I would have tried, but instead, he got Ty to bring me to the clubhouse to just breathe for a little bit. I think he also knew that at the moment, all I wanted to do was feel safe. Not that I was scared of what Alexander might do, but more for the fact that the damage had already been done and he was giving me time to pick up the pieces.
“You want another drink, baby girl?” Avery questioned from behind the bar.
I looked at the empty glass in front of me, wondering whether this was really the moment where I should possibly let go of all my inhibitions and get trashed. I was three shots of tequila and a glass of gin deep in my own problems, so the shudder that washed through me was probably the answer I needed. “No. I’m fine. I should probably drink some water.”
“Coming up,” Avery answered with a wink.
“You need something to get your mind off everything,” Kennedy offered with a thoughtful look. “A booty call?”
I practically inhaled the water Avery had just handed me, slamming the glass down on the table and dropping my feet to the floor as I leaned over, trying not to fucking drown. Avery laughed softly, banging the heel of her palm against my back a couple of times before rubbing up and down.
“Shit,” I cursed, sucking in a deep breath and throwing my head back. “Fuck me.”
“Exactly,” Kennedy grinned.
Avery took a seat at the table too.
“She okay?” a deep voice questioned, drawing my attention to the double doors that led through into the club’s garage. Another of their businesses. Shotgun raised his eyebrow at me, and I held up my hand, nodding. “I’m okay,” I rasped between coughs.
“Kennedy suggested she get a booty call,” Avery teased, her entire face lit up in amusement at my predicament. “I’m thinking there’s a certain prospect in there with you that wouldn’t mind being the test subject.”
My jaw hit the floor.
I was damn sure of it.
“Ave,” I warned, which only served to make her smile brighter and wider.
Shotgun wasn’t much help either. “Ty!” he called over the banging and clanging. “Take Cora upstairs and show her a good time.”
The hooting and hollering from the garage full of men that followed had a rush of heat smacking me in the face. As though someone had dipped my head in gasoline and struck a damn match. “Oh. Geez…” I narrowed my eyes at Shotgun, desperately wishing I could get up and smack the smug fucking smile off his face. “I hate you.”
“I employ you.”
“You’re forgiven,” I quickly backtracked, waving him off. “As you were, sir.”
“That’s what I thought.” His deep scratchy laughter followed him back through the doors, even as they swung closed behind him.
“You talk like I haven’t tried before,” I huffed, rolling my eyes. “Did we miss the way every man between here and Nevada was shit fucking scared of a certain biker? Huntsman has been scaring away my boyfriends for fucking years. No one has the balls to stand up to him.”
Avery shrugged. “Some day, someone will. Trust me, you’re not the only one waiting for some guy to grow some balls.”
I didn’t miss the way her eyes drifted toward the door Shotgun had just disappeared through.
Kennedy and Avery were both club girls—at least, Kennedy once was, until a club member claimed her recently. Avery and I worked closely together behind the bar at Empire, so I’d gotten to know her quite well, and I knew she had no embarrassment or shame about what she was and what she did for the club.
I’d never judged her for it.
It wasn’t my place.
She was a single woman, so she could use her body in whatever way she wanted.
But I also knew there was a big part of her that had feelings for a certain club president, and I wasn’t entirely sure if those feelings were returned.
Chapter Four
Coralie
“I haven’t had a drink in like three days.” Holly grinned. “Are you proud?”
“Proud as a peacock.”
I really was. It was nice to have my best friend with me these past few days. She’d come to stay with me over the weekend since Shake had given me this week off. Given may not be the word I would use, more along the lines of forced upon after the emotional crash last Friday.
I loved this woman more than life itself. We’d been best friends since we were in kindergarten.
Our stories were similar.
Single children with single moms who worked their asses off doing meaningless jobs just so we could have everything we wanted. We both grew up with absentee fathers, and while I felt that hurt every day, I coped in my own way. Usually, by smothering those abandonment emotions with schoolwork and earning my own money while working toward being something or someone. Someone a father might be proud of.
Holly, on the other hand, was determined to desperately fill that hole in her heart she held for her father, and it just so happened she packed it full of a shit load of drinking, casual sex and unhealthy relationships with men.
It had gotten worse this year since I’d moved back in with my mom and started working more to help out and pay the mortgage while my mom was recovering from an accident. Holly, however, had dived right into the college lifestyle and joined a sorority. The girls there seemed lovely and they did a lot for the community, but they also did a lot of drinking and partying and God knew what else.
We pulled up to the curb behind a dark car—a Mercedes.
“Dang, you have some boujee neighbors,” Holly commented, slowly falling in love with the sparkling machine as we grabbed our bags and walked up the driveway. “You know whose car that is? Maybe I should go door knocking.”
“See, and you were doing so well,” I teased, closing the front door behind us and kicking off my shoes before heading for the end of the hall. I could see my mom sitting on the sofa with a coffee mug in her hand.
“Mom! Whose car is parke—”
“Cora…” my mom warned sternly as I froze in the doorway where it opened into the living room.
My backpack dropped to the floor with a heavy thump, my head already moving from side to side. “What do you want?”
Alexander looked up from the mug of coffee in his hands with a forced smile. “I couldn’t leave things like they were,” he hedged, reaching over and placing the mug on the small glass coffee table in front of him before getting to his feet. His hands tugged at his suit, this one a dark navy-blue pinstripe, probably the same price as a small car. “I thought maybe your mom might be able to help me get through to you.”
“You mean you thought you could come here and manipulate her like you used to.”
Holly’s laughter was the support I needed from afar. But being the smart girl she was she’d decided to stay back and not run her mouth. It was a hard concept for her to grasp but she just had too much respect for my mom to insert herself.
“Coralie Jayne Carter,” Mom scolded, leaping to her feet.
I couldn’t look at her, I knew that brokenness would be back. The same glaring pain she used to get when I was little, back when Alexander actually used to visit.
“You can sit, and you can listen to what your father has to say, and stop acting like a brat,” she hissed, stepping around the coffee table and hobbling toward me, trying to keep that stern look on her face and anger in her step despite the fact that she could barely walk.
Alexander’s eyes watched her, his fingers rolling into a fist at his sides.
“You need to sit and listen to what he has to say,” my mom ordered, taking my hand in hers and demanding my attention.
I pulled my gaze back, focusing on the woman in front of me. The strong, independent, take no shit woman who raised me.
On her own.
Without a man supporting her.
“Why?” I whispered, the fight in me melting as she brushed her hand across my cheek.
“Because I didn’t raise you to be vengeful.” Damn her. “I raised you to be forgiving.”
Well, shit.
Tears balanced precariously on my bottom eyelashes as I met her eyes. That pain was still there, it may have eased a little, might be well bandaged up, but the scars of what this man did to her would never leave. They would never disappear. And yet, here she was, asking me to forgive him. To give him another chance.
She wanted me to have this relationship with him. She always had. It was why she didn’t take him to court, why she never took him to the press and outed his cheating scandal to the world. It’s why she’d never allowed Huntsman to step in.
It was because he was my father.
He was a piece of me.
The part that had me so confused was why I would want to have a relationship with Alexander Presscott.
I should turn my back now, tell my mother no, that this was my choice because of what he had done to her, to us. I should kick him out, tell him to never come back and just be content with the fact that my father was not in my life.
But as it turned out, I was my mother’s daughter.
And she was right.
She did not raise me to be vengeful.
“Can I also give your new wife a fun Disney villain name?”
Sarcastic, maybe, but not vengeful.
“Spring break?”
Alexander nodded. “Your school finishes next week, and your break goes for two weeks.”
“You know far too much about my education.”
He continued, making no comment about how he was so up-to-date with my schedule. “I think that would be the perfect amount of time to come up, spend some time with Dawn and her daughter Eden. Get to know them a little.”
I turned to Holly who was still managing to keep her lips sealed while she stood back. “There’s a daughter.”
“Oh, I heard,” she reassured me, though her amused smirk didn’t help.
Surprise.
Alexander swallowed like there was a hard lump in his throat. “Yes. She’s eighteen, a senior in high school. I think you two will get along really well. She’s excited to show you around, give you a tour of the city. And Dawn is eager for her to have someone to look up to that doesn’t class Instagram influencer as their job title.”
I didn’t miss the way his eyes kept flicking to my mom, like he was checking to make sure she was coping with all this information.
Maybe he really didn’t want to hurt her.
Pressing my fingers to my temple, I shook my head. “How did you meet this Dawn?”
“We were friends in college,” he answered instantly. “We lost contact and she’s been living in New York with her first husband, but they divorced a couple of years ago and she just recently moved to Vegas.”
The story rolled off his tongue, like it was so damn easy. “So, you really like her, huh?”
Was he a part of my life? No. But I still knew him.
I’d spent years when I was younger, looking at photographs, analyzing the way he spoke, the way he moved and how he smiled. I was obsessed with knowing him even if it was, for the most part, from afar until Cruella came through and destroyed everything.
She pushed me out.
And he let her.
So instead of studying him, I decided it was better I knew nothing. I couldn’t be hurt if I didn’t know. Once I realized, I stopped looking at magazines, stopped Googling his name, and stopped asking him questions when he called. Which was probably why I had no idea he’d gotten divorced a year ago, considering that would have been major tabloid news.
“She would really like to meet you,” he explained, letting out a heavy breath and allowing his usually strong shoulders drop like a heavy weight had just fallen off them. I was that heavy weight. I was the person in his life who made him nervous and weighed him down. “And I’d really like for you to be a part of the wedding. And hopefully, maybe, start building up our relationship now that Cruella is gone.”
Pursing my lips as tightly as possible, I fought so hard to keep the smile from breaking through, but I couldn’t.
It won.
And I saw it mirrored in his face a few seconds later.
I smirked. “I thought we weren’t calling her that.”
“Bitch deserved it.”
Maybe I was in too deep, maybe I should have been angrier, fiercer, stood my ground and made him suffer a little more. But honestly, I think a part of me remained that little girl I thought I had grown out of. The one who still wanted a dad who would take me to the park, who would dance with me in the living room while I stood on his feet, and who would protect me from the world.
It was a feeling I couldn’t fight, despite the fact there was this nagging part at the back of my brain which was screaming at me to run.
To get the fuck out.
To move on and remember how okay I was without him.
Instead, I was about to go all-in and risk it all.
“Okay.”
Chapter Five
Coralie
The bright lights captivated me as we drove the length of the Strip.
It wasn’t my first visit to Las Vegas. I’d been plenty of times before this, though this time felt different. This time, instead of staying at my dad’s home out of the city, we were pulling up to Alexander Presscott’s hotel and casino.
There was a distinct difference.
Security guards fell into step beside us as we climbed out at the curb and headed for the front doors of the hotel part of the oversized building. Everything was bright, sparkling, overstated, and screamed luxury, but I didn’t know why I would expect anything less.
No one bothered to even nod or greet us as we walked straight past reception to the line of elevators, my short legs scurrying to keep up with his powerwalking.
“Mister Presscott!” Something flashed, stunning me for a second, before two of the bodyguards swept in around me, ushering me into the open doors of the elevator.
“Who is she, Alexander?
“Who is the girl?
“New girlfriend?”
The pounding in my chest echoed in my ears as I looked from Alexander to one security guy then to the other, expecting someone to explain something. Anything. “Um, hello,” I protested, waving my arms about just to get their eyes at least to focus in on me. “What just happened?”
“Reporter looking for a story,” Alexander announced, his brow furrowed and his fingers scratching at his hair. “I’m going to have to make a statement tonight.”
“A statement,” I repeated, shaking my head, letting him know I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.
“Yes. About you.”
Right.
He meant that now I’d been spotted, he was going to have to explain to the world, exactly who and what I was.
His love child.
The product of his affair with the maid while married to wife number one.
I couldn’t help but wonder which story he was going to go with.
My stomach swirled and I pressed my hand against it, leaning back against the moving mirrored box which we were now trapped inside of.
“What are you going to say?”
The question pulled his thoughtful gaze back to me, those wrinkles in the corner of his eyes and across his forehead growing a little deeper. “I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug, just as the elevator lurched to a stop with a loud ding.
My feet were already itchy.
They were telling me to run.
To get the fuck out of there and pretend like this never happened.
Why did I continue to put myself through this fucking punishment?
Like I was expecting him to have some kind of damn musical number ready to perform when the world finally figured out that this man they put up on their pedestal wasn’t so fucking perfect after all.
But instead, I remained the mistake he was unsure he wanted the world to know about.
I was still the dirty little secret he’d spent nineteen years attempting to hide.
“This is a mistake.
I need to lea—”
“You’re home,” a bright, sweet voice called, cutting short my escape confession and drawing my attention forward. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of exactly what floor we were on—the penthouse. Of course. So damn exclusive that someone inside had to let you in, or if there was no one home, you could open a keypad and press in a number.
The penthouse.
The top floor on the keypad was lit up.
Fifty-three.
We were on floor fifty-three.
My stomach churned, my body stumbling back against the wall.
“Is this a bad time to say I don’t do well with heights?” I murmured, pressing my lips together as the doors finally opened all the way, and I found myself staring past the beautiful woman with the warm smile, to the endless view of the entire damn city that I could see through the glass at the end of the hall. “Nope. No freaking way. Not a chance.”
Alexander’s hand slipped between me and the glass wall, pressed to my back, forcing me out of the elevator, the death machine closing quickly behind me. “Cora, this is Dawn Mathews.”
Awkwardly I lifted my hand in some kind of weird wave, the unease of the situation more than likely going to hit me later. “Hi,” I snapped. “Sorry, I’m feeling a little like I could fall to my death right now.”
When my eyes finally settled on the woman, drawn away from the death drop, I couldn’t help but let my shoulders sag. Her warm smile was completely unexpected. “I was the same when we moved in,” she reassured me with another gentle smile, her arms welcoming Alexander home as he slipped in beside her. “I made some soup today, that should ease your stomach.”
Smiles.
Soup.
So much for my list of Disney Villains I’d been going over in my mind. With her short, dark hair and perfectly soft creamy complexion, she was more like Snow White and less like the evil queen than I had planned.
What did that make me exactly?
One of the freaking dwarfs?
What I would still like to do though, was take the smug look on Alexander’s face and smear it all over the fifty-third story windows as I gave in to the offer to ease my belly. “Soup would be great, thanks.”
Call My Bluff Page 27
