Chapter 24 Sarah
SARAH
On the phone, I told Cassius the truth.
But it wasn’t the whole truth.
By now, it was all too clear that the longer I stayed in Cassius’ orbit, the longer I’d get hurt. Even if, taking the emotion out of things, my life wasn’t as much in danger as I feared and the Reapers weren’t as close as I had thought, there was still damage. This very call said as much.
By choosing to let Cassius take me places, by choosing to be his date to all these high-profile events, I had become a pawn in their game of billionaire chess.
Expendable, perhaps more dressed up than a typical pawn, but a piece to be moved in all directions all the same.
I was damn tired of it, damn tired of having the ghost of my past haunt me, just damn tired, period.
What I didn’t tell Cassius, however, was that just because I had no intention of staying in his orbit and helping him resolve the issue on his end didn’t mean that I was willing to stand by and let the damage come to me.
I was going to take a stand—I was going to speak out against whatever allegations were coming, build a backbone of my own, and fight.
If the Morrils wanted to take me down, they’d find I was just as formidable a foe as the Vales.
And I knew just who to bring to my side.
I was already on the highway to Phoenix, the Las Vegas Strip just barely visible in my rearview mirror.
A part of me had silently wondered if I could make things right, but that was before Cassius had told me more drama was to come.
I would not be coming back to Vegas for anything other than visits to my friends—and now, I knew who would be first.
I brought up the desired contact, pressed the Call button, and waited a few seconds.
“Change your mind already?” Delilah said, with a hint of cheerfulness and hope in her tone.
A part of me wished she would have no idea what was transpiring, but actually, she could handle this kind of shit better than anyone.
She lived and breathed high-stakes political and power games; she did not get intimidated by them or threats from those above her.
“I wish,” I said, only catching myself after I said those words.
Are you really sure you want to get away?
Are you sure you’re not just running—like you did when Virgil died?
“I’m calling, Delilah, because Cassius just called.
He said that the Morrils are working on a hit piece about me.
He said that they’re trying to hurt him by trying to hurt me.
I don’t care to be involved with him, it’s over and done, but they’ll blow it up to the world that I was the driver when Virgil died. What am I supposed to do?”
A long pause came on the other end of the line. I had zero doubt Delilah was on my side; she was just very good at not feeling the need to speak all the time. Sometimes, that was so she could think. Other times, it was to force someone into the awkwardness of speaking.
“The problem, Sarah, and I don’t mean this meanly.
My editors would never care to run a rebuttal piece, at least not about you,” she said.
“The piece would have to cover Cassius and the Vale family as a whole, and it would have to mention you in passing. There might be some good news in that if my editors won’t go for a response piece, they aren’t the ones who are going to publish a piece on you. ”
“Meaning?”
“The Morrils are presenting like they're rattling a large sword, but really it’s a dull butter knife. The Los Angeles Times isn’t going to run a gossip piece about what the girlfriend of the King of Hearts did twenty years ago.
No reputable newspaper. Even TMZ won’t; they’re scraping for some poorly read blogs or influencers to get attention. ”
I suppose it was of some solace to know that this was unlikely to be a massive blowup of news.
Still, I knew that this wasn’t going to be the last time that the Morrils might come after me to hurt Cassius.
The easy solution was to make clear I had no connection to him any longer, and that attempts to hurt him would be akin to going after a random woman in New Hampshire to hurt Cassius.
Except that wasn’t true.
If I really let the feelings sink in, if I really thought about everything that happened, if I let the absolute truth wash over me…
I couldn’t not care about Cassius Vale. I knew the same was true for him.
That didn’t mean we were destined to fall in love.
But we had too much history. In twenty years, an article could come out blaming Cassius for the decline of Vegas, I could have not talked to him in those twenty years, and I’d still feel something for him.
“We can work to get you good press, Sarah,” she said.
“But if you do that, it means you’ll probably have to make an appearance with Cassius.
The only counter for juicy gossip is the unassailable truth that doesn’t need to flaunt its veracity.
Truth that is undeniable, truth that no one can deny—that is how you defeat bad press.
So, think about what truth you want to present to the world.
I’m not saying it has to be any one way, other than showing you to be honest and of character.
But it has to be a truth you are fully committed to. Does that make sense?”
It did.
It very much did.
So much so that I pulled over at the next exit. I stopped at a gas station as I told Delilah that I understood what she meant. She laid out some more logistical steps, but one thing was clear.
I—and Cassius—had to stop living in a world of half-truths or even eighty percent truths. We couldn’t keep parts from ourselves, whether dark parts or secretly good parts. He could not hide his Black Reapers lust from me, but I couldn’t hide how seeing him at Virgil’s grave had affected me.
I needed a night alone to figure out what truth I really wanted.
Because once I committed to that truth, that would really, truly, be it, one way or another.
I could not, however, spend that night in Las Vegas.
God forbid, that seemed like the worst idea possible.
If the Morrils were planning more than a nasty hit piece, then setting up in their backyard was like announcing to the bears that meat had arrived.
If I ended up giving into the temptation of physical satisfaction with Cassius, it might be nice in the moment, but it would leave me flustered, feeling like I was diving into something I hadn’t given full thought to.
Instead, I visited someone who, despite being very important in my life, I had not taken any time to see since everything started with Cassius.
He would know what to do, for he had been up close and personal with the old Vegas.
He would always tell me the whole truth, both good and bad, and would not give me bad advice.
My father.
When I pulled up to his Phoenix suburban home, I was reminded in some ways of the world that we had left.
Not because he had motorcycle club paraphernalia or anything like that, but because the house he now lived in was much smaller than the one I grew up in Las Vegas.
Taking a step away from the city where he’d made his legal career had absolutely taken a financial toll on him, a reminder that intermingling with the wrong crowd, even on a professional level, had its consequences.
Yet when he stepped out of the house, beaming with a huge smile, it was also a reminder that anything that didn’t kill you could be recovered from.
He had grayer hair than he did in his youth, and he had a very slight limp that got just a little worse every year, but he was still my dad.
He was still the best man I knew, and fleeing Vegas had done nothing to change that.
“You missed out on some great turkey,” he chuckled. “I know Wyoming has great bison, but it’s nothing compared to my blasted turkey.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said, embracing him. “Can we talk about that, though?”
My father led me to the kitchen, where he had a glass of white wine waiting for me. He made some remarks about how I needed to relax, but not relax too much, and that white wine threaded that needle.
“So,” he said. “What kept you in Vegas as long as it did?”
In the next ten minutes, I told him everything.
There were no surprises in there from before.
He had known well of my first relationship with Cassius, had known that he was a billionaire now—though he did not know that he had just opened Allure and become something of an arts patron.
He listened closely as I recounted details that seemed a lifetime ago yet had happened after Halloween, like how he immediately called me out for passing myself off as Sasha Carter or how he ran both hot and cold at the Cosmopolitan.
I laid out what happened in Wyoming—leaving out the not-safe-for-parents details, of course—and ended with my fury at him contacting the Black Reapers.
My father listened as he always did, using the skills that made him such a great lawyer. But at the very end, when I mentioned my fury at the Black Reapers, a raised eyebrow came across my father. That wasn’t too surprising. After all, they had been the ones to kick him out of Vegas.
“Do you know why we left Vegas in the first place?” my father said. “It wasn’t because of the Black Reapers. It never was. It was the King’s Men.”
You knew that.
You’ve always known that.
You just used them as a convenient excuse not to get close to Cassius Vale. Because opening your heart up to him is enormously risky, even if it’s enormously rewarding. No one can break your heart like he can.
“That’s a distinction I’ve tried to make to several people.
Few seem to—or care to—understand,” he continued.
“When you’re looking in from afar, or even just from far enough that it’s not in your day-to-day life, you think the game is being played by the same people.
‘All billionaires are the same.’ ‘All bikers are the same.’ But you said it yourself.
Cassius might be ruthless, but he’s honest and protective.
The Morrils don’t seem that way. Why would the Reapers be the same? ”
“Are they not?” I said, though I was just playing devil’s advocate by this point. “If not in action, then in temperament? In proclivities?”
“We don’t prosecute people for their proclivities. We don’t even judge people individually, never mind legally, for their proclivities. We judge them for how they treat us and have treated us.”
And Cassius might have had the proclivity to try to destroy me… but he always treated me well. Or at the least, he didn’t actually destroy me when he ran cold.
“The Reapers are crazy men. You won’t hear me say otherwise.
But in a strange way, I think they’re good men.
They made Vegas a better place by helping take out King.
So you ended this by saying you were leaving Vegas because of them?
My advice, Sarah, if an old man in his seventies can give advice worth a damn.
If you’re going to stay away from Vegas, do it because opportunities are better in Phoenix. ”
He smiled.
“As a father, I also have to always tell you to trust no other boy,” he said with a chuckle.
“But. A father can’t ask more from a man for his daughter than to prioritize her and protect her above all else.
If Cassius will do that? If he will put you above his empire and his petty grievances?
Then there’s not much more you can ask for. ”
I wasn’t anyway.
And yet he gave me so much. A career ignition. Trips to New York, Wyoming. Access to his penthouse.
And if I really listen to it…
“Thanks, Dad,” I said with a warm smile.
I grabbed my glass of wine and toasted to his advice and health. It was a shame I didn’t spend more time with him, and it was a shame that it took his advice to get me to accept what I already rationally knew to be true.
Only one real question remained.
How could Cassius truly, once and for all, prove that he prioritized me over his empire and over his grievances and flirtations with the Morrils and Black Reapers?