Chapter 14 Sarah
SARAH
Cassius, for once, did not have any galas lined up the following week.
But that didn’t mean that he didn’t have any events or activities lined up for me.
Notably, the following Tuesday, Cassius had set up an afternoon shoot at Allure for me to get some high-level, professional photography done.
He warned that he would not be there, but that he expected me to show up all the same.
He didn’t do this for just anyone, he said.
I was a special case because of our past; when I pressed him on it, he simply said that he had more atoning to do than he thought.
That was all good and well, but I was starting to wonder if Cassius was feeling the same way I was.
Namely, confused—and perhaps cautiously, carefully, guardedly optimistic.
I had thought Cassius hated my guts. He might still, but it felt like if he was going to destroy me, he would have by now.
Not because he would have run out of patience, but because it was hard to envision a more public setting than a New York City gala and the Red Court’s gala.
In the modern era, a hit piece planted by him would have spread by now.
The next major events were not nearly as major; a show in Phoenix, a show in San Francisco, an awards ceremony in New York City.
Relevant to my career, yes, but not with nearly as strong a public eye as before.
When I bounced this confusion off my friends, none of them were particularly impressed.
Bridget warned that men like Cassius were like the Black Reapers; they never forgot a grudge, never forgot a quest for vengeance, and always followed through on their desire to fulfill their personal missions.
Talia was a little less forceful in her appraisal, but she shared the same general sentiment.
Admitting she was biased, she said that word about the Vales from the Morrils suggested what they said was almost always a mask for what they did.
I didn’t doubt that for two seconds, but…
Delilah was the most interesting one. She didn’t say anything at all.
She simply asked if she could join me at the photoshoot; she’d go just as a friend in support of me, not as a journalist. I thought about asking Cassius for permission, but at the risk of his fury, I decided it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
If Cassius really was playing games with me, I could play games with him too.
And that meant having the eye of a journalist at my photoshoot, even if undercover.
Delilah and I met at the entrance to the Ruby, a smile on her face. She looked relaxed; the girl always looked relaxed despite working a high-stress job with impossibly unstable hours. I was probably a little worse for the wear, but I hoped that my cautious optimism provided some glow to my face.
“Very nice of the billionaire to pay a couple thousand dollars for this for you,” Delilah said dryly. “I’d hate to think that what for us would be like tossing a nickel in the pool might be a hardship to him.”
“He could have not done it,” I said. “He could have chosen to just let me out to dry. I think it’s telling that he’s doing this even though he can’t be there.”
“Right,” Delilah said in a tone that clearly suggested she did not buy it. “Just because he’s not there doesn’t mean he won’t be watching.”
“I mean, he does have cameras—”
“No, not that. I mean that everyone there will tell him in some form or fashion what happens today. They’ll know you brought me along.
I don’t think that’s cause for concern, but Cassius will know I’m here.
Frankly, if he gets upset, good. It’s a sign he’s really intending something nefarious for you.
If he doesn’t, then I’ll really have my guard up. ”
I asked a few more questions why, but the conversation ended as soon as we got to the entrance of Allure.
After speaking with the guard and being let in, I stepped into the most professional gallery shoot I had ever seen.
I had four pieces of artwork I would pose with, centered in the middle of Allure, with three photographers and countless other handlers.
A couple thousand dollars might have been underselling it, although to be fair, I didn’t know the true price since most of my prior photoshoots had been non-financial trades with friends.
“You’re like the turkey leading up to Thanksgiving,” Delilah said, shaking her head.
“Huh?”
“Every turkey in the days before Thanksgiving thinks that it's being treated as a king or queen. They’re fed to excess, given the most luxurious quarters possible, are protected against all threats, and can do whatever they want. Then they’re summoned to their human’s room one day, thinking nothing of it, and… ”
Delilah made a motion like an ax chopping downward. The message was clear enough.
“Let’s talk after the shoot, shall we?” I said, not particularly relishing the image of Cassius chopping my head off.
I walked over to the photographers, who immediately began directing me to various poses.
Admittedly, the process felt extremely impersonal; I could barely get a word in, and the photographers had obvious instructions for what I was to do.
If it had been under any other prior context, I would have felt like a commodity, almost like a stress test practice for the photographers.
Instead, in a very twisted way, I felt seen.
A gala was one thing. I might just be a hot girl on his arm to impress other billionaires or the media; at the very least, I was protection against questions about him showing up by himself. There were a million and one excuses for why me going with him to a gala was nothing more than showmanship.
But here, Cassius didn’t win any accolades or praise from the outside world. Between Delilah, the staff here, me, and him, there might be ten people in total who knew what was transpiring. Sure, I was still at the whims of Cassius, but it just felt more personalized. More individualized.
More feeding and luxury before the ax comes chopping down, I thought with a shiver. And with Thanksgiving coming up, to boot.
Delilah occasionally scrolled through her phone and typed out what looked like texts or emails, but otherwise she remained to the side.
At one point, her eyebrows raised as she seemed to find something of note, but I never kept up with her work.
It was her insistence, anyways—what often appeared like a smoking gun could simply lead to a mere grounded cigarette, not evidence of something damning or shocking.
In other words, for the duration of the shoot until the first break, while Delilah provided the security of knowing a friend was there, she did not protect me from what was in my own head.
I might be the fat turkey getting ready to be carved up, or I might be “pardoned,” as it were, into a life of happiness and joy.
The first break of the shoot finally came.
Cassius was still nowhere to be seen, and I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t be hiding and watching.
I wouldn’t put it past the man to watch this on camera later, maybe even do something that would both make me gasp and bring a smile to my face as he watched, but he was not lacking in confidence.
If he wanted to see me in person, he could have cared less if there were five dozen Delilahs there.
I headed to the bathroom, but before I made it there, Delilah had walked over.
And when she walked with a purpose, you knew.
A good journalist like her would not be stopped by anyone or anything; police let her pass through, security guards nodded to her, and even rich and powerful people spoke to her.
Very, very, very few people were ones who would not speak to her, and I suspected the Vales were amongst them.
“A quick question for you,” Delilah whispered. “You think Cassius does everything on the up and up, right?”
I nodded and shrugged. Cassius might have been ruthless and vicious, but he was aboveboard. The IRS or the FBI wouldn’t come calling tomorrow with questions for him.
“Did you know he’s been trying to create an alliance with the Black Reapers?”
My heart sank. My face froze—hopefully, versus growing angry. The hair on my skin raised.
The Black Reapers? The fucking Black Reapers?
“Define alliance,” I said, hoping that my voice sounded far more even-keeled than I actually felt.
“I’m working on a story of old Vegas versus new Vegas,” Delilah said.
“Old Vegas, you can think of as the crime-riddled world that we knew. Black Reapers versus King’s Men.
Cops powerless to do anything but stop speeding tourists.
Mayors mere puppets of those organizations.
New Vegas is what’s grown in the four years since.
King might be gone, but his influence and the aftereffects of his actions are very much not.
The Black Reapers? Definitely not gone.”
“I thought they had mostly retreated to their other places,” I said. “California and New Mexico, no?”
“There are still a couple who have become Black Reapers in name only,” Delilah said. “Crush and Prince. His son and, well, in the words of others, his former lap dog. Cassius is trying to use them to establish a link with the Reapers.”
No.
No.
No!
That could not fucking be. The group—the gang, I knew they fucking hated that name but I wanted to call them that—that had ruined my father’s career and forced me to flee to Phoenix.
If Cassius knew me as much as he claimed to, he had to have made at least an educated guess that I fucking despised them.
Yet he was trying to pull them into his orbit?
Why? What could Cassius possibly need in New Vegas that he couldn’t get with his power and money?
“What do you think is going to come of it?”
Delilah shrugged, but she didn’t look happy about it.
“Honestly, at the moment, nothing,” she said, which only brought a fleeting relief.
“Neither Crush nor Prince has shown up on the police blotter in four years. I looked up the original chapters, there’s a couple of speeding tickets and drug possession tickets, but even those are for low-grade offenses, not like cocaine.
But you know how owning a gun that hasn’t been fired in a few years doesn’t mean it’s not capable of something deadly? ”
Delilah nodded. My head was spinning, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be here anymore. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be around Cassius anymore. If he was going to affiliate himself with… with… with assholes and evil men like that!
I took in a breath. I had to give fair weight to what Delilah had just said.
The two Reapers living in Vegas hadn’t been on the blotter since the infamous violence that took down King.
The Reapers elsewhere hadn’t been in trouble for more than weed and going too fast on the freeway.
These were still bad men, but maybe, just maybe, they weren’t the bad men of years past.
They are still bad men, Sarah.
“What else?” I asked, forcing the words out before considering them would have made me nervous.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re doing a profile of Old Vegas versus New Vegas. Surely you’ve uncovered something more. What else have you found? What else have you uncovered about Cassius that I might not know about?”
“I… don’t know what you don’t know,” Delilah said.
“The gist of the article, I suppose, is that while the current climate is far more peaceful than it was before, there’s still the looming threat of powerful entities going to war, not giving a shit about who falls in the crossfire.
Before, it involved motorcycle clubs and crime rings.
Today, it involves executive leadership and billionaires who have never lost before.
The Vales are on one side, but there are others coming. Most notably, the Morrils.”
I flashed back to what Leo had done at the New York City gala. Kissing my hand before Cassius. I had no idea if he actually found me attractive, but he sure knew Cassius found me attractive.
Well, I would not become a fucking pawn in their game of billionaire chess. I still felt something for Cassius that might explode or might delight, but I had zero, zilch, nothing for Leo. Cassius could break my heart and stomp on my spine, and I would never look Leo’s way once.
But that was simply a side thought to the bigger question looming over my head.
What else was Cassius not telling me?
Plenty, obviously. He was a billionaire with trade secrets, family secrets, and personal secrets. He could be a hundred-thousandaire, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to know everything. A better question: what else was Cassius not telling me that could affect me?
Plenty, unfortunately.
And how much of that was he hiding from himself? Or was aware of but refused to acknowledge it?
That scared me most. A man who refused to face his own secrets and his own demons was dangerous, because that refusal to face them usually resulted in lashing out elsewhere. And the way Cassius was acting…
“Do me a favor,” I said quietly, lowering my voice, even though there was no one within a dozen feet of us.
“If you get wind of anything significant with the Reapers, tell me. I doubt they’re going to sign papers agreeing to protection terms, but a handshake, a man’s word might as well constitute a contract in that world. ”
“I will,” Delilah. “You’re a friend, Sarah. Not just a journalistic source. You know the last thing I want for you is to wind up in a trap of luxury.”
God, wasn’t that the truth.
And it was still all too feasible that Cassius was playing a very long game to break me for what I’d done to Virgil.
I had no idea how the apparent summoning and alliance of the Black Reapers might yet play into this. I might not play into it at all; it might have just been a move to keep the Morril family at a distance, forewarning them to not fuck around and find out.
But I preferred not to be in a spot where finding out myself might get me in serious trouble. It had ruined my family’s life once before, forcing us out of Las Vegas.
I did not care to make the same mistake with Cassius twice.