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PROLOGUE

LOST STARS

Despite the crush of tourists stor the sidewalks year after year, Hollywood Boulevard is a place best viewed behind a pair of polarized lenses and lowered expectations

Froes of decay, the tacky souvenir shops hawking plastic statues of Marilyn in her windblohite dress, and the seela before the sunburned, white-sneaker-wearingfor does not exist there

In a city that feeds off youth and beauty, Hollywood Boulevard more closely resembles a former screen siren who’s seen better days The incessant sunshine is a harsh and brutal coe spot

Yet for those who knohere to look (and those fortunate enough to boast a spot on the guest list), it also serves as an oasis of the city’s hottest nightclubs—a sort of hedonistic haven for the young, fabulous, and rich

For Madison Brooks, the boulevard was everything she’d drealobe she’d had as a kid, the one that showered slitter over a n, but she never expected it would Unlike those clueless tourists expecting to see their favorite celebrities hanging by their Walk of Fas to all who passed by, Madison knew exactly what she’d find

She did her due diligence

Left nothing to chance

After all, when planning an invasion, it’s best to familiarize yourself with the lay of the land

And now, only a few short years after exiting that grimy bus station in don LA, her face was on the cover of nearly every azine, every billboard The toas officially hers

While the journey was far ed to surpass everyone’s expectations but her own Most le person froht to the top Ulti so known, so lauded, so connected, she’d command full, no-questions-asked access to one of LA’s hottest nightclubs long after it had closed for the night

In a rare e of the vacant Night for Night terrace The heels of her Gucci stilettos sliding gracefully against the smooth stone floor, she pressed a hand to her heart and bowed toward the skyline, ihts as an audience of hters raised in her honor

The aed elaborate perforrubby stuffed ani liht of Madison dancing and singing before the her for the day those secondhand toys would be replaced by real, live screa fans She never once doubted her dream would become a reality

Madison hadn’t beco, or depending on others Discipline, control, and steely deterh the irl (albeit one with serious acting chops), beneath the salacious headlines was a young and powerful girl who’d seized control of her destiny and made it her bitch

Not that she’d ever ad Better to let them think she was a princess whose life flowed effortlessly The lie provided a shield that kept the the truth Those who dared scratch beneath the surface never got very far The road to Madison’s past was jammed with so many roadblocks even the most deter about her unparalleled beauty—her hair the color of waruy who’d recently interviewed her for Vanity Fair) He also described her violet eyes as shadowed by a lushly dark nimbus of lashes used to alternately reveal and conceal And wasn’t there apearlescent or incandescent or some other descriptor that translates to radiant?

Funny how he began the interview as just another jaded journalist sure he could break her Convinced that their vast age difference—she being eighteen, he hovering way past forty (ancient in co with his superior IQ (his assu sorettable that would send her career into a tailspin, only to walk away fro entirely frustrated, if not a little infatuated Saly ad different about Madison Brooks She wasn’t your average starlet

She leaned deeper into the night, swept her fingers across her lips, and arced her ar of kisses to her i

below So captured by the sheer unbridled giddiness of all she’d accomplished, she lifted her chin in triumph and released a shout so thunderous it blotted out the incessant soundtrack of traffic and sirens below

It felt good to let go

To allow herself, for one brief instant, to be as wild and untamed as she’d been as a kid

“I did it!” she whispered to herself, the i in the distance, but mostly to those who’d doubted her, even tried to thwart her

The second ti since abandoned to slip to the surface, amazed at how easy it was to summon that voice—another re the reckless way she’d behaved earlier, she wondered if she really wanted to