Chapter 25 Cassius
CASSIUS
The normal single glass of bourbon to close out the night had turned into my fifth of the evening. I stood at the glass windows of my penthouse overlooking Las Vegas, faced with an immediate paradox that I somehow kept making worse.
The more I drank to try to forget Virgil and Sarah, the worse it got.
I was old enough to know better by now. The only way to truly forget everything that had transpired was to get so fucking drunk that I might turn into a medical emergency, and as in my head as I was, I was not that desperate. Never would be.
But how the fuck was I supposed to resolve the unresolvable?
“You wanted to destroy me? Well, the Morrils can’t destroy what’s already broken.”
Even now, well after the fact, I had no idea how the fuck to address that. Already broken? That implied that she’d been broken for some time now. Did she mean over us? Over the longer Virgil saga? Sometime in between those two points, maybe because of the Reapers or something?
“Your world is no different than the Reapers’.”
Of all the things she had said… that wasn’t really that fucking wrong, was it? No, I never rode a bike. No, I never killed a man.
But maybe…
Fuck, no! No! I would not—I took a huge gulp of the remaining fifth drink in my hand—let myself be thought of as anything like a Black Reaper. I was not! I was a businessman, they were bikers. End of story!
“Just because you don’t use guns and motorcycles doesn’t mean you don’t play the same games of power, control, and greed.”
Why the fuck did what Sarah say have to stick in my mind like this? Why couldn’t I just fucking shrug it off without having to be crippling drunk? Why?
Because it’s the truth.
That thought flashed in my mind for only a split second, as if someone else had put it there. It came and went as quickly as many other thoughts might, here one moment, discarded so quickly thereafter I might as well have never thought it.
But then it came back.
And it stuck.
And a heavy part of me began to realize that it wasn’t just a part of me desperate to find a solution to bring Sarah back into the fold. She could be six feet under for six years, and it would be true.
My world is no different than the Black Reapers.
What a… strangely relieving thought.
No, not relieving in that I somehow thought I could go ride a bike and adopt some stupid name like King or Heartcrusher. I might have accepted the reality of the core of the idea, but there were going to be superficial similarities that would never come to fruition.
But if I acknowledged it…
I didn’t have a good reason for why it made me feel better to just accept it.
Maybe I could stop pretending that I might still control them; since the very thought of someone trying to control me was insulting, I had to admit the same might be true of those in the Black Reapers.
Maybe some psychoanalyst might dive deeper into me and say it allowed me to be a fuller version of myself, but honestly, fuck that.
In business, we were judged by our profits and losses, and I was going to view this realization in the same way.
And then it gave me an even crazier idea.
What if they could relate to what I was going through?
Being a billionaire was empowering, intoxicating, and lonely as hell sometimes.
When even people who thought themselves generationally wealthy had a tenth of the net worth you had, when people who were at the top of their industry had their assets dwarfed by yours, resentment naturally formed.
It became nigh impossible to form friendships, because once people bothered to Google you, they saw you as a means to an end, not the end itself.
But what if the person on the other end didn’t give a fuck about your money and power?
That was rare. Sarah Carpenter had been one such example.
The Black Reapers was the other.
Fuck.
This was either one of my dumbest or my boldest ideas yet. I picked up my phone, barely taking the chance to contemplate what I was doing—willing to blame it on the excess bourbon if I must—and dialed Prince’s number.
“You better make this quick,” Prince said as soon as he picked up. Right. Our last encounter hadn’t exactly been hugs and cheers.
“I’m calling to ask questions about Wesley Dread, not Prince.”
A pause on the other line came, a hitch that told me I had an opening—but I had better tread really fucking carefully.
Well, I didn’t believe in letting others guide my caution, but I was still sober enough to recognize a chance.
“I need your advice, not your arms or a favor,” I said. “Why did you stop?”
“Stop… what, exactly?”
Prince’s—Wesley’s—voice still was marked with heavy suspicion. And who the fuck could blame him? Getting called at eleven p.m. this late after everything was probably the early stages of what sounded like a threat.
“All the MC shit,” I said. “The violence. The bloodshed.”
Wesley snorted.
“I got tired of my father’s actions, if you must know,” he said. “What the fuck is this really about, Cassius? Don’t fuck with me.”
“What role did your wife have to do with it?” I said. “Just shoot me straight. I’m not going to ask for any meeting or favors. This phone call is the fucking meeting.”
Another hitch in the voice, another pause. Good. The longer I delayed him hanging up on me, the more likely I was to get the results I wanted.
“I was already sick of my father by that point, but Sasha played a big role in encouraging me to follow through on everything,” he said.
“And did you guys encounter trouble along the way?”
“What do you want, our entire relationship story? Have you been fucking drinking, King of Hearts?”
“Entirely too much, but I will remember this,” I said. “I will not forget what you have to say, Wesley.”
“I see,” he muttered. Drawing a breath, he pressed on.
“Yes, we encountered trouble. But you know what? Sasha made every decision easy. I knew it then and I certainly know it now, not one fucking thing matters more than my wife and kids. That doesn’t mean I don’t stay involved in the Black Reapers.
That doesn’t mean I worship at her feet and beg for her grace every morning.
Fuck no. There’s a difference between prioritizing my family and being supplicant to them.
But they’re number one, and when push comes to shove, they remain number one.
And if someone wants to fuck with them?”
Wesley didn’t answer his own question, but he didn’t need to.
I knew full well how far I’d go to destroy the Morrils to protect Sarah, and I didn’t even have a ring on her finger, let alone years of marriage and a kid.
I could only fathom how much of Vegas would burn if Wesley thought Sasha might be in danger.
“That’s all I needed to know,” I said. “You didn’t have to take this call, Wesley. I… appreciate it.”
“Don’t make it a habit, King of Hearts,” he growled. “You’re lucky I’m alone right now. And don’t you fucking think this somehow means we’re interested in joining you.”
“I—”
I never got to finish what I wanted to say, because the line went dead. Hard. But fair enough. Wesley had spoken briefly, but Prince needed to return.
And that’s how I suspected it needed to be with Sarah, should I ever get the chance to have her back in my arms. Cassius Vale, the man, needed to be present; not the King of Hearts, not the ruthless billionaire, not the vengeful Vale.
Which meant that even if the Morrils followed through on their threat to release a hit piece on her, even if they had bigger plans, even if someday, their business empire surpassed ours and we had to accept second place…
So be it.
I could choose Sarah, or I could choose revenge and power, but I couldn’t choose both. She wouldn’t allow me, nor should she. And for fuck’s sake, if the Black Reapers could choose women over revenge and power…
Maybe it was a fucking good thing that we weren’t as dissimilar as I had once thought.
“Well, Cassius,” I said to myself. Suddenly, I didn’t feel the need to be as drunk as I was.
Oh, there was no magic “pull alcohol out of body” technology; I was going to suffer a hangover tomorrow morning, even if I chugged water for the next hour.
But I’d gotten what I needed. “Guess the King of Hearts will become her king for her heart.”
I chuckled. That was a fucking terrible joke. But maybe, in a weird way, that was another part of this entire process. Letting go of the need for perfect control, whether over my empire, my city, or my words, to let something gentler in.
Now, however, practical issues.
The last time I’d called Sarah, it had blown up badly in my face.
I hadn’t forced her to do anything, but there was certainly something to the fact that I had taken the same tone with her as I might have in an urgent business meeting.
I didn’t feel unjustified in doing that, but I had to be aware it had backfired.
So, I had to frame it more gently than that. I had to…
I had to, fuck, give her the option.
That wasn’t especially pleasant. If she took the option, I would spare no expense to make her feel welcome. But I couldn’t drag her in anymore than the Reapers had dragged their women to their feet.
So, carefully—certainly more carefully than I had with Prince—I pulled out Sarah’s contact and texted her. I wrote out the message, read it a couple of times, edited it to be as gentle as I could—I was still Cassius Vale, there was only so much I could do—and hit send.
My job was done. All that I could do now was wait. It went against everything I knew and how I operated, but if I wanted a different result, I needed a different approach.
And to achieve the result of love I’d never had in my life before, I really had to do something I’d never done before.