Alyson Noel - Blacklist

But just like every other day, the tray of lumpy food shot past, the slot slammed shut, and Madison’s cries for help languished hollow and unheard.

She kicked the food aside and glanced around the small room, searching for something she might’ve missed, something she could use to defend herself with. Paul had taught her how to see past the mundane. Nearly everything has a dual purpose, he’d told her. Even the most ordinary item can be used as a defense. But even if she could fashion her stiletto heel into a weapon, there was no opponent—no one to fight. She was trapped all alone in her cinder-block cell.

With a frustrated sigh, she turned her attention to the pictures of her eight-year-old self spread across the ceiling and walls. The repeating image was occasionally spliced by a random strip of mirror meant to reflect the sorry state she currently found herself in. In the photo, her hair was tangled, her feet dirty and bare, an old doll dangled from the tips of her fingers as she regarded the camera with a deep violet stare.

It was the same picture someone had sent Paul as an unspoken threat.

The one he’d assured her had burned long ago with everything else from her past.

In the ten years since the photo was taken she’d traveled such a great distance, rose to great heights, only to come full circle and find herself as powerless, desperate, and filthy as she’d been as a child.

Everything Paul had told her was a lie. Her past had never been erased. It had been there all along, patiently waiting for just the right moment to remind her of the sins she’d committed on her rise to the top.

Someone had connected the dots between the hopeless child she’d been to the triumphant star she’d become.

Someone had uncovered the darker truth of her journey—the lies she’d told, the people she’d betrayed—and now they were making her pay.

While she refused to believe Paul was behind it—he’d been protecting her for too long to turn on her now—she couldn’t rule out the idea that maybe someone had gotten to him. Either way, it was clear she could no longer count on him to find her.

Absently, she ran a finger over the web of fresh scars that covered her knuckles and hands—a reminder of an earlier bid to escape that had resulted in a broken pinkie, a badly strained wrist, and the loss of three nails. She’d acted impulsively, allowed herself to be driven by fear. It was a mistake she would not make again. Her next attempt had to succeed. Failure was no longer an option.

She remained like that, staring at the wall and formulating a plan, the images of her past and present selves merging into one, until the last meal was delivered and the cell went dark once again.

BEAUTIFUL IDOLS

Innocent Until Proven Guilty, Yo!

By Layla Harrison

Warning: If you landed on this blog looking to revel in the usual sarcastic celebrity snark fest, then you might want to get out while you can and save your clicks and comments for Perez Hilton, Popsugar, or wherever you go to fuel up on your daily dose of Hollywood gossip when you’re done reading me.

Don’t even try to pretend we’re monogamous.

I know you’ve been clicking around.

While I’m usually all too happy to provide the sort of low-level, derisive, Hollywood dirt you’ve come to crave, today I’m afraid I’m unable unwilling to come out and play.

Unless you’ve been hiding under the proverbial rock, you’re probably aware that Aster Amirpour has been arrested for the murder of Madison Brooks. A good source confirms the Bravado Channel even cut a very special Real Housewives of Hades episode in order to report the breaking story, and I think we can all agree that the willingness to preempt the daily digressions of everyone’s favorite cloven-heeled, cleavage-enhanced, pitchfork-wielding blondes shows just how very serious this story is.

As it turns out, it is serious, and I was there when it happened. Which means I watched in horror as an innocent person was unfairly handcuffed and hauled away in a squad car in front of dozens of paparazzi.

Until you’ve watched someone being accused of a heinous crime you know they did not commit , then you probably won’t have any empathy for what I’m going through now. Thing is, I know beyond a shadow of doubt—well beyond any and all reasonable doubt—that Aster Amirpour is innocent . Which means I will not write about her arrest in my usual way.

While I’m more than happy to continue to report on all manner of Hollywood debauchery, I cannot and will not use this blog to bring down an innocent or perpetuate a story that simply isn’t true.

Also, as we so often seem to forget during times like these, allow me to remind you that our legal system works on a little thing called the presumption of innocence , which translates to mean: the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on the one who denies .

Look it up:

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/

presumption+of+innocence

546 Comments:

Anonymous

Your a fucking idiot.

MadisonFan101

Your friend is a murderer and you’re both going to hell.

RyMadLives

Aster Amirpour is a slut and a murderer and everyone knows it but you.

StarLovR

You’re blog is as ugly and boring and basic as you are.

CrzYLuVZomby38

If the dress don’t fit, you must acquit! But we all know it fits, so . . .

AsterMustDie

I hope you end up as dead as Madison.

Layla Harrison sat at her desk, mindlessly sipping her coffee and glaring at the comments section emblazoned across her computer screen. She was supposed to be working. Supposed to be making her mark by ensuring that the party to herald the launch of Ira Redman’s new Unrivaled tequila label was the most hyped, most talked-about party of the season. Instead, she was using company time (along with the company computer) to read the comments a bunch of media-manipulated morons had left on her blog.

“Innocent or guilty?”

Layla looked up to find Emerson, the guy from a few cubicles over, standing too close for comfort and peering over her shoulder.

With a click, Layla minimized the tab along with the other pic on her screen—the one of a frightened and pale Aster being ushered into a police car, the headline above it screaming, Party Promoter Aster Amirpour Arrested for the Murder of Madison Brooks!

It wasn’t like she needed to study it. She’d stood right beside Tommy Phillips and watched the whole sordid scene play out just one week before.

“Definitely, one hundred percent not guilty,” Layla snapped. To Emerson the case was little more than a hot piece of gossip about a fellow Unrivaled employee. It wasn’t personal for him like it was for her. She resented him using it as an icebreaker, and had no problem letting him know it.

“Not like it matters.” Emerson regarded her through wide topaz-colored eyes that his thick lashes and perfectly groomed brows only seemed to enhance. It was Layla’s first day on the job, and it was already the second time she’d been on the receiving end of his go-to condescending expression. Thankfully she’d started midweek, so there were only two more days left until the weekend.

The first was when she got lost in the maze of identical cubicles on her way back from the break room, and Emerson escorted her to her desk with an eye roll and an audible sigh. Layla had spent the next half hour silently fuming. How was she supposed to recognize hers when they all looked the same? When it came to designing his clubs, Ira Redman spared no expense. So why wouldn’t she expect a cool millennial campus, brimming with espresso bars, basketball courts, spa rooms, and maybe even a yoga studio or meditation den? But the Unrivaled Nightlife corporate offices, which basically amounted to a study in greige with their matching wall-to-wall carpet and workstations, were so opposite of what she’d envisioned—so disappointingly bland—that when she’d first walked in, she was sure she’d arrived at an accounting firm.