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I shook my head.
“I figured. Your dad wouldn’t have told you unless you needed to know, which apparently, you didn’t.”
“You knew my dad?”
West nodded. “We did some business. Small things. He helped me with a supplier when mine went bust and took fifty grand of my money.” His expression tightened. “I owe him a lot. Fifty grand to be exact, and now, you. If you need anything in the future…”
I swallowed. I hated talking money and hearing how much my dad used it to help others… “Donate it. I don’t need it. Cancer charities need it more.”
He stared at me for only a second before a slight smile touched his lips. “I’ll write a check tonight.”
Mia sniffed. “Sorry. Period.”
West didn’t bat an eyelid. “Rather you crying than shouting about the milk being on the wrong shelf.”
“Everything has a place, West, even the milk.”
I sipped to control my laughter.
“Anyway,” West continued, turning so he was fully facing me. “The Fox family didn’t become so predominant in Vegas without some scandal. It’s been a generational thing, that’s for sure. The…legend, if you call it that, says that Damien’s grandfather screwed a casino out of half a million dollars. He used that to open a brothel operating as a dance show. He was caught and put in prison, but his son—Damien’s dad—got control of the business. He was old enough to use it wisely and funneled it into strip clubs.” He paused. “The next rumors are more personal, and while I don’t feel entirely comfortable, you asked, and, well, he’s never confirmed or denied them to me.”
“Did you ever ask?”
“Once. Never again.” He ran his hand through his hair. “When he was a child, his mom apparently left his dad. Some stuff happened, and then some tragedy followed it, and the family has never been the same since.”
Hmm.
Now, I was the one who didn’t feel entirely comfortable.
“That sounds like the makings of an HBO show,” Mia noted, sipping her wine. “Nobody’s life is that dramatic.”
“Bravo would disagree with you,” I replied.
She tilted her glass in deference.
“But what about him?” I asked West. “He’s done nothing but annoy the crap out of me for a couple weeks now, and I know nothing about the man.”
Except the fact he has a damn big cock and the filthy mouth to match it.
“He’s a good guy,” West said simply. “His business might not be totally above board, but we all break the rules once in a while. Personally, he’s not a bad person. He’s just private, and there’s no crime in being private.”
No, there wasn’t.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
Twelve
Damien
I leaned against the wall, barely ten feet from the pure black headstone with my mother’s name on it.
Her name was engraved in white, but the morning sunlight glinted off it as if it were silver. It was almost blinding to look at the stone—but always painful. The stone was perfectly polished, but the grass was only barely trimmed. Weeds licked at the back and sides of the memorial, too leafy and green to be grass or wildflowers.
Not that wildflowers would grow here. It was a miracle the grass did.
She was closer to the desert than the city. Tucked out of the way, safely away from the hubbub and remembrance of the city she’d called home her entire life.
A glance to the headstone to her right reminded me that it didn’t matter how far away she was; she was never alone.
I ignored it. That one hurt more than my mother’s.
That stone belonged to the catalyst.
The person who, through no fault of their own, destroyed everything.
Who shredded my life as I once knew it.
Looking at their name was almost too much to bear. Sometimes, I could do it. Other times, it was unthinkable.
Today was one of those other days. It hurt too much. It was one of the days where I wish I had my mother here to talk to. It was a day where I wished I pay every cent I had just to get one answer from her. To hear her voice for a split second would be worth everything I owned. I’d sell my soul to feel her hug me again—to be wrapped in her warm embrace and be enveloped by the smell of warm vanilla and lavender.
The memory of my mother was more than my life was worth. I was sure of few things, but that was one of them.
Cold stone dug into my back through my t-shirt.
It was like ice, despite the blazing heat from the sun overhead.
My mom’s name was still nothing but a mass of reflection from the light.
Yet, I stared.
I stared until I was blinded.
Until my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Until I turned out of the tucked-away cemetery and headed back to the city, ignoring the buzzing against my thigh.
***
My feet pounded against the asphalt rhythmically. I couldn’t say that I liked running—I tolerated it. It was an excellent stress reliever. There was something soothing about the pounding of my feet against the concrete paths that lined the city that beat the emotion right out of me.
