collaboration, and a Tony winner for the 2005 revival of My Fair Lady.

Despite her many professional accomplishments, Stevens is perhaps best known for her messy personal life, which has included six husbands, one child, four divorces and the murder of her third husband, stuntman Brock Lawton, which remains unsolved thirty years later.

“I’ve worked with everyone who’s anyone,” Stevens said in a release issued by her publisher ahead of the book’s late January release. “I’ve kept a few secrets that’ll shock the world, and I’m ready to tell the true story behind the glitz and glamour. And what a story it is.”

A bidding war is on behind the scenes to secure the rights to the book’s first excerpt, due to be released in early January.

I’m going to be sick. Vivian had seven husbands. I was the first one, but no one knows that. It was over before it began, forgotten almost as fast as it happened.

The one person who doesn’t know, who can’t ever know, is my beloved Stella, who hates Vivian Stevens with the heat of a thousand suns.

That thought registers one second before the scone I had for breakfast erupts onto my copy of Variety along with two cups of coffee and whatever was left from last night.

I roll up the mess and drop it in the trash before I go into the bathroom that adjoins my office to splash cold water on my face and brush my teeth. My stomach roils with more nausea that I spit into the sink.

This secret has the potential to blow up my entire life and everything I hold dear.

I’ll have to tell Stella—and the kids—about Vivian before they hear it from someone else.

They’ll hate me for this.

I hate myself for it.

Our golden anniversary celebration, Christmas, the trip to Mexico… Hell, the rest of my life with Stella is suddenly at risk, which is something I never would’ve thought possible before this morning.

Another surge of nausea has me hanging over the toilet with the dry heaves.

My cell rings in the other room. I grab a hand towel and hurry to grab it, hoping it’s Flynn. I’m relieved to see the name he gave himself in my phone, No. 1 Son, on the caller ID. Our only son is the youngest of our four children.

“Hey.”

“What’s up, Dad? You sounded weird on that message.”

“Can you come over? Now?”

“As in today?”

“Flynn… Please.”

“Are you sick? Is Mom?”

“Nothing like that, but it’s urgent.”

“Let me move some stuff around. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Thank you.”

I hit the red button to end the call and put the phone on my desk as I drop into the chair that I turn to face the garden. I need something to stare at while I wait for Flynn. He’ll know what to do. He gets shit done in this town. He knows everyone, and everyone knows him. His Oscar-winning career is among the proudest things in my life.

Will a massive scandal that involves me ruin everything for him? For his partners and closest friends at Quantum Productions? They’re like extra children to Stella and me. Are they successful enough in their own right that something blowing up for me can’t touch them?

The possibility that a mistake I made years ago could come back to haunt my wife, our family, Flynn and his partners is the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me.

I’ve rarely experienced this level of fear. My life has been blessed beyond all measure with true love, family, friends, success, money… I have it all, which means I also have everything to lose.

 

Flynn

“Something’s up with my dad,” I tell my wife, Natalie, when she emerges from the bathroom after a shower. I’m holding our youngest son, Bennett, who’s three months old today and not interested in his morning nap.

I watch as she rubs lotion on her arms, which drives me wild, but then everything she does turns me on as much as it did six years ago when we first met. “What do you mean?”

“He left me a frantic-sounding message that he needs to see me right away, and when I talked to him, he said it was urgent but not a health issue for him or Mom.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” She runs a brush through her long, dark, wet hair. That too is sexy. Hell, she’s sexy when she breathes. As much as I’ve loved her from the start, seeing her as a mother to our four children has made me adore her more than I ever thought possible. “I’ll take Ben. You need to get over there.”

“Is it weird that I’m afraid of whatever he’s going to tell me? I’ve never heard him sound like he did on that message.”

“Play it for me.”

While juggling Ben, I find the message on my phone, put it on speaker and press Play, adding volume so she can hear it.

She listens intently, brow furrowed. “He does sound strange.” She comes over to take Ben from me. “I’ve got things covered here.”

“We’ve got the foundation meeting this afternoon.”

“I’ll handle it. Take care of your dad.”

I stand to kiss her and Ben. “I’ll do my best to make the school pickup.” Our oldest, Cecelia, known as Cece, is in kindergarten at the same school where her two younger siblings attend preschool. They love the school and can’t wait to get there every day.

“Text me if you need me to do it.”

“In case I forget to tell you later, you’re the glue that holds this whole thing together.”

“Duh, I know.”

Smiling, I kiss her a second time because I can never resist her. That’s been the case from the first day we met, when her crazy dog Fluff bit me in a Greenwich Village park. Best thing to ever happen to me.

Fluff, a twenty-pound ball of fur who’s now at least a hundred and twenty in dog years, lifts her head off her bed to give me a suspicious look. She’s probably remembering the time she bit my ass when I was face-first in my beloved. I’m sure that’s one of her favorite memories.

“Let me know what’s up with your dad.”

“I will, and I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“We’ll be here.”

As I collect my wallet and keys, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to hear whatever he has to say. I don’t want anything about my blessed life to change. I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth, and I know it. I have the best wife, children, parents, sisters, nieces, nephews, friends and partners. My career is on fire, and I’m still madly in love with my wife after six years together.

Before Nat, I would’ve told you I already had it all, but that wasn’t even close to true. I needed her to have everything. I needed her and our four incredible kids to show me what truly matters in this life.

As the father of four, I drive an SUV full of child seats these days, albeit a black Mercedes GL 450 AMG. My days of being a car slut are mostly in the past, even if I keep my collection in climate-controlled buildings that’re my son Rowan’s favorite places to visit. We had his second birthday party there a few weeks ago.

On the way down the hill that leads into town, I dictate a text to my dad. On the way.

At the next light, I see that he read it, but he doesn’t reply.

I want to call my sisters to see if they know what’s going on, but my dad sounded so strange that I decide to keep this situation to myself until after I see him. If needed, I’ll call the girls then.

The “girls” are the three older sisters who treated me like a baby until I was thirty and begged them to knock it off. Most of the time, they treat me like a grown-up, but they still backslide every now and then.

I take a call from Hayden Roth, my best friend and business partner. “What’s up?”

“Hey, so Cammy Smith is in town and wants a meeting with us.”

A meeting with one of the hottest young actresses in the business would be a top priority at any other time.

“Can you set it up for tomorrow?”

“She was hoping for this afternoon.”

“I can’t today. I’ve got some family stuff to deal with.”

“Everything okay?”

“I hope so. How are Addie and the girls feeling?” Hayden’s entire family has been down hard with the flu for the last two weeks. He’s the only one who’s escaped the plague.

“Better, thankfully. We’re good to go for the party and vacation.”

“I’m glad they rallied in time.”

“Me, too. I would’ve hated to leave them at home alone for Christmas.”

I laugh, because Hayden hates to go anywhere without his baby girls.

“I’ll get with Cammy’s team and set something up for tomorrow. I’ll text you the details.”

“Thanks.”

After I end the call, I change lanes twice in rapid succession, wanting to get to my parents’ house in Beverly Hills, handle whatever’s happening with my dad and get to the kids’ school in time for pickup so Nat will have one less thing to do this afternoon. I’ve got an hour to give my dad before I’ll have to leave to get there in time.

Cece gets nervous if we’re late, so we try not to be late, although we’ve reminded her that LA traffic sometimes results in snafus. We also had to tell her what a snafu is without fully explaining the acronym. Thinking about that makes me smile as I recall Nat and me fumbling our way through it the way we do most things with our sharp-as-a-tack five-year-old. She keeps us on our game, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let me tell you… Having four kids in five years isn’t for the faint of heart, but as I’m about to turn forty on Christmas Day, we moved quickly to have the big family we both wanted. Luckily, my bride is ten years younger than me, which comes in handy, especially after a sleepless night with a fussy baby. Nothing fazes her when it comes to our kids. She was born to be a mother. Whereas a night without sleep wrecks their old man.

I pull into the driveway at my parents’ palatial home and park behind my dad’s black Escalade. He’s remained true to the Cadillac brand even as foreign cars became all the rage. It’s one of many things I tease him about.

I enter the house through the breezeway door that connects the kitchen to the three-car garage. I’m surprised to find my dad standing by the massive kitchen island, looking as shell-shocked as he sounded on the phone. “What’s wrong?”

He brightens slightly at the sight of me and gestures for me to follow him down the hallway to his office.

I go in ahead of him, and he closes a door that’s almost always left open. Max Godfrey doesn’t like being sealed off from his family. “You’re scaring me.”

He sits behind the desk where he’s “held court,” as my sisters and I call it, since we were little kids. My earliest memories occurred in this room as I watched in awe while my dad talked business with some of the biggest stars in the world, helping to put together projects that would go on to be monster hits. He’s as successful a producer as he is an actor and has the awards on the shelf to prove it.

“Did you see the news this morning about Vivian Stevens writing a memoir?”

“I haven’t seen any news today. What about it?”

“It was in Variety. Talked about how she’s spilling her deepest, darkest secrets.”

“So what?”

He looks agonized as he says, “I’m probably her deepest, darkest secret, and when the book is released next month, my life—and my marriage to your mother—will be ruined.”