There was a brief pause on the phone, just enough that a part of me dared to hope the warning might be getting through.
“I’m choosing to step away from the limelight you brought me into, Cassius,” she said. Her voice wasn’t quite as callous or distant, but it was nowhere near the tender voice I’d heard in Wyoming. “Maybe I’ll go back to being Sasha Carter. I don’t know. But I don’t want to play in your world anymore. Your world is no different from the Reapers’.”
“No, Sarah, I?—”
“Just because you don’t use guns and motorcycles doesn’t mean you don’t play the same games of power, control, and greed,” she said. “If my punishment for letting myself get caught in that game is one bad article, I’ll accept it. But I won’t let myself dig further. You wanted to destroy me? Well, the Morrils can’t destroy what’s already broken.”
“Sarah!”
But she had already hung up.
Fuck.
What now?
24
SARAH
On the phone, I told Cassius the truth.
But it wasn’t the whole truth.
By now, it was all too clear that the longer I stayed in Cassius’ orbit, the longer I’d get hurt. Even if, taking the emotion out of things, my life wasn’t as much in danger as I feared and the Reapers weren’t as close as I had thought, there was still damage. This very call said as much.
By choosing to let Cassius take me places, by choosing to be his date to all these high-profile events, I had become a pawn in their game of billionaire chess. Expendable, perhaps more dressed up than a typical pawn, but a piece to be moved in all directions all the same. I was damn tired of it, damn tired of having the ghost of my past haunt me, just damn tired, period.
What I didn’t tell Cassius, however, was that just because I had no intention of staying in his orbit and helping him resolve the issue on his end didn’t mean that I was willing to stand by and let the damage come to me. I was going to take a stand—I was going to speak out against whatever allegations were coming, build a backbone of my own, and fight. If the Morrils wanted to take me down, they’d find I was just as formidable a foe as the Vales.
And I knew just who to bring to my side.
I was already on the highway to Phoenix, the Las Vegas Strip just barely visible in my rearview mirror. A part of me had silently wondered if I could make things right, but that was before Cassius had told me more drama was to come. I would not be coming back to Vegas for anything other than visits to my friends—and now, I knew who would be first.
I brought up the desired contact, pressed the Call button, and waited a few seconds.
“Change your mind already?” Delilah said, with a hint of cheerfulness and hope in her tone. A part of me wished she would have no idea what was transpiring, but actually, she could handle this kind of shit better than anyone. She lived and breathed high-stakes political and power games; she did not get intimidated by them or threats from those above her.
“I wish,” I said, only catching myself after I said those words.Are you really sure you want to get away? Are you sure you’re not just running—like you did when Virgil died?“I’m calling, Delilah, because Cassius just called. He said that the Morrils are working on a hit piece about me. He said that they’re trying to hurt him by trying to hurt me. I don’t care to be involved with him, it’s over and done, but they’ll blow it up to the world that I was the driver when Virgil died. What am I supposed to do?”
A long pause came on the other end of the line. I had zero doubt Delilah was on my side; she was just very good at not feeling the need to speak all the time. Sometimes, that was so she could think. Other times, it was to force someone into the awkwardness of speaking.
“The problem, Sarah, and I don’t mean this meanly. My editors would never care to run a rebuttal piece, at least not about you,” she said. “The piece would have to cover Cassius and the Vale family as a whole, and it would have to mention you in passing. There might be some good news in that if my editorswon’t go for a response piece, they aren’t the ones who are going to publish a piece on you.”
“Meaning?”
“The Morrils are presenting like they're rattling a large sword, but really it’s a dull butter knife. TheLos Angeles Timesisn’t going to run a gossip piece about what the girlfriend of the King of Hearts did twenty years ago. No reputable newspaper. Even TMZ won’t; they’re scraping for some poorly read blogs or influencers to get attention.”
I suppose it was of some solace to know that this was unlikely to be a massive blowup of news. Still, I knew that this wasn’t going to be the last time that the Morrils might come after me to hurt Cassius. The easy solution was to make clear I had no connection to him any longer, and that attempts to hurt him would be akin to going after a random woman in New Hampshire to hurt Cassius.
Except that wasn’t true.
If I really let the feelings sink in, if I really thought about everything that happened, if I let the absolute truth wash over me… I couldn’t not care about Cassius Vale. I knew the same was true for him. That didn’t mean we were destined to fall in love. But we had too much history. In twenty years, an article could come out blaming Cassius for the decline of Vegas, I could have not talked to him in those twenty years, and I’d still feel something for him.
“We can work to get you good press, Sarah,” she said. “But if you do that, it means you’ll probably have to make an appearance with Cassius. The only counter for juicy gossip is the unassailable truth that doesn’t need to flaunt its veracity. Truth that is undeniable, truth that no one can deny—that is how you defeat bad press. So, think about what truth you want to present to the world. I’m not saying it has to be any one way, other thanshowing you to be honest and of character. But it has to be a truth you are fully committed to. Does that make sense?”
It did.
It very much did.
