Chapter 20 Sarah
SARAH
Despite it having been Thanksgiving weekend, all the girls responded within half an hour, and we had plans for the following day, Black Friday.
As I had before, I asked all the girls to meet in Summerlin, more specifically at Sunny Side Up.
There was comfort in returning to a spot that we’d met at before Cassius had become such an integral part of my life, before I’d made the stupid decision to sleep with him, before all the obvious warts and flaws had blown up as they had so fucking predictably done so.
Right now, I just needed some comfort, some level of happiness in my life.
True, I knew happiness would be fleeting.
I knew that whatever laughter those three girls would give me would vanish within the hour, if not the minute, of my leaving the restaurant.
But you know what? I fucking needed that two-minute laugh.
I fucking needed to just be with my friends, to pretend all this bullshit with the Black Reapers wasn’t happening, and to just… be.
Just be. That’s all I really wanted. Not to think. Not to act. Not to go anywhere. To just be.
As I had before, I walked in to see Delilah, Talia, and Bridget waiting for me, making me the last one to arrive.
I swore to myself that they were just incredibly prompt friends; I looked down at my watch.
Sure enough, I’d asked to meet at ten a.m., and it wasn’t even that time yet.
It paid to have friends who didn’t just do what you asked of them, but went above and beyond in doing it.
Bridget saw me first. She rose, walked over to me, and embraced me tightly.
She didn’t say a word at first; she just held me there.
I knew that her sister and her Black Reaper had been doing well, but if anyone truly understood the mental anguish that club could cause, it was Bridget.
She knew that when you found yourself ensnared in their world, you just needed someone to hold you and say it would be OK.
“Hey, Sarah,” Bridget finally said.
“Oh, you look good for someone dealing with an asshole!” Talia said, drawing a laugh from all of us. Sure enough, the laughter left me first, replaced by the anger and heartache Cassius had left me.
But yes, I did appreciate, however fleeting a moment it was, to have that laugh. She, too, rose and gave a hug, and she tempered her quip with words of reassurance.
Delilah was the last to hug me, purely by where she stood at the table. She embraced me and had little to say, but I understood why. She’d already provided me with the greatest words of wisdom at the Allure photoshoot—that the Black Reapers might still be involved. She had saved me, really.
Really.
There was nothing about what Cassius had said that could compare to what Delilah had said.
“I came to you intending to destroy you, Sarah.”
I took it back. Cassius could say something that could compare to what Delilah had said. But it didn’t really matter, as Sarah had been first.
“You want to know the whole truth, Sarah? I want the Black Reapers. I want them under my hand and in my control.
But I’m also not a fucking idiot. I don’t pursue what will never work out if it won’t work out. I will not let anyone I am associated with, you included, be tainted by them or touched by them.”
“Sarah?”
I shook my head. Delilah was staring at me as if I’d just had a seizure at the table. Which wasn’t medically true, but the way thoughts of Cassius could seize my brain, it could sometimes be metaphorically true.
“Sorry, lot going on.”
“Understandably so,” she said, motioning for me to take a seat. “So, word has it that you are intending to leave Las Vegas?”
I nodded.
“I don’t really know how I can stay here,” I said, doing my best not to let my temper or frustration get the best of me in public.
“I never actually signed a lease or bought a place here, which means I’m currently entirely dependent on Cassius paying my hotel bill.
And, as you picked up by text, that’s over and done with.
I doubt if I ever see him again, he’ll speak to me, let alone apologize for what he’s done and might still be doing with the Black Reapers. ”
I shook my head and swallowed. Saying the “Black Reapers” might as well have been akin to a priest or rabbi having to say “fuck” before a congregation.
It burned at my soul and left my tongue with a nasty, bitter feeling.
I’d sooner take shots of ground-up spices than have to talk about them much longer.
“Don’t let a man decide where you live,” Talia said. “We always say, don’t move somewhere for a man. Well, I think it’s fair to say, you shouldn’t move from somewhere just because of one man.”
“Easier said than done when it’s not a bunch of bikers,” Bridget said.
“Brianna is lucky. Frankly, in a weird way, Sarah, you are lucky. I’m not dismissing the danger.
But for as bad as the Black Reapers have been and, I’d argue, still are, there are way, way, way worse motorcycle clubs out there.
Most have been smart enough to stay as far away from Vegas and the American Southwest in general, but never put it past a bunch of egotistical dumbasses to try to take territory here. ”
Lovely.
I was “lucky” to have the Black Reapers on my trail. If they ruined my father’s career and pushed my family out of town, what would have happened if I’d gotten “unlucky?”
“I agree to an extent with Bridget, although for different reasons,” Delilah said.
“I can’t speak for what happened personally between you and Cassius.
But the thing about being a journalist, Sarah?
We get to see the rich, famous, and powerful up close in ways only their employees might be able to match.
We can’t write about everything, because it may not be on the record, or it may not be something we can get corroborating accounts on, but we know their secrets, their dirt, their utterly depraved desires.
Cassius is ruthless, he’s cruel, and he can be unbelievably forceful in getting what he wants. ”
Yep. That all aligned with what I already knew.
“As far as I know, Sarah, from what I’ve dug into his past, he hasn’t murdered anyone. He hasn’t been in the orbit of anyone who died under mysterious circumstances.”
No, but I have. I was driving the car that got hit and killed Virgil.
And…
I swallowed, even as Delilah continued. Virgil. The one innocent Vale in all of this.
I hadn’t been to his grave since fleeing Las Vegas.
I wasn’t sure I owed it to him, but a part of me felt I could not leave Vegas without doing so.
Maybe it was just a way to flatter my pride, to make me feel like the bigger person than Cassius.
Maybe it genuinely came from a place of sincerity and well intention.
Either way…
“But Cassius is a billionaire, he is powerful, and when pushed, powerful and rich men don’t usually back down.
In fact, the only reason I’ve ever seen one do so is because it’s a ploy, an appearance of a maneuver to set something up.
So, all this to say, Sarah, I agree with Bridget. I think it’s wise to move.”
I nodded with a grim expression on my face.
The waiter came by and took our order; I didn’t even know what to order, I hadn’t looked at the menu.
I just asked for the waiter’s favorite scrambled eggs dish, as I couldn’t think any further than that.
The waiter left, putting on a veneer of politeness but definitely showing an expression of concern.
“Well, I’m glad the three of us could get together on Black Friday,” I said. “Somehow, it feels more relaxing than storming the malls for deals.”
That brought a polite laugh from those three. I hadn’t delivered the joke with much vigor, and frankly I’d done it more to not totally kill the mood than to get a bunch of laughs. But they were my friends, if nothing else. They’d be as polite as they possibly would be for me.
“What about your art career?” Talia said.
She didn’t speak as if she would do anything to keep me in Las Vegas, but I did appreciate her being here.
“It will go on at a smaller scale,” I said. “I appreciate what Cassius did for me in that regard, but I expect he will destroy me as quickly as he built me up. If he wants nothing to do with me, he’s probably already stripped Allure of my presence. Probably already told—”
“We should go to Allure after this,” Delilah suddenly said.
Perplexity draped over my face. Delilah wanted to go back to the heart of Cassius’ casino empire? She did?
“Do you trust that you’ll get anything out of the photoshoot you did? Wasn’t that like right before you left for Wyoming? Your Thanksgiving trip?”
The one where we had some of the most mind-blowing sex of my life? The one where I thought all was well, we’d forgiven each other, and we might yet move to something bigger and better?
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, my face belying the wild thoughts of that night. Maybe someday, I could disassociate the intense emotions from the physical pleasure, and I could use it as a memory. But until then… “Why?”
“Everything from that photoshoot will never see the light of day now,” Delilah said. “If it does, consider it a happy accident or a parting gift from Cassius. But I wouldn’t exactly expect that man to give parting gifts.”
I didn’t either. He seemed more capable of giving parting stabs to the back than parting gifts. And even if he did, Delilah made a good point.
“So we need to head back there,” I said with a sigh. “OK. But I don’t want to go today.”
“Why?” Delilah said.
The truth was because the idea, while good, was too raw.
We’d only had the breakup yesterday, not two weeks before.
The idea of setting foot back in Allure so quickly, even if it was so necessary, was impossible.
Truly, I would have rather suffered the career setback than have to face the possibility of Cassius.
“Well, it being Black Friday, you’ll get a lot of foot traffic there visiting the shops,” I said.
“And even if there’s only a twenty percent increase in traffic, that’s going to make our ability to do our own photos near impossible.
We should plan on getting there first thing tomorrow morning, when crowds will be minimal. ”
The skepticism was obvious on everyone’s face. And who could blame them? I wasn’t offering an explanation but an excuse.
Yet when anger coursed through your broken heart as it did with me, was there really much of a difference between the two? And did there really need to be?
“Tomorrow, then,” Delilah said. “I don’t think I’ll have to be anywhere. And even if I do—”
“I know I can be there,” Bridget said.
“I think I can too,” Talia said. “It’s not like I’m banned from going to competitor’s locations. I’m not important enough to be involved in my boss’ worlds anyway.”
That’s what I had thought, too. Not that Cassius was ever my boss, but I had once thought that I would never get involved in a billionaire’s world.
Funny how that worked out.
Funny how I could see all too easily how that might work out with Talia, depending on if any of the Morrils—or, perhaps more frightening, if any of the Vales—took an eye to her. God help her, it would be the worst thing to ever happen to her.
“So then, sounds like a second group date,” I said, smiling for the first time without forcing it. “Sounds like a good way to end my return to Vegas.”
“Indeed,” Delilah said, and she held out a mimosa glass for cheers. I had never ordered one, yet now that I looked down, I saw that the girls had already ordered one.
That, I thought, that was the difference between true friends and a truly idiotic decision of a man.
The former knew your preferences and desires and catered their actions to you, even ensuring that you arrived already having your needs met.
The latter gave no shits about what you wanted and went about their own way, ignorant of how it might affect you.
Are you really so sure that Cassius was—is—the latter and not the former?
Strangely, even as the conversation moved to other topics, even as thoughts of Cassius became less the main stream of thought and more a series of intrusive thoughts, that question never really disappeared. Nor did the answer I was leaning toward.
Well, wherever Cassius was, I hoped that he wasn’t getting in too deep with the Black Reapers. And if he was, I hope he got exactly what he deserved.