Just live with the fact that Virgil was dead? Accept that he was gone, not fight it, not try to get vengeance? The man who had actually killed Virgil was still serving a life sentence without parole; justice had been very well served in that regard.
So…
Yes.
It sure as fuck seemed that way.
Instead of trying to dominate the darkness of my heart, instead of trying to leverage it to become as rich and powerful as I ever could, I had to face it, accept it, acknowledge it, and maybe even embrace it.
Fuck.
That sounded both incredibly stupid and also just perfectly right.
A part of me almost didn’t see the point. Sarah was gone. I had no reason to do it. Other women didn’t know this about me, and if they did, they’d be so enamored with my bank account and my penthouse they’d turn a blind eye.
Which…
Didn’t that make it all the more reason to look inward? Fate was highly unlikely to give me a third chance with Sarah Carpenter. Yet who else was there who would look past Cassius Vale, the billionaire, and see Cassius Vale, the man? Maybe other wealthy women, but they might suffer from the same headaches as I did.
Fuck. I was ruminating too much up here. I needed to go away. I?—
My phone buzzed on a desk outside my bedroom. Curious. It was still not even eight a.m. yet; it wasn’t unusual for me to be up at this hour, but everyone had very clear orders not to call me until ten a.m. at the earliest unless absolutely necessary. I liked to ease into my mornings and do work I needed to do alone without distraction, and only about four people would even merit looking at the phone before ten a.m. My three brothers and my head of security.
Still, with no real work to do—outside of the aforementioned nebulous goals—and welcoming a distraction from my mind, I stepped outside my room wearing nothing but my boxers and a bathrobe and grabbed my phone. It was Dante. I felt a lump in my throat. Of all my brothers, Dante was the least likely one to call me before ten a.m.; I’d had to remind Adrian and Lucas of my rules a few different times.
“It’s fucking early to be calling,” I said upon picking up the phone, hoping that would encourage Dante to get to the point.
“Where’s Sarah?”
“Not with me,” I said as my grip on the phone tightened.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Probably in her hotel room. Why the fuck are you asking me? Are you going to leak some shit to the press?”
“Dude, calm down. You know nothing ever leaves the conversation between us.”
I took a breath in. Dante was absolutely right. If journalists or even the police heard half of the bantered ideas we knew we’d never execute on but made cold jokes about, there was a decent chance we’d be vilified for life and possibly in jail.
“I’m asking, Cassius, because I’ve gotten word that she’s become a target.”
I froze. Dante almost certainly did not mean a target for a job.
“Go on.”
“Through some connections, we know that we have enemies in this city just by virtue of being the fastest risers on the Strip. People know about you and Sarah. They know that if they can’t hurt you, they can try to hurt those around you.”
“What the fuck does ‘hurt’ mean here, Dante? Do I have to worry about a fucking hit job on Sarah?”
“Brother, I honestly have no idea.”
Fuck. I could feel my face getting sweaty and my heart thudding in my chest. I had tried to stay above violence so much, outside of trying to corral groups that might have ties to occasionally being violent. But now… when what was at risk was not casino property or even personal property but a person…
“The source I talked to said he was kept in the dark as much as anyone, but that they have plans to make us suffer. Slowly at first, they said, and then gradually.”
“Who the fuck is your source?”
“Someone who works for one of the casinos the Morrils own,” Dante said. “But Cassius. I know it’s easy to jump to that family as the ones responsible. I’ve learned long enough that everyone has eyes and ears everywhere. Fuck, we have some of our best employees at other casinos just so we can get secrets. This man may very well be a mouthpiece for the Morrils. But I’d be less concerned with who was causing it than with how we can protect Sarah.”
