Chapter 33
VAUGHN
Riley comes through the door looking like she’s just gone three rounds on a roller coaster. Which, emotionally speaking, she probably has.
Her skin is so pale that the freckles on her cheeks look like splatters of paint on a white canvas.
Her eyes are dry—no tears, which is a good sign—but the look behind them is that of a woman who has just stripped away twenty-seven years of her life in a single conversation, like old wallpaper from a wall.
“And?” I ask.
“Done.” She exhales and looks at me. “Cross has been pulled back. The deal stands. Richard accepted it.”
Griffin, beside me, nods with satisfaction.
“Good work,” he says. “I’m flying back to Manhattan tonight. The papers are watertight; the contract holds. If Blackstone so much as—”
“Griffin,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“That’s what friends are for. Chester Street.”
“Chester Street.”
“What’s your plan now?” I ask him.
“I’m taking the next flight home. I’m sure both my kids and my wife are already missing me,” he grins. “What about you two?”
“I need a drink first,” Riley says.
“Tequila?” I ask.
Griffin looks at us, shakes his head, then smiles. He shakes my hand, squeezes Riley’s shoulder, and disappears into the elevator with his briefcase. Griffin Calloway, the man who flies in when you need him and vanishes when he’s no longer required.
When we step out onto the street, Valentino is at the Mercedes and straightens up when he sees us. His gaze travels over Riley’s face, then to mine.
Riley leans against the car and closes her eyes. Her hands rest on her thighs. Her breathing is shallow.
“I feel sick,” she says.
“That’s normal. You just told your father that—”
“Not emotionally sick. Physically sick.” She presses her lips together. “I’ve been nauseous all day. For days, if I’m honest. I thought it was the stress.”
“Could be the food,” I say. “The pancakes yesterday were—”
“Maybe I’m pregnant.”
She says it with a crooked grin, but I’m not sure if she’s joking.
I laugh anyway. “You’re surely on the pill.”
“No.”
The laugh gets stuck in my throat. “What do you mean, no?”
“No, I’m not on the pill. Why would I be? Until recently, I was a virgin. There was no reason to take the pill.” She opens her eyes and looks at me. “But surely you’ve had a vasectomy.”
The world goes very still.
The slot machines behind the glass doors of the Onyx Grand continue to hum, the tourists on the Strip keep laughing, and the few shallow clouds drift across the Las Vegas sky. But in my head, a scenario is forming that I don’t want to follow to its conclusion.
“No,” I say. “I haven't.”
Riley stares at me. Her crooked grin vanishes like a candle flame someone blew out.
“What?”
“I haven't had a vasectomy.”
“Vaughn.” Her voice turns sharp. “Then why didn't you use a condom? In Vegas, you used one. Every time after that, you didn't. Why?”
The honest answer is so simple it scares me: “Because I hadn't planned on sleeping with you again.”
“Not planned?” She straightens up. “You didn’t plan—Vaughn, you plan everything!
You plan kidnappings eight months in advance!
You put clothes in my size in a desert house!
You prepared a goddamn marriage contract in an Elvis chapel!
But condoms in case we slept together in the safehouse—you didn’t think of that? ”
“The safehouse was meant as leverage. Not as—”
“As what? A love hotel?”
“Riley—”
“Oh god.” She runs both hands through her hair. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”
Valentino stands three meters away at the car and does what Valentino always does in delicate situations: he becomes invisible. He cleans the windshield with a rag and whistles softly to himself, as if he were alone in the parking lot.
“Fuck,” Riley says. “We need a test.”
“The probability is—”
“Don’t tell me anything about probabilities right now, Vaughn Mercer. Not you. Not the man who earns his living with probability theory and still managed to ignore the most basic contraceptive mathematics of mankind.”
She’s right, but my mind clings to the numbers because numbers are the only thing keeping me from panicking right now.
The probability of getting pregnant from a single act of unprotected intercourse is approximately twenty-five to thirty percent during fertile days.
Outside the fertile window, it drops to under five percent.
We slept together without protection at least five or six times.
The cumulative probability that at least one of those times fell within a fertile window is—
High. It’s damn high.
But it still doesn't have to be. The body is not a machine. Stress lowers fertility. Emotional strain can shift ovulation. Riley has experienced more stress in the last few weeks than most people do in a lifetime. It’s entirely possible that—
“Vaughn.” Riley’s voice brings me back. “You’re calculating.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You look like a calculator with a migraine.”
Despite everything, I almost have to laugh. But only almost.
“We’ll buy a test,” I say, taking out my phone. I check the surroundings. “There’s a pharmacy two blocks from here.”
“And if it’s positive?”
The question hangs heavy in the air without me being able to answer it.
If it’s positive.
Then in this moment, in the parking lot in front of the casino of the man who drove my parents to their deaths, I will turn from a childless avenger into a—what?
A father? Me, a father? The son of Arthur and Elaine Mercer, who killed themselves because they saw no way out?
The man who lived alone for thirty years, who allows no ties, becomes a father?
Fear hits me like a fist.
Not so much the fear of responsibility, nor the fear of change (my life has changed constantly), but the fear that has haunted me since I was sixteen: that I carry my parents' failure within me like a hereditary disease.
That I destroy everything I love. That a child near me will suffer a similar fate to mine.
“Vaughn?” Riley stands before me. Her green eyes search mine. “If it’s positive, then what?”
I open my mouth and want to say: Then we’ll find a solution. Then we’ll talk. Then we’ll make a plan.
But no word comes out.
Instead, I turn around and walk away.
Just like that. I turn around, shove my hands into my pockets, and walk across the parking lot, away from the car, away from Riley, away from the question I can’t answer.
My legs move without my mind giving them the command.
An automatic reaction, like pulling your hand back from a hot stove burner.
“Vaughn!” Riley’s voice behind me. Sharp. Hurt. “Vaughn, where are you going?”
I don’t turn around.
“Vaughn!”
I turn the corner of the hotel and the Strip swallows me. Thousands of people, neon lights, noise. I am a drop in an ocean of sensory overload, and for the first time, I am grateful for the chaos of this city because it is big enough to hide me.
Behind me, in the parking lot, stands a woman with red hair and green eyes and a question I couldn't answer.
And beside her stands Valentino, still cleaning the windshield even though it’s long since clean, who after a while puts down the rag, goes to Riley and says:
“He’ll come back.”
At least, I hope that’s what he says.
Because I myself am not sure right now.
I walk through the streets of Las Vegas and for the first time in thirty years, I don't know where to go. The plan is over. The enemy is defeated. The game is won.
And for the first time in my life, I am terrified.