Page 59 of Rock Chick Bonus Tracks

Pong was buried in women and wasn’t paying attention to anything else.

It was Stella who stood from the couch and made the approach, hand out.

“Dee-Amond, wow. Honored,” she said as he took her hand.

“Couldn’t believe it’d be true, you being more beautiful up close and personal, but here it is. And that voice. Damn, sis, platinum-plated.”

Stella smiled at him, and the richest, most famous recording artist of the day was instantly charmed for a lifetime.

Mace grinned.

Yeah.

That was his girl.

“Eventually, you gotta get outta the game, my brother,” Dee-Amond said through his phone into Mace’s ear. “Time to spend less of it on the road workin’ my ass off, and more of it enjoyin’ all the money I earned.”

“I hear you,” Mace replied.

“Still gonna need you, Mace. Just because I’m slowing down doesn’t mean crazy motherfuckers don’t want a piece of my ass,” Amond went on.

“You need my services, you got ’em. You don’t, you’re still invited over this weekend. I’m grilling. My mom is in town.”

“Lana? Is Tom with her?”

“’Course.”

“Chloe and Ben coming?”

“Absolutely.”

“Count me in. Have your girl talk to my girl about times and shit.”

His “girl” was the woman who ran MTS Security for him so he didn’t have to be behind a desk all the fucking time.

She was also sixty-seven years old and had been the executive secretary to two studio heads. Both of whom she hated. Both of whom she’d wrung top salary out of, including “retirement” packages (even when she left one at age forty-three) that meant she didn’t have to work again, even in LA.

He suspected it was more about the dirt she knew about them, but she’d endure torture before she’d ever tell.

Another reason why she worked for Mace.

After her second retirement, she realized she’d become used to the excitement of the business and couldn’t stay away.

Now she kept Mace’s ass in gear, and all his men…and women.

“I’ll get on that,” he told Amond.

“Right. Later, brother.”

“Later, Amond.”

He’d barely put his phone down before the screen lit up with a picture of him with his seven-year-old daughter wrapped around his back, Stella pressed to his side, smiling up at Tallulah, who was smiling down at her mom. His wife’s hand was on his abs.

It was only Mace who was smiling at the camera.

For a second, the past came rushing back, and he didn’t know who the man in that picture was.

But he grabbed the phone, took the call from his wife, and after he said, “Hey, baby,” and she replied, “Hey, Kai,” he remembered.

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