Influencer (Influencing Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Life is almost perfect.

  The only thing that could make it better right now would be having a blueberry pancake to eat because I am famished.

  Suddenly Ryan wakes up and rolls over to face me and as if reading my brainwaves telepathically, he kisses me on the lips and asks if I want pancakes for breakfast.

  I’m a lucky girl.

  Then he tells me to relax because he is going to make them and will bring them in when they are ready so we can eat in bed.

  I really am lucky.

  As I watch his naked body walking away from me, I wish I had the confidence to sleep in the nude. As it is, I still insist on wearing pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt to bed. I might have a drop dead gorgeous boyfriend and thousands of guys on PhoGlo trying to get me to sleep with them on a daily basis but I’m still the same girl who thinks she could do with losing a little weight and worries that her bum looks big in almost everything.

  Speaking of PhoGlo, I’m aware I should probably show my face on there today and give my followers a little update on how my Saturday morning is going. When you have millions of followers, not only do you get paid a fortune to promote to them, but you also have the responsibility to keep in touch with them and let them know what you are doing.

  It’s like your best friend. You check in with them every day and see what’s new. I have to do the same. Except I do it with 14.6 million best friends.

  As I rummage around on the duvet for my phone, I hear Ryan’s footsteps coming back towards me down the hallway and I wonder if the pancakes are ready in record time.

  But then I see him enter the room and there is no plate of pancakes in his hand. But there is a pure white envelope with a gold stamp on the front.

  ‘It’s for you’ Ryan says, as he casually tosses it across the bedroom towards me.

  I surprise myself by catching it before it flies past my head and Ryan fist pumps the air in celebration at my amazing skills as he leaves the room again. I laugh as I turn the envelope over in my hand and look at the front of it.

  Ryan is right. It is addressed to me. Whoever sent it must have good contacts because I only started telling people that I was living here two weeks ago. But I don’t recognise the handwriting on the front and so I carefully open the envelope, marvelling at the beautiful stamp on the cover as I do. I pull out a thick piece of embossed, gold-edged card and feel a surge of excitement as I realise that it’s a party invitation.

  It’s from Zack Reynolds, a social media star who made it big posting short videos of himself to PhoGlo back when the platform first launched. A few years later and he is now the most followed account on the app. Mason Manor is second.

  I know that annoys her.

  It’s his 21st birthday next week and he’s taking everybody to The Bahamas on his yacht. He says it will be the social media event of the year and I have no doubt about that. The photos from this day will be seen by billions of people all around the world, looking at their mobile phone screens and wishing they were there themselves.

  And I have an invitation.

  He had already pre-invited everybody by direct message a couple of months ago but now I have the official invitation in my hand. Little Emily Bennett from Billericay. Invited to the biggest social media party of the year. Of course I will be attending and I have no doubt that my best friend will be there too.

  After all, it isn’t a party until Mason Manor walks in.

  #SnailMail

  Mason Manor

  So I woke up to an invitation in my letterbox. It was in a pretty little envelope and even had a cute red stamp on it. Who knew that people sent post these days? I get 99.9% of my correspondence via my PhoGlo account but it’s always nice to get some old-fashioned mail from a smiling postman every now and again.

  It’s an invitation from Zack Reynolds to his 21st birthday party next weekend. Of course, I know who he is. He’s the only person on PhoGlo who has more followers than me.

  How annoying.

  But I’ve met Zack before and he’s a great guy, so of course I will be attending.

  After all, it’s not a party until I walk in.

  I shoot a quick message off to my bestie, Emily, to make sure she will be going to the party too. I expect she will be, and I expect she will also have her new boyfriend in tow. But that’s okay, Ryan is a great guy and I can see how happy he is making her. And it’s not as if there will be a shortage of male talent on that yacht for me to mingle with.

  Mason Manor is still on the market.

  Form an orderly queue boys.

  Of course there’s much for me to do before I touch down in Miami and hop aboard Zack’s yacht next weekend. I’ve got the launch of my fashion line in Paris on Monday. I have to be in Mykonos on Wednesday to help promote the latest luxury hotel that has opened on the Greek island. And Friday sees me in Tokyo to support my good friend and musician, Tesha, as she begins her world tour.

  It’s a lot of travelling but it’s made a lot easier by the fact that I now have my own private plane.

  The MileHighManor.

  I’m certainly getting my money’s worth out of it since I purchased it last month, which is good because it set me back $15million. And even then, it’s second hand. It used to be owned by a famous basketball player and he give me a discount on the sale in exchange for me promoting his latest sneaker design to my millions of followers. It was a pleasure to do business with him. He was a proper businessman.

  Not like the one I used to be forced to work with.

  It’s been two months since Emily killed Sebastian and I killed his murderous hitman, although to the rest of the world he was just known as my creepy stalker. Since then things have been good. Emily and I are now free to grow our brands how we want to and grow them we have. I’m now closing in on 200 million followers and while Emily is some way behind me, she is still doing very well for herself. Not private-jet well, but I let her ride on my plane sometimes, if I’m not using it.

  After all, that’s what best friends are for.

  And there’s also the fact that I am forever indebted to Emily. It was her master plan that resulted in the two of us escaping the influence of Sebastian and I will be eternally thankful to her for that. I had always been too afraid to try and get away from him on my own. I’d seen too many people I knew die at the hands of his callus hitman.

  But Emily was brave and bold enough to show me that it was possible and it’s all thanks to her that we are able to enjoy the kind of lives we are living now. If Sebastian was still around then we would still be under his control, forced into obeying his every command and constantly in fear for the lives of ourselves and our loved ones.

  But Sebastian is no more.

  Now Emily and I are in control.

  The King is dead.

  Long live the Queens.

  Our success since the collapse of Sebastian’s empire just goes to show that we didn’t need him to make us into stars. We were perfectly capable of growing our audiences ourselves, without him and his team of mysterious hackers running our accounts for us. Okay, so he may have given us a head start but he also threatened our lives and the lives of the people we loved so I think we can be excused for that.

  Now that Emily and I are in privileged positions, we want to be able to give back and not just with our charity work. We want to help bring through other influencers and give them a chance to have all their dreams come true.

  It wasn’t long ago that Emily and I were just anonymous wannabes, desperate for somebody to notice us and give us a chance to show how productive we could be in growing not just our own brands but the brands of others. There are millions of girls out there just like Emily and I and it’s only right that we help them as much as we can.

  There’s no need to be too competitive about it. It’s a big world and there’s plenty of room for us all.

  That’s why every day at 2pm no matter where we are in the world, Emily and I both pick an account on PhoGlo and urge our followers to give them
a follow too. Not all of them do, of course, but many of them will and that’s usually good for at least hundreds of thousands of followers suddenly flooding their accounts and launching their careers in an instant.

  When you have as many followers as we do then there’s no limit to the opportunities available to you and we give two people that same prospect every single day. It’s up to them what they do with it then but usually they make a big success of their newfound platform and my inbox is constantly full of thank you messages from those who I have helped. I’m sure Emily’s inbox is the same.

  We are filling the role that Sebastian played when he was alive by plucking people from obscurity and offering them the chance of fame and fortune except that instead of all the threats and dishonest posts, we are simply giving them support and encouragement.

  None of the people we help are told what to post.

  None of them are monitored, and hacked, and followed.

  And none of them end up dead in a hotel room.

  This is the age of the influencer and Emily and I are at the forefront of it while cavemen like Sebastian are extinct.

  It feels good to be successful.

  It feels good to help others.

  And it sure does feel good to be free.

  #6DaysBeforeTheParty

  #DuvetDay

  Emily Bennett

  We really should get out of bed. We spent all day in here yesterday and if we’re not careful then we’re going to do the same again today. Although I will admit it is hard to get up when you have a gorgeous man lying next to you who pulls you back into the sheets every time you try and leave.

  Ryan and I are still very much at the early stages of our relationship, which means we are still very much in the ‘stay in bed all day and have lots of sex’ stage. I’m not complaining. I lead a busy lifestyle and taking some time out to de-stress is exactly what I need. And there’s also the fact that Ryan is a major upgrade on my previous boyfriends. The sex with them could best be described as over in a flash and they all thought breakfast in bed was just the term for when you wake up with last night’s kebab still on your pillow.

  Ryan is certainly different. He is five years older than me and he knows how to treat a woman. And he knows how to mistreat a woman, if you know what I mean. Things are going well. So well in fact that we have been holed away in his apartment now for almost two days straight and I’m still not missing the outside world, not even a little bit.

  Of course it makes it easier to stay connected to events outside of this studio apartment in Brooklyn when you have a mobile phone and so occasionally, in between all the lovemaking, and the pancakes, and sharing stories about our past, I open up my PhoGlo app and see what my ‘glowers’ are up to.

  I have been fairly lax with my own social media updates recently, but I know my followers will understand. The few posts I have uploaded have mainly been photos of Ryan on his pillow or the cool artwork on the walls in his apartment and so I’m sure they are all aware of what I am doing at this moment in time.

  When you fall in love, everything changes and suddenly the things you were doing before don’t seem as important. I used to think that if I hadn’t spent the day finding the coolest images and best video content for my account then it had been wasted, but now I see that there are more important things in life than that. Instead of running around some city or party looking for the content of my next caption, I am happy simply to let any ideas come to me as I enjoy living my life.

  I used to think that nothing could beat a picture of a sunset from a sandy beach or a video from a poolside cabana where the beds were occupied by beautiful people and the tables were occupied by expensive bottles of champagne.

  But now I see that a photo of a stack of blueberry pancakes made by my boyfriend is just as good, if not better, just like the video of him dancing around in his underwear to his favourite song instantly beat out all the videos I have on my phone of a crowd of strangers dancing to a DJ’s setlist.

  I used to want the biggest things in life, like the VIP tickets, and the red carpets, and the adulation of millions. But now I appreciate the simpler things in life, like a lazy Sunday morning in my pyjamas, and instead of craving the attention and affection of millions of strangers online, I only want attention from one person now. And he is always happy to give it to me, without me needing to edit, filter and hashtag anything beforehand.

  Life is sweet right now. And as I lie here under the duvet with an empty breakfast plate on one side of me and my lover on the other, I feel like I would be happy to stay like this forever.

  But I know I can’t. We only have today before our busy schedules will tear us apart again and I don’t know exactly when I will see Ryan again. He is due to fly out to the West Coast tomorrow, with a full week of stand-up shows in LA, San Francisco and Seattle to perform. I’m heading in the opposite direction, across the ocean to Europe where I have several meetings and events to attend as I continue to grow my online brand.

  We are both living our dreams now, each being paid to do the one thing we always wanted to do, and we are extremely lucky to be in the positions we are. But it’s easy to travel the world and give all your focus and attention to your career when you are single.

  It’s not so easy when all you want to do is stay at home in bed with the person that you love.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ Ryan asks me, suddenly making me aware of how quiet I have been for the last half an hour. The sound from the television in the background has helped break any silence between us, but it still isn’t enough to cover up the fact that we are both obviously feeling pretty down about the fact that we won’t be waking up together again for a while.

  ‘Nothing. Just wishing there was some way I could fit you into my suitcase this week’ I reply, rolling over in the bed to face him again and basking in the warm glow that comes when you are this close to your favourite person in the world.

  ‘If you chop my legs off then I should fit’ he says, ‘although you’d have to wheel me around in a chair at the other end and that might suck.’

  I laugh and kiss him on the forehead, noticing again as I do how perfect and clear his dark skin is compared to my pasty, blemished features right now. It’s nothing twenty minutes with some concealer couldn’t fix but I enjoy the fact that Ryan doesn’t care about me looking my best for him at all times. He told me he prefers the natural look and while I seriously doubt he prefers me with no makeup on and dressed in his baggy clothes compared to when I am all dolled up and wearing a tight dress and heels, I appreciate the sentiment.

  He makes me feel good about myself all the time and in this day and age it’s rare to find somebody who does that. Especially when you are a social media celebrity. Just because I have millions of fans it doesn’t mean that I don’t still receive my daily share of nasty comments and offensive messages.

  Haters. Trolls. Idiots. There’s no escape from them when you live most of your life online. All I can do is block, report and delete. But I still see the messages. They still chip away at my confidence and threaten to break my positive attitude. It takes so much work not to let them win. But I can handle it. I’m a big girl and I knew what I was getting myself into when I decided to try and become a full time influencer.

  Okay so I hadn’t been prepared for Sebastian and his reign of terror, but I had been ready for all the abuse and negativity that would come as soon as I started to achieve good results. People just love to try and tear down anybody that is having more success than they are. It’s human nature and I don’t get mad at it anymore but it’s still always there, threatening my mental health.

  It’s annoying how I can get 5,000 comments on a post and 4,999 of them can be beautiful, heart-warming and empowering messages yet it’s the one lone message from a hater that sticks in my mind and cancels out all of the others.

  Even now as I lie here beside Ryan enjoying what are our last few hours together for a while, my mind keeps returning to the nasty comment I re
ceived on the photo I posted of him yesterday.

  Thousands of my fans told me how hot he was, and how lucky I was to have him, and how jealous they were that he was my man. But one person, a PhoGlo user called @jf_872, wasn’t so kind. This hateful individual chose to make disgusting comments about the colour of Ryan’s skin and said how I should be ashamed to be seen with him. Of course, I reported this blatant racism instantly, and I’m sure many of my followers did too, because the next time I checked I saw several of my fans commenting that this vile person’s account had been deleted.

  I know Ryan didn’t see the message, because he barely checks his own PhoGlo account, never mind mine, but I saw it and it makes me so mad that there are people like that out there in the world. I’m out here trying to spread positivity but there are still people trying to bring me down. But I can’t let them win. I refuse to let them win. And my 14.6 million glowers refuse to let them win too.

  Besides, I know it could be worse. Dealing with trolls and haters online is nothing compared to dealing with a man who threatens the lives of you and your family. If I can beat Sebastian, then I can beat some sad loser sitting in a basement somewhere typing nasty words into their keyboards.

  Don’t mess with me.

  Don’t mess with my mum.

  And definitely don’t mess with my man.

  Because I’ll get you.

  Just as soon as I’ve finished my pancakes.

  #FromRussiaWithLove

  Ivan Ilghiz

  Don’t mess with a Russian criminal. Especially not one with millions of rubles to spend. Because he will get you.

  Particularly if you killed his boss and ruined their blossoming business.