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“In a way, yes. The night of the game, I could read the fear behind the façade. If a game shook you up, there was no way you could work the corner. A girl like you has no business on the streets. I could tell that the instant you walked in the room.” He leans across the table toward me. “Prime fucking pussy, too. Best there is to have, even when you didn’t know what to do, even when you weren’t enjoying it. You’ve got prime fucking pussy, Hailey.” He leans back and grins, knowing he got to me again.
“Enough.”
“There she is. There’s the girl who has always had the fight to take on the world.”
“You get off on this.”
“I get off on you, but more than that, I never wanted to kill the fight inside you. I just wanted to keep you safe, which I did until you made the decision to walk away. For months, Hailey, I’d seen you battling to find an escape.”
“Then why not let me go?”
“If only it were that easy.” He looks down, then looks back up at me. “I have a past, and I have enemies, more than I care to count. It wasn’t safe unless you owed me. No one would touch you if you were working a marker for me; they would fear my wrath in not getting repaid. As long as you worked, went home, and took care of Marisa, all was fine.”
“Okay, and I did that until you threatened to get to Marisa.”
“You fucked Aces. I needed you out of the game, Hailey. You had no business in this world, yet there you were. Aces may be good at the table, but he’s not here full-time, which would leave you unprotected.”
Anger fills me. “You want me to believe you did all this for my safety? I call bullshit.”
He leans back in his chair arrogantly. “Read me, Hailey.” His eyes instantly soften. “I never lied to you, never beat on you. We both had a role to play, and in the beginning mine was to keep you safe. Then your mom died, and you had no one, so I made sure you got Marisa. I made sure to hide your pills so you couldn’t take them. I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“You want me to believe you gave me my daughter out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe, Hailey. You should also know I don’t have a heart, so it wasn’t that. It was you. There is a softness under the hard that calls to a man. You are the best place to fall at end of the day. Any man who had a chance at that little bit of tender in his sheets would be a fool to pass it up.”
“Then why the game with Morrison? Why put a price on Marisa?”
“You still don’t see. You can’t find the read. Hailey, Aces had to be out of the game permanently. You can’t stay here with no debt to me. You made the choice to walk into a room of players and sit at the table. You made the choice with your man to publically repay the debt. In a world of checks and balances, you tipped the scales of your safety in a way I couldn’t keep under wraps. Word was getting out about you and Aces, and I couldn’t have that if he was gonna stay in the league.”
“Fine, but he was out of the game, so why try to kill him?” My hands tremble and my voice shakes. How twisted can one person be? He really believes in his mind that everything he did was to protect me? In my day-to-day existence, Monte was an ass of epic proportion. He disgraced and threatened me using Marisa, in order to control and manipulate me. There is nothing he can do or say now that could make me trust or like him, if he’s even being serious.
“He came back. If he was going to keep you and your girl safe, he shouldn’t have been in Vegas. You left, and he should’ve been with you. He wasn’t, and I needed you away from the players.”
The door opens again, and the DA calls out, “Time’s up, Hailey.”
Pulling the papers from my purse, I push them in front of him. “Sign over your rights. You took away my choices.” I reach back and pretend to straighten my dress pants under me. Reality is, I am rubbing my ass to remind myself of who I really am. I am Caldwell’s little momma, and I’m done with the markers and the games. I want my daughter, and I’m going to get her. “You said you gave her to me as a gift since I lost Momma. Give her to me, Monte. Sign your rights away. If all you say is true, if you really wanted to keep me safe, then prove it.”
