Chapter 7
VAUGHN
Riley is asleep.
Her breathing settled into a steady, calm rhythm twenty minutes ago. Her body is curled up on the right side of the bed; she’ll likely sleep for about eight hours. A detail I found weeks ago in one of her hacked fitness tracker profiles, now confirmed.
Her red hair is fanned out across the white pillow. One hand rests under her cheek. The other lies outstretched on the mattress, fingers slightly curled, as if she’s reaching for something in her sleep that’s no longer there.
I watch her longer than I should.
Then I swing my legs out of the bed. My cock thrums with a dull pulse. She was tight. Damned tight. The memory of her face when I entered her—that brief flinch followed by something that looked like awe—pushes its way uninvited into my mind. I brush the thought away like a mosquito on my skin.
A shame, I think. A shame I’m going to hurt you this much.
Riley Blackstone is collateral damage in a war her father started a long time ago. I didn’t ask for this war. But I’m going to end it.
I stand up and pull on my boxers. The lights of the Strip seep through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting geometric patterns across the floor. Somewhere below, a taxi honks.
My blazer is hanging over the back of the armchair. I reach into the inner pocket and pull out the inconspicuous envelope. Inside are the pages Riley signed three hours ago without reading a single sentence.
I sit at the desk by the window and turn the reading lamp to its lowest setting. The beam of light falls onto the paper. I unfold the documents and begin to read, even though I know exactly what I’m holding in my hands.
The first page is the marriage license. State of Nevada, County of Clark.
Vaughn Mercer and Riley Blackstone. Date, time, the signature of the officiant who calls himself Elvis and whose legal name, according to the fine print, is Gerald Patterson.
Two signatures below. Mine in steady, controlled strokes.
Riley’s in a script that drifts to the right, as if her hand wasn't quite obeying anymore.
The second page is the chapel’s consent form. Standard. Irrelevant.
The third page is the reason I’m sitting here.
Postnuptial Agreement.
Griffin’s masterpiece.
I run my thumb over the top edge of the document, thinking back to that evening three weeks ago when Griffin Calloway drafted this contract in his Manhattan office. He sat behind his exorbitantly large desk, tie loosened, a glass of scotch in his hand, slowly shaking his head.
This won't hold up in any court in this country, Vaughn, he had said. She’s signing while intoxicated, without legal counsel, without time to reflect. Any halfway competent lawyer will sweep this off the table in twenty minutes.
It doesn't have to last forever, I had replied. It just has to last long enough to put pressure on Blackstone. Weeks, maybe months. Long enough for him to start making mistakes.
Griffin had given me that look he’s spent years perfecting in the country’s biggest courtrooms. The look that says: I think this is a catastrophic idea, but I’m going to do it for you anyway because you’re my friend and because Blackstone is a pig.
And because we are both members of the Chester Street Society.
Then he finished his scotch and flipped open his laptop.
The result lies before me. Six pages of legal prose that boil down to a single statement: In the event of a divorce, whether mutual or contested, Riley Blackstone transfers fifty percent of her current and future assets to her spouse. Including all holdings, trust assets, and inheritances.
Fifty percent of Blackstone’s empire.
It’s not about the money; I have more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes.
My crypto algorithms spit out six-figure sums every month, which I immediately reinvest. I don't give a damn about the money.
But Richard Blackstone—that man cares about his money more than anything else in this world.
More than his reputation. More than his business partners.
More than his daughter.
The prenuptial agreement is a grenade. It’s enough to place it on the table, pull the pin, and look Blackstone in the eye. He’ll know I married his daughter. That I have a legal claim to his fortune. That a divorce could cost him half of everything he’s plundered over forty years.
And then he’ll start making mistakes. Because men like Blackstone always make mistakes when you try to take the only thing they hold sacred.
I fold the documents and slide them back into the envelope. Then I tuck it into the inner pocket of my blazer and hang it back over the chair.
A soft murmur comes from the bed as Riley turns in her sleep. The sheet rustles. Then silence.
I stand at the window and look down at the Strip. This city never sleeps. Even at three-thirty in the morning, lights crawl through the streets, signs blink, people stumble over sidewalks. Las Vegas is a machine that never stops eating souls.
Just like Richard Blackstone.
My gaze wanders back to the bed. Riley has pulled the duvet up to her chin. In her sleep, she looks younger than twenty-seven. More vulnerable. Her lips are slightly parted.
She was good tonight. Not good in the way women in my bed are usually good, but good in a way that surprised me because it was so real.
She clung to me as if I were the first thing in her life worth holding onto, and when she moaned my name—my real name, not the fake one—something shot through my chest that felt like a crack in a wall that’s been standing for thirty years.
I brush the thought away. It has no place in my head.
I take my phone from the nightstand. The display lights up. I open the encrypted messenger and type a message.
Tomorrow 9 AM. Pickup Meridian Hotel, rear entrance. 2 people. Destination as discussed.
I hit send. The message vanishes. The recipient will read it, confirm, and send a car tomorrow morning. Black, tinted windows, no questions asked. The driver knows the route. Seven hours through the desert. To a place that doesn't appear in any registry, on a road marked on no map.
Tomorrow morning, Riley will wake up. She’ll be hungover, confused, and likely in a panic. She’ll ask questions I won't answer. She’ll scream, threaten, and want to call her father. She’ll hate me.
That’s fine. I can handle hate. Hate is a predictable variable. I’ve invested my whole life in hate.
What I can't handle is the image currently burning into my memory: Riley Blackstone, smiling in her sleep as if she’s experienced something that feels like freedom for the first time in her life.
Freedom I’m going to take away from her again tomorrow.
I place the phone on the table, turn off the lamp, and go back to the bed. I lie down beside her without touching her.