Chapter 15 Cassius
CASSIUS
It was late on a Tuesday night, and I was alone on my penthouse rooftop. No one, not even my brothers, not even Sarah, was here tonight. I had sent my waiter home early; if I wanted something, I would get it myself.
Truth be told, I did not like to be completely alone.
I liked the image of being alone, a lone wolf who needed no one and nothing but what he had earned, but I knew myself well enough.
Be alone long enough, and certain thoughts and temptations would creep to the top.
I would not, had not fucking given into those, but why make life harder than it actually was?
No, tonight, I simply wanted the isolation to figure out what the fuck I was going to do with Sarah Carpenter.
I should have broken her by now; she’d been to, what, three shows?
A photoshoot? Shit I’d already forgotten but that she’d probably view as very important for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom?
No one would say shattering her by now would be rushing the process; my brothers sure wouldn’t.
Fuck, I hated Leo Morrils guts, and he probably was wondering why I hadn’t pulled the trigger now.
I should have, but I hadn’t. And that was because… because…
I was starting to fall for Sarah Carpenter. And that was fucking dangerous.
She would distract me from my goal of conquering the Strip.
Given her background, she’d be furious if she found out I was doing my best to rope the Reapers to my side—or rather, to Dante’s side, arm’s length away from me.
Not that the distinction would matter to her, though.
She’d still be pissed if the connection were there.
And if I became so distracted that the Morrils became the dominant family on the Strip?
My brothers would never let it come to that; they would throw a coup and oust me as CEO of our company if I let myself go that badly. But why even let it come to that?
Suddenly, I wasn’t on the penthouse rooftop. I was on the rooftop of our childhood home. I knew this memory well; it was one I often dreamed of and often thought of in quieter moments, when I was easily distracted.
I had just returned from college, and Virgil was still a relatively young boy, in middle school.
He was old enough to know the world was not as innocent as dumb kids’ shows made it out to be, but he was not old enough to know just how corrupt and fucked up it could be.
He liked to sit up on the roof, he said, because he felt like he was on top of the world.
And, fuck me, in retrospect, he was. Sure, he—nor I—had more than a few hundred dollars to our name back then.
The extent of our power, if you could even call it that, was whatever influence we had in our respective friend circles.
But in those days, being on top of the world wasn’t about the zeros in your bank account or the people you could break on a whim, but how you personally felt.
A faint, but real time.
“You don’t talk to me like you used to, Cassius,” Virgil said.
His voice was softer then, not quite hardened by puberty.
He only barely got there in real life, which meant most of my memories were of him as my littlest brother.
Unfair to him, perhaps, but sadly he’d never outgrow them. “It feels like you’re an adult now.”
That I was. But at the moment, the comment had felt like an insult, a legal punch but a punch to the face nevertheless.
“How would you have me talk to you, Virgil?”
“Tell me everything,” he said. “We’re family, right? Family always shares everything. We share everything with those we care about the most. We tell the truth, and—”
I waved my arms. Not because that had happened in the memory, but because I didn’t care to recall this anymore.
Lessons, fucking lessons. Tell the truth. Share with those we most care about.
That was the truth.
I sighed. I really, fucking, heavily sighed, harder than I did over any business deal, harder than I had in months before Sarah reemerged, harder even than with anything to do with the Morrils.
Because at this point, that memory might as well have one-two punched me in the fucking face with what I needed to do.
Tell Sarah everything.
Tell Sarah the truth.
Which meant telling her that, yes, at first, I’d roped her in with the long-term intention of breaking her, of having her feel the kind of pain that I had felt when we lost Virgil.
Admitting to her that as time went by, as I spent more time with her, I could see hints of reflection, both in her artwork and in her words.
I could pick up that she had suffered, maybe not to the same extent I had, but suffered all the same.
But…
Fuck.
If anything happened, truth telling or otherwise, it was not going to happen here.
My penthouse was where I exerted my authority, closed final deals, brought other women before Sarah into my world for one night.
There were too many other memories, too much presence of power for me to do what Virgil had done. I had…
Well, Thanksgiving was coming up. I’d normally spend it with my brothers, but maybe this once, I could take Sarah somewhere.
Where somewhere was, I could not say. It was odd admitting to myself that I didn’t know where, but that would be figured out in time.
And to give myself ideas, I decided to watch Sarah work.
Not now, of course. It was almost midnight, and even I knew that rousing Sarah to paint would, at best, produce mediocre results and at worst push her away for good. No, fortunately, however, I had something better.
Recordings.
I hadn’t told Sarah that I’d recorded her little photoshoot at Allure, but surely, she was not stupid.
She knew me well enough to know by now I saw everything that happened at Ruby.
At the very least, I had the capability of seeing everything that happened at my flagship casino, and any time she set foot into my place, I would have the ability to watch.
I pulled out a tablet, found the footage, and began playing.
The first half was relatively boring; it was just her posing with her existing artwork.
I noticed that there was one other woman whom I had not invited; she looked vaguely familiar, but it being a slow and somewhat haunted night, I couldn’t quite place it.
No matter. If it became clear by the end of the video she had done something, I’d make sure things were taken care of.
Around the halfway mark, she and her friend moved to the side.
The conversation looked intense; these being security cameras, I didn’t have an audio feed, but Sarah’s face gradually morphed from relaxed and perhaps a tad nervous to almost pissed off.
I regretted right then not having audio feeds, if for no other reason that I wanted to know what had pissed her off so.
She didn’t look angry at her friend, so I doubted it was that.
If it was to do with me, that only solidified the need to do what the memory told me. I was just trying to get ideas at this point for where to tell the truth.
Then the second half began, and something interesting happened.
Instead of skipping through parts, instead of playing at double or even triple speed, I slowed down as Sarah sat down and began painting.
She had warned beforehand that art done on the spot, especially in front of other people, would never be as good as art done well-rested, without a crowd, and with a clear idea.
I knew it, the photographers knew it, and she obviously knew it.
But even still, artists bare their souls when they worked, even when they didn’t realize it. Sarah could sketch a McDonald’s restaurant, and something about the sign or the windows would give a hint into her inner being. I cared less about what she painted than what it said.
Fuck. This was so unlike me. I was a businessman who dealt in cold realities and played cold games. Sarah Carpenter really was dragging me to a part of myself arguably buried with Virgil.
Minutes passed, and gradually, what started out as one of many things slowly converged into a single image—two people in the forefront, sitting over what looked like a table, with someone above them, watching.
The details were not yet fleshed out, but it was clear that she felt watched almost at all times.
If only she knew the irony that I would watch this on video later.
I turned off the video, aware of what I had to do.
Stop taking her to galas. Stop setting up public situations. Stop taking her on private jets that would inevitably land in public settings, even if we found ourselves in private situations along the way.
I had to put her in a spot where it was just me and her, and whatever happened, no one would ever be able to witness.
Not my brothers, not the Morrils, not even housekeeping staff or butlers or valets or anyone who might gossip elsewhere.
It wasn’t just for Sarah; it was for me.
Only by being alone could I go from being Cassius Vale, powerful billionaire and the latest Vegas mogul to…
To…
Well, fuck.
Human.
That just sounded weird, almost antithetical to what I had done to this point.
And as weird as it sounded, the implications were even stronger.
Because if I let myself be human, a mere mortal, then I would almost certainly let go of the plan to break her.
I would take her as mine, but I’d stop worrying about vengeance.
And in a sense, maybe that was best.
Because the truth of the matter was, while Sarah was the driver of the car that Virgil died in, the police report had been clear.
It was not Sarah’s fault. A drunk driver had killed him, a man who was now in jail and whom I had long forgotten about.
I had just used the story to hold Sarah up as an enemy, even when it was clear she was not. I guess it made dumping her easier.
I shook my head. I couldn’t fucking believe I’d just let myself recall that detail. This really was coming to a head one way or the other, and I had a feeling “one way or the other” no longer entailed such a public downfall as I had expected. How had Sarah had this effect on me?
No, not her having an effect on you. Her making you remember the truth. Her making you go past the pain to what really happened and how you really feel.
This might not be something money can buy or power can quash. But it’s something you must do.
“Virgil,” I said with a sigh, “you’d better be happy with whatever happens.”
Because by the time I put the tablet down and had taken another deep breath, it was clear that wherever we went, we’d be alone. Truly, absolutely, one hundred percent alone.
The dancing would end.
The guessing games would end.
And only the truth about how we really felt about each other would be left standing.