Page 68 of Cruel Fate

“Yeah. She went to the cops and everything. Her face was pretty beat up. Someone got her good.”

“Someone?” Stella asks, cutting into her piece of cheesecake and trying to appear nonchalant, but her hand is shaking.

“Well, if she was trying to pay Ash back for something or if she needed money and someone put her up to it, she should havebeen more thorough. On the night she says he attacked her, he was at his club downtown. A stripper alibied him out. She said they were in the back and she was giving him a dance lesson, if you know what I mean.”

Stella bows her head. She’s probably thinking the same thing I am. Why does he need to go to his strip club when he’s dating my sister? That he owns it is immaterial. He wasn’t there to check up on business. I know him too well to believe that.

Ash does what Ash does, and he’s always been that way.

“I hope they find whoever did it to her,” Stella murmurs.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” Chase says, finishing off a brick of chocolate cake.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because she disappeared,” Mina says, her eyes gleaming. “The cops wanted to bring her in for more questioning, but she’s gone. Stopped going to work, her friends haven’t heard a peep. Her car got ticketed and towed. It’s sitting in the city’s impound lot.”

Chase shrugs. “If you’re going to tell lies about a Black, that’s what you get.”

Ash would never do something like that. Rape a woman, beat her. He doesn’t need to force a woman to have sex. He and Zarah are in a relationship and he shouldn’t be hooking up in the first place, but maybe he wanted something my sister isn’t experienced enough to give him, something he felt he should pay for. I’ve never denied Ash has an edge, that he doesn’t have a taste for the darker side of sex, but everything he’s ever done has been consensual. He’d never hurt a woman intentionally.

“She probably realized her mistake and wanted to get away from the gossip rags. You can’t say something like that and not get hounded to death.” I grapple for something that makes sense.

Mina shrugs and drains her champagne glass.

“It’s getting late,” I say, pushing my dessert plate away. I reach for my wallet.

“Let me get this, old man,” Chase says, flagging down our waiter. “Save your pennies. You’ll be spending plenty hosting that party of yours.”

I sit back, surprised. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Hey, it’s good to see you out. We were all sorry to hear about Kagan and Lark. I hope they find the bastards.”

My ears twinge, but before I can ask him to explain, to tell me what he’s heard, the waiter comes by and picks up Chase’s credit card.

“Let me give you my number,” Mina says to Stella, and reluctantly, she pulls the phone that syncs to the Mac and iPad she uses at work out of her purse.

I can’t say why, but her movements make my heart hitch. I don’t like how closed off she feels.

They exchange numbers, and Chase signs the slip, his signature illegible.

We stand in the lobby as the valet retrieves our cars, and Mina and Stella visit the ladies’ room.

“Stella’s a real looker,” Chase says, glancing down the hall where they disappeared. “Young, too. I bet her pussy’s nice and tight, huh?” he asks, slapping my back. He leans in, and I back away, distaste curdling the food in my stomach. Ash is crass, too, but not like that. Not about people we care about. “Mina popped out our girls, and it felt like parking a Mini Cooper in a train tunnel, if you know what I mean.” He guffaws, and I don’t remember him being so annoying. More than likely, he spoke to my father more than he spoke to me.

I don’t envy my dad the shit he put up with. “I’ll remember that.”

Chase nods. “Yep. Don’t be in too big of a rush to have brats. You’re young yet. Let Ash show you a good time first, and then settle down. Get it all out of your system.”

Luckily, the valet returns with Chase’s car, and he waits outside for Mina who flutters her fingers at me on her way out the door.

The doorman opens the passenger side door—Chase is already behind the wheel—and she climbs in. What a prick.

Stella silently waits near me and the unease I felt earlier grows.

We’re a good distance away from the restaurant when she finally says, “What horrible people.”

I agree, but I can’t help but tense. It’s not my fault they can’t see past their own noses. I reach her street and stop outside her apartment building, letting the car idle. We sit, and I stare out the windshield.

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