“I need you to come down to the station.”
I stare at the man, trying to find the answer in his eyes. I haven’t done anything wrong. I pay my dues, have an accountant that handles all of my finances. Unlike other shady millionaires that exist in this city, I move through Vegas legally.
“What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We need you to identify a body.” There’s a large pause between this sentence and the next. “We have reason to believe that it might be your mother’s.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sir, please come with me. It’s better to do this now before the city comes alive and starts asking questions.”
I grab my suit jacket and button it up before following the officer out of my own apartment block. My chest stings with fear, but I shoo it away and focus putting one foot in front of the other.
My steps are shaky, my hand wobbling as I call for the elevator. The police officer stands beside me. In my peripheral vision, I see him watching me, his attention going to my hands.
I shove them in my pockets immediately, regardless of how unprofessional it looks.
Anything is better than looking like a nervous wreck.
This has to be a joke. People get jealous, so much that they start putting others down as a means to make themselves feel better again.
If this is one of those times, the bastards can go to hell and suck satan’s cock. I will not be played with like this.
But then I make it to the station and see more police officers gathered around, the same cold expressions written all over their faces.
My mother isn’t dead. She walks fine, still drives a car and is just as independent as she was twenty years ago. There’s no cause for alarm. Someone’s made a mistake…
Until I step into the room and lose all control over my body.
The sting in my chest bleeds out, filling every artery, every cell and vein in my body. I no longer have the option to shove the thought aside and move on with my day.
Because the day no longer exists.
She’s still. Eerily still. Some people look peaceful when they’re dead.
My mother does not.
She was taken too soon.
And when I say taken, I mean she was killed, even if the mortician in the room has something different to say.
The large cut down her face was deliberate, not accidental, like others in the room are suggesting. She was found on the side of the road. Someone apparently tried to cut her clothes so that they could place the defibrillator on her chest, and instead accidentally cut open her face.
I call bullshit.
“She was killed.”
“Sir, there’s no bullet wound,” says the mortician. “It’s looking like an MI.”
“She wouldn’t have a heart attack.”
“All due respect, your mother was old.”
“Old, but still functioning. You think a seventy-year-old wears heels if she can’t hold her own?”
“Sir—”
“There has to be an explanation for this.”
