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Chapter29
Erick
That night, after I get back home from work, I make Hellie put on hiking shoes and a hat. “We’re going for a walk.”
“A walk? Why the hell are we going for a walk?”
“Because I want to show you my land. Unless you want to stay up in here longer?”
She makes a face at the canvas. There are barely any marks, still only a vague sketch. “Fine. Hike. Let’s go.”
I lead her out the back door and toward the hills. “Recognize this?”
“Sure, from my escape attempt.” She makes a face. “That was unpleasant.”
“It’ll be cooler now that we’re near sunset, but still hot. You know that story about it getting freezing in the desert at night? Not around here.”
“It goes from unbearable to slightly bearable.”
“Exactly, but dark.” We take a path I know by heart that winds through an outcropping of rocks and up to the top of a low rise. “Here. Look.”
I gesture into the distance. The desert spreads out like sheets on the earth, pocked with a surprising amount of color. Lights and darks, browns and blues and greens, all of them mixing together to make this strange, alien landscape.
“Beautiful,” she says.
“Do you want to know why I moved out here?”
“Sure. I’d like that.”
I take her hand. She holds onto mine, looking surprised, but doesn’t argue as we start to walk again. I take her on a circuit I’ve walked a thousand times in the past. I don’t tell her, but this is where I used to go when I needed to think. There’s nothing like the quiet of the desert to quiet my brain.
“I come from an intense family. The Costa family. How much do you know about them?”
“I know the rumors. Connected to some shady people.”
“Go ahead, say the ‘M’ word, I know you want to.”
She laughs lightly. “Okay, fine. Everyone says you’re mafia, which I know is true, but I don’t really know what that means, you know?”
“It means, the casinos are only one piece of my business. We import things, illegal things, and we sell them on to distributors. We’re wholesalers, but we deal in weapons, drugs, anything that can’t be purchased through legitimate avenues.”
“Okay, so you’re rich and you’re shady. Got it.”
“I bought this house because my life has been speeding past me for a very long time. Ever since I was young, I’ve always had this feeling that the world is spinning faster and faster, my days are getting shorter, stretched thin, there’s never enough of it. I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, like I couldn’t catch my breath. Until I started coming out to the desert for these long drives.”
She looks up at me. I try not to return her gaze. I don’t want to get lost in her eyes right now.
“This place calms you down,” she says.
“It took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure that out, but yes. That’s when I purchased this house. This place is my refuge away from that life, away from the Strip, from my family, from my enemies. It’s the one place in the whole world where I don’t have to be Erick Costa, where I can just be whoever I am when the baggage of my name isn’t applied. I can be myself.”
“I’m jealous of that, you know. Not many people get a place like this.”
“You’re right, and I try not to take it for granted. When your father stole from me, and I realized you were in the crossfire, I had to make a choice. I could leave you for Frost and Gallo, or I could steal you myself. I couldn’t take you to the casino though, that would be stupid. No, there’s only one place in the world where you’d be truly safe and where you couldn’t escape.”
“Here.” She cocks her head. “You didn’t want to bring me here, did you?”
“No, I really didn’t. I’ve never brought a woman here, not once. There’s only ever been me, Ren, and Marina in this house, plus the doctor now too, I suppose. Other than that, this place has been all mine. Bringing you to this house has been very intimate for me, in ways you probably won’t ever understand, but I need you to know I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it at all.”
