Chapter 37
VAUGHN
I’m sitting on the roof of a parking garage, staring down at the Strip, feeling like Batman looking down on Gotham City.
With the small but significant difference that over the past three days, I haven't exactly acted like a superhero. Because superheroes don’t abandon the woman they might have knocked up.
Three long days and short nights in which I’ve barely slept. I got a room in a small hotel, but sleep was out of the question. Most of my time was spent trying to find an explanation for how my life changed so drastically in such a short period.
I spent thirty years hunting Blackstone, and I never spent a single night not knowing what the next step was. Now I’m sitting on a block of concrete in the desert, and for the first time in my life, I have no plan for what lies ahead.
My phone lies next to me on the concrete. It has vibrated six times in the last three days. Twice from Valentino: Where are you? And: She needs you. Once from Griffin: Call me. Dozens of messages and calls from Riley. Messages I didn’t answer and calls I didn’t take.
The phone vibrates again, but this time it’s a different number.
I raise my eyebrows. It’s Cayden.
I had uncovered his job regarding Hayes and the investment fraud while still at the safehouse and sent him all the incriminating documents. I haven't heard from him since.
The fact that he’s calling now—at one-thirty in the morning—means it’s important.
I pick up.
“Hi Cayden. Is there a problem?”
“You tell me, Vaughn.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before I tell you that, I want to say thank you. I owe you one.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I do. And you know it.” A pause. “The Hayes thing. The data you leaked to my journalist. The corporate structure of Icarus Holdings, the connection to Silver Star Entertainment, the accounts in the Caymans—without you, we wouldn't have pulled it off.”
Which he’s right about. Elias Hayes, the pious businessman with the clean image who wanted to finance Cayden’s stadium project in Montreal, turned out to be a massive fraud. Cayden sensed something was wrong, but he couldn't prove it. So he asked me to dig.
I dug. Deep. Through encrypted servers, shell companies, offshore accounts.
And what I found was a man who wanted to use Cayden’s sporting prestige as a door-opener to set up illegal casinos in Montreal’s port district.
Hayes had bribed city councilors, collected blackmail material, and paid Cayden’s old coach, Eric Davis, to dredge up the so-called Banff scandal—a rather inglorious episode from Cayden’s past—exactly at the moment Cayden would have been most financially vulnerable.
I gave the data to Jade’s newspaper. Anonymously. Cleanly. And Jade—Cayden’s journalist, the mother of his son, the woman he brought back into his life through this project—did the rest. Hayes is facing a federal judge. Davis is finished. Cayden is free.
“Jade wrote the article,” I say. “Not me.”
“Jade had the material. You procured it. Without you, Hayes would have gotten away with it, and I’d be standing before a bankruptcy judge today instead of an altar soon.” He pauses. “So: thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How are you doing?” he asks. A normal question under normal circumstances. But Cayden doesn't ask it normally. He asks it like a man who already knows the answer.
“Valentino called you,” I say.
“Riley called me. Valentino gave her my number.”
I take a deep breath.
“She told me everything,” Cayden says. “From start to finish. Vaughn—she’s a remarkable woman.”
“I know.”
“And you bolt and play the tragic loner.”
“I’m not playing—”
“Yes, you are. And I’m telling you this because I’ve been at the exact same point in my life. The point where a man finds out he’s becoming a father, and his first instinct is to run.”
I say nothing.
“Parker is eleven years old,” Cayden says.
“Eleven years, Vaughn. Eleven years I missed because Jade kept his existence from me.
And do you know what I did when I found out?
Exactly what you did. I bolted. I locked myself in my office and told myself that a man like me can't be a father. That I have too much baggage, made too many mistakes, that the child is better off without me.”
“Cayden—”
“And then I went back. And I met this little boy who has my eyes and who plays hockey and who looked at me and said: Are you my Dad? And in that moment, Vaughn—in that one, damn moment—nothing else mattered. The mistakes, the baggage, the fear. All gone. Just him and me.”
His voice grows kinder.
“Being a father is the best thing that ever happened to me. Not the stadium, not the millions, not all that shit with Hayes. Parker. Parker is the best. When he wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does is call for me, when he scores a goal in hockey and turns around to see if I saw it, when he falls asleep on the sofa in the evening and I carry him to his bed—those are the moments that made everything worth it.”
He pauses. Then he says:
“You are not your father, Vaughn.”
The sentence hits me like a lightning bolt. Not because it’s unexpected, but because it comes from Cayden. From a man who knows me, knows where I come from, knows what I’ve seen.
“Arthur and Elaine Mercer were desperate people in an impossible situation,” Cayden says.
“What they did was tragic. But it doesn't define who you are. You’ve spent thirty years climbing out of your parents' shadow. Now you’re standing in the light, and you want to go back into the dark because the light scares you?”
“I don't know how to be a father,” I say. My voice sounds raw. Three days without real sleep, without food, without the woman who reminds me that I am more than a revenge plan with legs.
“Nobody knows,” Cayden says. “Being a father isn't a talent you have or don't have. It’s a decision. Every single day. And you, Vaughn Mercer, are the man with the most stamina I know. You worked toward a goal for thirty years without giving up. Imagine what happens when you put that same energy into a child.”
I stare at the Strip. The lights blur before my eyes, and for a shameful moment, I’m not sure if it’s from the exhaustion or something else.
“Besides,” Cayden says, “you’re not alone in this.
You have Valentino, who would die for you.
You have Griffin, who would go to prison for you, even though he’s a lawyer and knows exactly how shitty it is in there.
You have me, Beckett, and Marcel. You have the Chester Street Society, Vaughn.
We were always there for each other. That doesn't change just because you’re having a kid. ”
“Cayden—”
“And you have Riley.” His voice turns serious.
“A woman sitting in a hotel room asking Valentino for help instead of packing her things and disappearing. A woman who calls me and tells me your whole story, not because she wants pity, but because she wants you back. This woman loves you. And you love her. So stop hiding and go back to her.”
I stare into nothingness as I let his words sink in.
“How are the wedding preparations going?” I ask finally, because I need a moment to process what he said, and because I want to change the tone before I break down.
Cayden laughs. “Jade organizes everything. I sign where she tells me to sign. Parker will be the ring bearer. He practices every night in front of the mirror, how he holds the pillow.” A pause. “You’re coming, right?”
“I’m coming.”
“With Riley?”
I close my eyes. The image that appears in my head isn't the Strip or the safehouse. It’s a kitchen in Oregon, a garden shed with a sofa bed, and a woman who places her hand on my chest and says: Stay.
And a stomach that is flat now, but not for much longer.
“With Riley,” I say.
“Then move your ass,” Cayden says. “And Vaughn?”
“Yeah?”
“If you run away from a pregnant woman again, I’m coming to Vegas personally and kicking your butt. Chester Street.”
“Chester Street.”
He hangs up.
I sit on the roof for another minute, thinking about how friends are the most important thing in life.
Then I stand up, pocket the phone, and leave.
But this time, I’m not going away.
I’m going back.