Chapter 10 Carter
CARTER
Me running into Carmen at the grocery store was coincidental.
Skipper can talk about his “soul contract” bullshit until the cows come home. Coincidences happen. That’s just how life works sometimes.
Of course, when I arrive back at the MC clubhouse, there are questions.
Skipper is the first to perk up in his seat and yell out his favorite two words. But at least I have Carmen here siding with me.
“Vegas is a small place.” She takes a seat at the bar and starts swinging her legs, taking in the clubhouse in a different light. The last time she was here, the room was dark and crawling with drunk bikers who had no filter.
It’s much quieter during the day.
“What are you doing back here, sweetheart?” Skipper asks.
“Your friend invited me back.”
Skipper looks glad, but Vex gives me quite the scolding look. “What the fuck are you playing at? Is this a game to you?”
I wish I could answer that question. The truth is—I don’t know what she’s doing back here. My brain has been out of sorts since Carmen reentered my life last night.
I made matters worse by sleeping with her.
But what was I supposed to do? Sit back and watch as my two friends have their cake and eat it?
I don’t crumble when people beg me to spare their lives, or when I’m being shot in the leg…
But I crumble for a woman?
The blame is on me for outbidding Conrad O’Neill. I don’t regret what I did, though.
There’s something about Carmen that I can’t quite put my finger on. Most women tell you who they are. Carmen keeps her cards close.
Not like I’m one to judge. I think we both play the same when it comes to the game of life. Maybe that’s half the reason I’m so intrigued.
The other reason speaks loud and clear for itself.
It looks like she’s been putting my money to use, treating herself to a makeover. The jacket is the same vintage brown as her boots. She also smells different, more classy. Unfortunately, it conceals her natural, honey-cinnamon scent that I remember smelling the first time we went to bed.
Money only goes so far. I hope she’s smart enough to know that.
I prop myself up against the bar. “I just thought we should clear the air. I know things between us have been rocky. I wanted to apologize for what happened three years ago. I shouldn’t have walked out on you without saying goodbye.”
Carmen frowns, pulling her brown leather jacket closer. “You think I care about what happened three years ago?”
My heart changes rhythm.
Maybe she doesn’t.
Maybe I’m the one who cares.
The day after I rudely walked away was the day my mother mysteriously lost her life. That made our time together significant.
For me.
Maybe not so much for her.
For Carmen, it was just another night. When the sun rose the next day, she continued on as normal. Unlike me, she probably didn’t question her life’s choices and fall into a deep existential crisis.
Because unlike me, Carmen was never an arrogant, stuck-up fool.
Not yet, anyway…
I look at the embroidered Isabel Marant logo stitched into the collar of her jacket and see the past repeating itself all over again.
“Don’t let the money get into your head.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s dangerous and not worth it.”
“Is that why you had a drastic change of lifestyle?” Carmen hitches her arms up to her chest. “Because you started to become a walking dollar bill?”
“Exactly that. It’s why I sold Milton’s Milkshakes. I was so hyperfocused on numbers, on making more money, that I forgot what mattered most in life. I don’t want the same to happen to you.”
“Then rest assured,” Carmen says. “You put me off that lifestyle the second you started talking about online courses and business revenue.” Her stare deepens. “What happened to you? Why did you abandon everything for Harleys and leather?”
Most people are asleep at five a.m.
But I’m not most people.
I jump out of the cab when it pulls up outside of my apartment block, and elevator up to my penthouse. The block was only built last year, so everything’s brand spanking new.
The views are even more unbeatable than the furniture. The apartment offers a perfect view of the Strip. I have my desk looking out onto it for that reason—while I’m making money, I’m also looking at it.
Milton’s Milkshakes is one of the USA’s favorite milkshake brands. Next month, I’m hoping to expand the company and distribute stock into Europe.
I sit back in my chair and watch the Strip dazzle below. Only unsuccessful people choose to sleep at night. The real winners of this world take strategic power naps throughout the day.
I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
Although I must admit, after the night I had with Carmen, I’m pretty fucking exhausted. If I hadn’t left her place quickly, I wouldn’t have left at all.
I would’ve stayed for another hour.
God forbid, another day.
While waiting for my computer to log in, I crack open the mini fridge and help myself to an energy drink. I have two hours of deep, focused work to get through, and this is what’s going to see me through to the end.
Until the intercom buzzes two minutes in.
I abandon my computer and head over, ready to tell the person on the other side to leave a message and come back later this afternoon.
But I don’t get to speak.
I’m cut off by a policeman who demands to be let in this instant.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“Sir, I’m afraid we have some urgent news.”
Begrudgingly, I buzz him in and hope he’s not gonna take up too much of my time.
Just when I think this is about to be a hoax—two kids messing around trying to photograph my place, the police officer strides in with a grave look on his face.
“I need you to come down to the station.”
I stare at the man, trying to find the answer in his eyes. I haven’t done anything wrong. I pay my dues, have an accountant that handles all of my finances. Unlike other shady millionaires that exist in this city, I move through Vegas legally.
“What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We need you to identify a body.” There’s a large pause between this sentence and the next. “We have reason to believe that it might be your mother’s.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sir, please come with me. It’s better to do this now before the city comes alive and starts asking questions.”
I grab my suit jacket and button it up before following the officer out of my own apartment block. My chest stings with fear, but I shoo it away and focus putting one foot in front of the other.
My steps are shaky, my hand wobbling as I call for the elevator. The police officer stands beside me. In my peripheral vision, I see him watching me, his attention going to my hands.
I shove them in my pockets immediately, regardless of how unprofessional it looks.
Anything is better than looking like a nervous wreck.
This has to be a joke. People get jealous, so much that they start putting others down as a means to make themselves feel better again.
If this is one of those times, the bastards can go to hell and suck satan’s cock. I will not be played with like this.
But then I make it to the station and see more police officers gathered around, the same cold expressions written all over their faces.
My mother isn’t dead. She walks fine, still drives a car and is just as independent as she was twenty years ago. There’s no cause for alarm. Someone’s made a mistake…
Until I step into the room and lose all control over my body.
The sting in my chest bleeds out, filling every artery, every cell and vein in my body. I no longer have the option to shove the thought aside and move on with my day.
Because the day no longer exists.
She’s still. Eerily still. Some people look peaceful when they’re dead.
My mother does not.
She was taken too soon.
And when I say taken, I mean she was killed, even if the mortician in the room has something different to say.
The large cut down her face was deliberate, not accidental, like others in the room are suggesting. She was found on the side of the road. Someone apparently tried to cut her clothes so that they could place the defibrillator on her chest, and instead accidentally cut open her face.
I call bullshit.
“She was killed.”
“Sir, there’s no bullet wound,” says the mortician. “It’s looking like an MI.”
“She wouldn’t have a heart attack.”
“All due respect, your mother was old.”
“Old, but still functioning. You think a seventy-year-old wears heels if she can’t hold her own?”
“Sir—”
“There has to be an explanation for this.”
In the corner of my eye, I catch the police officer giving the mortician a look, killing the conversation.
A thick silence fills the room, various people exiting and entering. I hear the door shutting intermittently from someplace far away.
It doesn’t feel like I’m in the room anymore.
It feels like I’m floating. No matter how many times I attempt to wrap my head around all of this, it still hurts.
If I stare at my mother’s closed eyes hard enough, they might just open again.
If I shut my eyes and focus on my breathing, I might just be lucky enough to wake up in the penthouse and call this a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
Any minute now, she’s going to return from the dead and strut out of here in the Louboutins she still has on her feet.
But how’s she going to do that when someone has cut a huge fucking chunk out of her face?
“Let me give you a lift back?” says the police officer.
I only hear him because he has a hand wrapped around my wrist.
I shoo him away. “I’m staying here.”
“Be my guest, but the mortician needs to move your mother on at some point.”
“She’s a human being, not a fucking shipping container.”
“Carter—”
“Don’t say my name.”
“I understand.”
It’s a waste of energy trying to explain to him that he doesn’t. Not in the slightest. A woman capable of reapplying lipstick every hour, of traveling the world and walking miles every day, doesn’t just drop dead all of a sudden.
She had no underlying health conditions.
The whole thing is a scam.
She was murdered.