So much so that I pulled over at the next exit. I stopped at a gas station as I told Delilah that I understood what she meant. She laid out some more logistical steps, but one thing was clear.
I—and Cassius—had to stop living in a world of half-truths or even eighty percent truths. We couldn’t keep parts from ourselves, whether dark parts or secretly good parts. He could not hide his Black Reapers lust from me, but I couldn’t hide how seeing him at Virgil’s grave had affected me.
I needed a night alone to figure out what truth I really wanted.
Because once I committed to that truth, that would really, truly, be it, one way or another.
I could not, however, spend that night in Las Vegas.
God forbid, that seemed like the worst idea possible. If the Morrils were planning more than a nasty hit piece, then setting up in their backyard was like announcing to the bears that meat had arrived. If I ended up giving into the temptation of physical satisfaction with Cassius, it might be nice in the moment, but it would leave me flustered, feeling like I was diving into something I hadn’t given full thought to.
Instead, I visited someone who, despite being very important in my life, I had not taken any time to see since everything started with Cassius. He would know what to do, for he had been up close and personal with the old Vegas. He would always tellme the whole truth, both good and bad, and would not give me bad advice.
My father.
When I pulled up to his Phoenix suburban home, I was reminded in some ways of the world that we had left. Not because he had motorcycle club paraphernalia or anything like that, but because the house he now lived in was much smaller than the one I grew up in Las Vegas. Taking a step away from the city where he’d made his legal career had absolutely taken a financial toll on him, a reminder that intermingling with the wrong crowd, even on a professional level, had its consequences.
Yet when he stepped out of the house, beaming with a huge smile, it was also a reminder that anything that didn’t kill you could be recovered from. He had grayer hair than he did in his youth, and he had a very slight limp that got just a little worse every year, but he was still my dad. He was still the best man I knew, and fleeing Vegas had done nothing to change that.
“You missed out on some great turkey,” he chuckled. “I know Wyoming has great bison, but it’s nothing compared to my blasted turkey.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said, embracing him. “Can we talk about that, though?”
My father led me to the kitchen, where he had a glass of white wine waiting for me. He made some remarks about how I needed to relax, but not relax too much, and that white wine threaded that needle.
“So,” he said. “What kept you in Vegas as long as it did?”
In the next ten minutes, I told him everything.
There were no surprises in there from before. He had known well of my first relationship with Cassius, had known that he was a billionaire now—though he did not know that he had just openedAllureand become something of an arts patron. He listened closely as I recounted details that seemed a lifetimeago yet had happened after Halloween, like how he immediately called me out for passing myself off as Sasha Carter or how he ran both hot and cold at the Cosmopolitan. I laid out what happened in Wyoming—leaving out the not-safe-for-parents details, of course—and ended with my fury at him contacting the Black Reapers.
My father listened as he always did, using the skills that made him such a great lawyer. But at the very end, when I mentioned my fury at the Black Reapers, a raised eyebrow came across my father. That wasn’t too surprising. After all, they had been the ones to kick him out of Vegas.
“Do you know why we left Vegas in the first place?” my father said. “It wasn’t because of the Black Reapers. It never was. It was the King’s Men.”
You knew that.
You’ve always known that.
You just used them as a convenient excuse not to get close to Cassius Vale. Because opening your heart up to him is enormously risky, even if it’s enormously rewarding. No one can break your heart like he can.
“That’s a distinction I’ve tried to make to several people. Few seem to—or care to—understand,” he continued. “When you’re looking in from afar, or even just from far enough that it’s not in your day-to-day life, you think the game is being played by the same people. ‘All billionaires are the same.’ ‘All bikers are the same.’ But you said it yourself. Cassius might be ruthless, but he’s honest and protective. The Morrils don’t seem that way. Why would the Reapers be the same?”
“Are they not?” I said, though I was just playing devil’s advocate by this point. “If not in action, then in temperament? In proclivities?”
“We don’t prosecute people for their proclivities. We don’t even judge people individually, never mind legally, for theirproclivities. We judge them for how they treat us and have treated us.”
And Cassius might have had the proclivity to try to destroy me… but he always treated me well. Or at the least, he didn’t actually destroy me when he ran cold.
“The Reapers are crazy men. You won’t hear me say otherwise. But in a strange way, I think they’re good men. They made Vegas a better place by helping take out King. So you ended this by saying you were leaving Vegas because of them? My advice, Sarah, if an old man in his seventies can give advice worth a damn. If you’re going to stay away from Vegas, do it because opportunities are better in Phoenix.”
He smiled.
“As a father, I also have to always tell you to trust no other boy,” he said with a chuckle. “But. A father can’t ask more from a man for his daughter than to prioritize her and protect her above all else. If Cassius will do that? If he will put you above his empire and his petty grievances? Then there’s not much more you can ask for.”
I wasn’t anyway.
And yet he gave me so much. A career ignition. Trips to New York, Wyoming. Access to his penthouse.
