Chapter 1
Nathan
Three months prior
I’m trudging toward the entrance when I’m stopped by a worker in a yellow hard hat.
His cheeks are red enough to rival his neon-orange vest as he begins to shout at me in Spanish.
I know some rudimentary Spanish, but he’s talking too fast and is mostly drowned out by the background noise of construction.
He takes a step closer, his finger stabbing the air aggressively around my chest area.
His gesture is a glaringly obvious: Who the fuck do you think you are?
Before I can tell him that I own this building, another man in a matching orange vest comes jogging toward us.
“Juan!” His voice booms over all the noise.
When he reaches us, he smacks the man named Juan on the back of his helmet.
“You tonto, are you loco? This is el jefe. Watch your tone.” He turns to me and offers his hand.
“I’m Frankie, the foreman here. I’m so sorry, Mr. Hatcher. ”
“What’s he so upset about?” I nod toward Juan who has retreated several steps out of earshot, his head hung in shame.
“Juan’s my shift lead. He takes safety very seriously. You’re about to enter an active demo site and you’re not wearing a hard hat. He’d be responsible if you got hurt. He shouldn’t have shouted at you though. I’ll write him up for that.”
I nod in understanding. “Right. You’re bilingual?”
Frankie nods. “Yes, sir.”
“How do I say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. Good job,’ in Spanish?”
With an odd look on his face, Frankie slowly translates my words.
I walk up to Juan with my hand outstretched.
He shakes it firmly, but there’s fear in his eyes like he’s worried he’s about to lose his job.
“ Lo siento, tienes razón. Buen trabajo .” I must sound like a fool in my American accent, but I tried.
Juan relaxes, blowing out a big breath of relief. He taps his hard hat. “Always safety,” he says in a thick accent. I pat his shoulder as a final gesture of approval.
As Juan disappears back into the jobsite, I turn to Frankie. “Don’t write him up. Give him a raise. If it’s not in the budget, bill my office.”
Frankie laughs, seemingly more out of surprise than anything else. “Geez. Thank you. When suits come around here, they’re usually assholes to my guys.”
I half-smile. “I have my moments. Do you have protective gear I can use? My dad’s inside. I need to speak with him.”
“Right away.” Frankie hustles off to a nearby trailer and returns with a bright yellow hard hat. The interior padding is holding on to a faint smell of sweat, but desperate times, desperate measures.
Dad’s standing in the heart of the building. With all the rubble around us, it looks like he’s in the eye of a storm, which explains the calm on his face. “Nate!” he thunders out. “Nice of you to show up, finally. You sleeping in these days?”
I check my watch. “It’s seven thirty in the morning,” I answer flatly. My dad is such an early riser, it could be argued he’s actually a night owl. He continues to invite me to five o’clock sunrise hikes despite how many times I tell him to shove it up his ass.
“So, what do you think of this beauty? A fucking steal, right?”
I take in a panoramic view of the broken columns amidst the piles of rubble. Sludge is leaking from the fallen pipes and liquid is getting uncomfortably close to the coils upon coils of ripped-up electrical wires. “Are we looking at the same thing here?”
“All this space,” Dad murmurs, spinning in place.
“I’m thinking a manmade lake with a projected water show.
Maybe burlesque dancers on giant floating lily pads.
” He waves his hands in the air like he’s shoving off the idea.
“But I’m not committed to anything yet, so if you’ve got something on your mind, jump in. ”
I blink at him. “Before we start talking about giant lily pads, can we discuss your definition of ‘light facelift’? Because I’m looking at a flimsy house of cards, held together with thin toothpicks. Dad, you bought fifty acres of rubble. And what the hell is that smell?”
He rubs his hands together as he grimaces. “The sewage smell or the burning rubber?”
“What sewage smell?” I cringe.
“It gets stronger that way.” Dad points over his shoulder. “We’re not sure where it’s coming from. Possibly a drain issue.”
“Great.” I stab my fist against my forehead. “And the burning rubber?”
“This building’s been abandoned for a few years. There were some squatters. Looks like they’ve been burning tire scraps for warmth.”
“Dad, up until ten minutes ago, I really thought you were the most savvy property investor in the world.”
His grin is wicked. “And now?”
“Now I think you need a CAT scan before making any more business decisions.” Right on cue, a light breeze brings a waft of the aforementioned sewage stink.
From what I understand, this was supposed to be a strip mall, and when the project went bankrupt, it was acquired by a new group of investors who attempted to convert the space into a massive hotel.
The more costly the construction got, the more the investors lost interest in the project.
Obviously, they cut their losses and abandoned ship.
“I looked at the bill of sale. We were already upside down before I saw this giant mess. You paid more than one hundred million dollars for the land alone?—”
“It’s a prime location.”
“It’s not ,” I argue. “It’s too far west of the Strip. The only people who venture this far are lost, looking for Chinatown.”
Dad lays his hand on his stomach. “Speaking of which, I could go for dim sum. Want to finish up here and make plans for lunch? I’ll call Jules. She knows the best restaurants.” He shoots me a pointed look. “Can I invite her?”
“I have lunch plans.”
Fucking Julia. That’s a whole other issue. My dad’s current girlfriend is the epitome of a late-life crisis.
“You can’t avoid her forever.”
Watch me.
Eager to change the subject, I ask further about Dad’s most recent harebrained purchase. “Who owns the lot directly behind this?”
Dad’s grunt of irritation tells me all I need to know. “Who do you think? Senior.”
Griffin Harvey Senior is Dad’s biggest rival for property on the Strip. They’re both heavy into real estate investments, and Harvey has a knack for swooping in and purchasing properties my dad has his eye on.
“We’d need it for a decent-size parking garage. A resort like this is not going to work without a parking garage.”
“Yeah, well, if I make an offer to Harvey, he’ll hold the property just out of spite.”
“I thought your rivalry was a ‘little friendly competition.’”
Dad licks his lips. “Let’s just say it’s gotten a bit heated over the past few years.”
“Heated as in enough fire to burn bridges?”
He teeters his head. “You could say that. Aren’t you friends with his grandson?”
“Somewhat.” Finn and I used to be pretty close. We’re both UNLV graduates and had the same friends. But a few years ago, we lost touch. Actually, I mostly lost touch with everyone. “I’ll make a call and see what I can find out.”
“Good.” Dad closes the short space between us. Clamping on to my shoulder, he looks me head-on. “I asked her to marry me.”
“Who?” I ask in disbelief.
He drops his hand and crosses his arms, looking annoyed. “ Ju-Lee-Uh. ” He enunciates like I’m a child learning my first word.
My only response is a dropped jaw and twitching eye.
“Come on, Nate. You can’t be upset about this. You’re thirty-three. Your mother and I have been divorced for ten years. She’s been married twice since, and you never had an issue with that.”
“One of those marriages was an accident and immediately annulled. The other was to a man her age. ”
Mom and Dad didn’t have a messy divorce.
They just grew apart. Once I graduated from college, Mom left the country, becoming nomadic as she tried to reenact her personal version of Eat.
Pray. Love. For a long time, Dad just worked.
He dated here and there, but nothing serious.
Then, one day, he meets a yogalates enthusiast and life coach, who is thirty years his junior.
I hold up my hands, looking at his expression that’s a mix of pissed and wounded. “What do you want me to say?” I ask defeatedly.
“Congratulations.”
“Fine. Congratulations,” I parrot flatly.
“And that you’ll make an effort to get to know Jules.”
“Okay. I’ll make an effort to get to know Julia.” I definitely won’t, but I’m trying not to be a dick to his face.
“And you’ll be my best man.”
Oh, hell. “Don’t you think Uncle Mac would want to do it? I don’t want to take that from him. I know how close you are.”
Dad sucks air through his teeth, the sharp squeak echoing off the rubble surrounding us. “Uncle Mac?”
“Yes.”
“The same Uncle Mac I speak to about once a year and only when he wants to withdraw a lump sum from his inheritance?” Dad oversees his little brother’s allowance.
It’s a pain point between them. But after Mac almost spent a quarter billion dollars by commissioning the finest minds at NASA to build him a functional version of Optimus Prime, to scale , the entire family agreed he needed to be cut off.
“I’m happy. And Jules is wonderful in every way. She’s the reason I bought this place.”
“Not helping her case.”
“She’s teaching me to see the beauty in potential instead of focusing on the bottom line.
We know how to acquire and sell and make more money than we’ll ever know what to do with—but this?
” He holds his palms up and takes a few steps back, gesturing to the condemned building like he’s proud.
“Let’s bond over building something from nothing.
I won’t be here forever, kid. This is the kind of stuff you’ll remember when I’m gone. ”
“You don’t want to hire a project management team. You want to do this ourselves?”