Chapter 4 Nova
NOVA
What did I expect when returning to my new apartment after almost fleeing that hotel room?
Armed men waiting for me outside the highrise?
Maybe somebody sitting in the overstuffed armchair positioned in the corner, surrounded by over-stuffed bookshelves?
My cozy little reading nook invaded by a menacing thug.
There was no sign of anyone. A lot had changed in a mere twelve hours. I’m not just talking wedding bells either.
Was I so na?ve? Of course, I didn’t know then what I knew now, sliding out of my red heels and leaving them by the front door rather than picking them up. The mere act of bending to pick something up off the floor was more than I could fathom—like a Herculean task.
Instead of picking up after myself, I walked barefoot through the apartment.
It still smelled like fresh paint and sawdust after minor renovations Dad had seen to.
“As if I would let my baby girl live in an apartment with old, faded paint and outdated cabinets.” In fact, he had been dead set on it.
Yet another thoughtful little gift to me.
The sense of warmth and ownership I had enjoyed in the handful of days since my return now tasted bitter.
Dried up like the desert that surrounded this town for miles in every direction.
Las Vegas was a city that had insisted on being built, twisting the laws of nature and forcing them to comply.
Now, millions of guests every year enjoyed all of life’s pleasures, from the crudest to the most distinguished, in what once was a barren wasteland.
It was that mythology that got me interested in business years earlier.
I had learned a lot at my father’s knee, so to speak, but settling in and digging deep into what made the city thrive was what had taken me across the Atlantic Ocean.
I needed to know everything there was to know about running a business from the ground up.
I wasn’t about to let anyone accuse me of being a nepo baby whose daddy handed her the keys to the kingdom without any qualifications to her name.
And since I was an only child, with no brother for Dad to groom as his replacement, it only made sense for me to be the heir apparent.
Being a woman wasn’t exactly a mark in my favor, either.
I would always face a higher level of scrutiny than my male peers.
Meanwhile, men like Vaughn Eastman could coast by on the value of their last name.
I loathed the double standard, how much harder I would always have to work to get nowhere near as close to the brass ring.
All along, I had worn blinders against the deeper truth at the heart of the matter.
I knew that now, stepping into my spacious bedroom with its clean lines and abundant sunshine streaming through open blinds.
Blinds I quickly closed, plunging myself into semidarkness for the sake of my pounding head.
During my search for ibuprofen, I reflected on the other side of the city—the darkness, the depravity.
Finding a bottle of tablets in the medicine cabinet, I shook a few onto my outstretched palm and popped them into my mouth. After swallowing water from my cupped hand, I turned off the faucet, then found the courage to look myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror.
I had seen pictures of soldiers after coming back from combat in World War I. The thousand-yard stare, they called it, the absent expression worn by men who were classified as victims of shell shock. Today, we called it PTSD. No matter what the name, I had the stare down pat.
I don’t know what stopped me. The shuffling footfalls against the pavement? Somebody kicked a bottle and sent it skittering loudly. A man’s voice. A muffled cry.
Maybe it was everything at once. It was enough to stop me in my tracks no more than two strides from reaching the heavy metal door leading inside, where kitchen staff usually clocked in for their shift.
Instead of going straight in, I hesitated, holding my breath and cocking my head to the side like an animal sensing danger.
I could see it all so clearly now like I was watching a movie. The kind where the idiot girl did some idiot thing while the audience booed and threw popcorn and wondered how she could possibly be so stupid.
“Keep it moving,” a man muttered, ignoring the soft, tearful whimper coming from what had to be a woman. What woman? I needed to know. I had to see her. It sounded like she was in pain.
Approaching the corner of the extension that had been built onto the original casino when the events division was expanded, I touched my fingers to the cool brick, craning my neck to peek around and see what was happening.
I had expected one woman being threatened or hurt by a man. What I found was beyond my wildest, most terrible imaginings.
Every part of me wanted to reject the memory before it took root and burst into bloom. I turned away from the mirror, wrapping my arms around myself. It was freezing in here all of a sudden. I couldn’t stop trembling.
Who were they? I counted at least fifteen, though they kept moving. Some of them were swaying a little in line, so it was difficult to get a solid number. Besides, something else caught my attention and pinned it down. My blood ran cold while a high-pitched ringing sound filled my ears.
It couldn’t be.
Yet it was.
I saw it as clearly as I saw the long, black van those women were being herded into. The men carried rifles, using them to nudge the women when they didn’t move quickly enough.
I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t wish it away. Those women were being forced at gunpoint into a van. Their confused, barely muffled sobbing went ignored.
Only when my vision started to blur did I realize I wasn’t breathing. Like my body had completely forgotten how to function. I sucked in a sharp breath, flinching at the sound as it echoed through the night.
Instead of one of the armed men turning my way, it was one of the girls near the back of the line.
Dark hair pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head, her tear-stained cheeks shining in the amber light mounted high overhead.
I tried to find an age for her but couldn’t pinpoint a number.
Sixteen, maybe? She held a backpack in front of her, one that wasn’t very full, and was dressed in shapeless sweats at least two sizes too big for her tiny frame.
Our eyes met. Hers widened. Her mouth opened, and she silently whispered two words. “Help me.”
Returning to the darkened bedroom was helpful for my headache but not for the nightmare spinning up all around me, solidifying a little at a time.
I ran for the door as silently as I could, almost throwing myself through it.
Ignoring the soft cries of surprise, the disbelieving laughter as I tore through the kitchen, almost blinded by horror.
I had to tell Dad about this. Something terrible had happened on the property, something we could all be held accountable for.
Something I did nothing to stop, though even then, using the service elevator to reach the building’s top floor, I knew there was nothing I could have done.
Those men were armed. If I had tried to help, I might have made things much worse for those women, not to mention putting my life in danger.
Even then, pacing the length of the metal box as it whisked me up to Dad’s floor didn’t make me feel much better. I was free. They weren’t.
There had to be security footage of what just took place.
Hope started humming through my veins by the time the doors slid open with a soft whoosh.
The silence at this time of night was eerie, and it didn’t do much to ease the hammering of my heart or the dread pulsing through me with every frantic beat. The poor girl. Younger than me.
From the looks of it, she should have been in high school, figuring out who she wanted to be and having fun with friends. The way I had finished doing less than an hour ago—living a carefree life.
Entering the reception area in front of my father’s office, I took in the silent surroundings—an empty reception desk, sofas, and chairs arranged here and there for anyone waiting to see the man himself.
He’d had everything redecorated while I was gone, getting rid of the heavier, rather old-fashioned ideas of masculine furnishings and turning to something more sleek, streamlined.
I didn’t care much about the furniture as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other, walking on legs that felt a lot like Jell-O. One of the double doors only feet away stood ajar, allowing light to stream through and spill onto the floor.
“I know what you already told me, and I am telling you we need to speed up the shipments. After this van load, they’re expecting another to leave at nine o’clock this coming Friday night. We need them processed and ready to continue on.”
I froze solid at the sound of that rough, demanding voice.
I could have gone the rest of my life without hearing it and wouldn’t have complained.
Nico Moreno, Dad’s go-to guy. Somebody whose presence I had tried to avoid since I was a kid since he always gave me a creepy feeling.
Like he could see through me and knew all of my secrets.
His dark eyes never failed to send a chill down my spine when they met mine.
Was it any surprise I did everything I could to avoid meeting them?
“Nico, you’re giving me a headache,” Dad warned in a weary voice. “I hear what you’re saying.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I’ll tell you, our friends don’t take kindly to what they consider stalling.”
“We’re not stalling, goddammit!” Dad snarled, making me flinch in surprise.
He didn’t sound like himself. “What? Do they want us to leave ourselves wide open to scrutiny? Maybe we should invite the cops in to help us get the shipment processed and loaded up? Because that is what would happen if we move too fast and don’t think strategically. ”
Few men could get away with laughing at my father and live to tell the tale. Nico was one of those men. “Strategically? Boss, no offense, but we’re moving women from point A to point B. How much strategy is really involved?”
There were times in a person’s life when good sense flew out the window. When something so shocking happened, they completely forgot themselves. Like in my case, where I should have backed away slowly and silently.
And instead, I gasped. Again.
And I knew I was fucked.
The sound of a glass being placed on a table sent me scurrying away from the door, backing up without looking where I was going.
By the time I backed up against the reception desk and rebounded off of it, the door had opened wider. Nico stood silhouetted in the light coming from the office.
Rather than leave the door open, he closed it behind him before moving toward me with almost superhuman speed. I had barely started moving before his hand circled my bicep, holding tight enough that his thumb and fingers almost touched. Snarling, he demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
I let the dress fall from my body after unzipping it, stepping out of the circle of fabric left behind, and crawling into bed.
I had a lot of thinking to do, possibly a lot of planning.
I needed a clear head, which meant trying to make up for the sleep I didn’t get last night.
It wasn’t like I could figure things out when I was still battling a hangover, anyway.
The fact was, I wanted to forget if I could.
Maybe once I fell asleep, I would have a good dream and be able to leave behind all of the horrible implications of what I’d witnessed and everything that happened afterward.
It wasn’t enough that those girls were forced onto that van to be taken God only knew where.
I wanted to deny that my father knew anything about it.
This just wasn’t who he was. Not my father.
But would it be safe to bring it up to him?
Of course it would. He’s my father. A good man.
It was a relief when instead of Nico’s flat, cold eyes, it was a certain pair of green eyes flecked with gold that danced in my memory.
I should have forced myself to think about anything else, anyone else, since those green orbs and that dangerous smile had convinced me to go completely against my nature out of some drunken belief that somehow, this man would protect me from the unknown.
It was a sixth sense, something instinct compelled me to believe.
Well, instinct and much more vodka than anyone should drink in one evening.
If only all of my problems were as inconsequential as a quick annulment. Vaughn Eastman had no idea what real problems were.
I drifted off to sleep with that thought ringing in my head.
No matter how I looked at it or tried to deny it, the fact was I needed help.
I had the feeling I needed it desperately, but an arrogant playboy like Vaughn Eastman would not be my salvation.
Hell, he would only get me into deeper trouble than ever since there was a very real part of me wishing we had consummated our marriage so I’d at least have a pleasant memory to take from all of this.
Thinking back on his body and the way he made my blood hum, something told me it would have been incredible.