Chapter 14
RILEY
The next morning, Vaughn flips open the laptop and turns it toward me.
I sit at the kitchen table, hands clamped around my coffee mug, staring at the screen. He has organized the files into folders. Clean, chronological, labeled. Like a prosecutor preparing his evidence for a jury.
Vaughn opens it. A scanned document appears.
Yellowed paper, typewritten font, handwritten notes in the margins.
I recognize the Blackstone Holdings logo in the top right corner.
A logo I’ve seen a thousand times—on letterheads, on business cards, etched into the marble wall of the Onyx Grand lobby.
I read through it all, and what Vaughn told me the day before seems to hold up.
The terms are phrased in a way that a layman would consider generous.
Low entry interest. Flexible duration. An initial grace period.
The poison only starts in the fine print on page four: variable interest adjustments at the lender's discretion, special termination rights if vaguely defined performance goals aren't met, a total maturity clause upon any breach of contract.
It’s a contract designed to lure the borrower into a trap. I’ve read enough business agreements to recognize that. And at the end of the last page sits a signature I know.
The letters are large, confident, with an aggressive upward stroke on the B. Richard Blackstone. I’ve seen this signature on birthday cards, on Christmas presents, on the authorization for my first car.
My stomach knots.
“This could be a forgery,” I say.
Vaughn says nothing. He opens the next folder.
Correspondence Mercer / Blackstone Holdings, 1995–1996.
Dozens of letters. Reminders that grow increasingly sharp.
Responses from Arthur Mercer—desperate, polite, pleading.
Then the final letters, in which Blackstone Holdings' legal department announces the foreclosure.
Cold legal jargon hiding the destruction of a family.
“Also… maybe faked?” I ask, hearing how thin my own voice sounds.
Vaughn opens a third folder. Newspaper articles from the Nevada Herald, the Las Vegas Sun, the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Small reports, not headlines. Local business files for bankruptcy.
Mercer Security Technology ceases operations.
House foreclosed. And then, six months later, a short note in the miscellaneous section: Couple found dead in residence. Police suspect murder-suicide.
Two people's lives, summarized in three lines.
I push the laptop away from me.
“In the age of AI, you can forge anything,” I say, my voice louder than intended.
“Documents, signatures, entire newspaper pages. You’re clearly a man with resources.
You bought this house, you have a driver, you have a lawyer crafting marriage contracts.
Who’s to say you don't have someone producing convincing forgeries for you?”
“No one is saying that.” Vaughn leans back. His voice remains calm, as if we’re discussing the weather. “You have to decide for yourself what to believe.”
“What I believe?” I laugh, but it sounds hollow.
“I believe I’m sitting in a house I can't leave, with a man who got me drunk, married me, and dragged me into the desert. And now this man is showing me documents on his laptop and expecting me to take my father for a monster. Forgive me if I’m skeptical. ”
“Your father signed that contract. You recognized the signature.”
“I recognized a signature that resembles his. That proves nothing.”
Vaughn closes the laptop. Slowly, without haste. He stands up, goes to the sink, and fills a glass with water.
“The documents stay on the computer,” he says. “You can look at them whenever you want. Take your time.”
“Generous. The kidnapper gives his hostage reading time.”
He sets the glass down and looks at me. No trace of anger. Just that unshakable balance that provokes me more than any outburst ever could.
“I’m going outside,” he says. “I need to move.”
He leaves the kitchen. I hear the front door open and close again. Then the soft click of the lock being engaged from the outside.
Locked in. Again.
I stand up and walk to the kitchen window. The sun is high, turning the sandy ground of the courtyard into a shimmering frying pan. Vaughn steps into my field of vision. He’s taken off his T-shirt and tossed it over the wooden bench in front of the house.
His torso is a map of muscle and shadow. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. His stomach is flat and defined. The scar over his left ribcage, which I traced with my fingers that night. His skin already glints with sweat before he’s even started.
He drops into a push-up position. Down, up, down, up.
Controlled, steady, as if his body is following an internal clock.
The muscles in his arms and shoulders tense and relax in a rhythm that’s almost hypnotic.
After thirty reps, he stands, reaches for the pull-up bar under the eaves, and hauls himself up.
His back tightens. Every single fiber becomes visible.
I stand at the window and watch. I shouldn't. I should turn away, go to my room, and think. Instead, I stand here watching the man who imprisoned me as he trains half-naked in the desert sun. And my body, this treacherous, idiotic body, reacts.
It starts as a slight tingle in my lower abdomen. Then it spreads, warm and damp and completely inappropriate. I feel something stirring between my legs—a memory of his hands on my skin, his lips on my neck, the feeling of him inside me.
I curse myself.
This man lied to you. He manipulated you. He’s holding you against your will. And you’re standing here getting wet because he’s doing pull-ups? What is wrong with you, Riley Blackstone?
I turn away from the window and go to my room. The door clicks shut. My breath is faster than it should be.
On the shelf next to the bed sit a dozen books.
Ragged paperbacks that look like they were bought in a second-hand shop.
Thrillers, mysteries, a travel guide to Patagonia, a cookbook with dog-eared pages.
I grab a novel whose title promises it’s about a serial killer.
Exactly the right reading material for a woman held captive by a stranger in the desert.
I lie on the bed and open the book. The letters blur before my eyes. Not because I’m about to cry again, but because my thoughts won't stay with a fictional serial killer.
They return to my father.
Richard Blackstone.
I try to see him in front of me. Not the businessman, not the mogul, not the name on a loan agreement.
But the man who carried me through the garden on his shoulders on Sundays.
Who taught me to ride a bike, even though he was more afraid than I was.
Who tucked me in when I had nightmares and always said: I’m here, Riley.
No one can hurt you as long as I’m here.
But then I think of my mother.
Emilia. I was six when she died. Car accident, my father said. A rain-slicked road, a sharp curve, a truck in the oncoming lane. It was the only time in my life I saw my father cry.
Afterward, he changed.
Not immediately. It was creeping, like a virus slowly eating through a system before the symptoms become visible.
First, the rules grew stricter. No sleepovers at friends' houses. No swimming lessons without his personal approval. Then came the cameras. First in the entrance hall, then the garden, then everywhere. He explained them with safety, with burglary protection, with it’s Las Vegas, honey, you can never be too careful.
Then came the drivers. No more school bus, but black limousines that picked me up in the morning and brought me back in the afternoon. No walks alone, no shopping without an escort. My father called it protection.
I was thirteen when I first thought of the word prison. I sat at my bedroom window and watched the neighborhood kids playing kickball in the street far away. They laughed and screamed and ran across the asphalt, and I sat behind the glass watching like a fish in an aquarium.
Prison, I thought. And then immediately: No. He means well. He’s protecting me.
I suppressed that thought for twenty-seven years.
Now that thought lies with me on my bed in a house in the desert, staring at me like an old acquaintance saying: I’ve been waiting here the whole time.
My mom. I remember her laugh. Her hands, which always smelled of lavender. A blue dress she wore for celebrations. A voice singing lullabies whose melodies I’ve forgotten, but whose warmth I can still feel.
I remember something else, too. An evening shortly before she died.
I was in bed and couldn't sleep. Through the wall, I heard my parents talking. Not arguing—talking. But my mother’s voice had a tone I didn't recognize.
Sharp. Tense. And my father said something I didn't understand, but it made my mother cry.
I was six. I pulled the duvet over my head and told myself everything was fine. Like children do. You declare your world safe because the alternative is too terrifying.
Three weeks later, she was dead.
The book lies open on my chest, though I no longer know what it’s about. Outside, I hear the muffled sounds of Vaughn’s workout—the rhythmic grunt during pull-ups, the crunch of his shoes on the sand.
Did he ever tell you how he started?
Vaughn’s question echoes in my head.
What exactly is he protecting you from, Riley?
I don't know. I’ve never known. I never asked because the question itself felt like betrayal. Good daughters don't ask questions. Good daughters trust their fathers.
But what if the father isn't a good man?
I turn onto my side and stare at the bare wall. The sun travels across the ceiling, drawing slow patterns on the plaster. The house creaks quietly as the heat makes the wood shift.
My eyes grow heavy and sleep creeps in, even though it’s the middle of the day. My body is exhausted—from the fear, from the tears, from the thoughts spinning in circles like hamsters in a wheel.
Before I fall asleep, a thought forms that feels like a knife in my chest:
My father didn't change after my mother died. Maybe he was always like that, and she was the only one holding him in check.
And when she was gone, there was no one left to stop him.