Page 8 of All Bets Are Off

How about those Golden Knights?

Here’s the truth. Having a hockey team in the desert was a stupid idea. Almost nobody cares about the Golden Knights.

Basically, what I’m getting at is that sports are not something I can converse about with my father. The only thing he wants to talk about is work … and that’s the last thing I want to talk about. Sure, I love working for the casino—who wouldn’t?—but I don’t need to spend my days talking about it. That’s where we diverge.

“I’m here to see my father,” I announced to the woman behind the desk outside my father’s office on the 35th floor.

The woman, who was new, looked to be about twenty. Seriously, could she even drink? My father’s secretaries had been getting progressively younger over the past five years. They didn’t last long either. I had my suspicions on why that was, but I kept them to myself. That seemed safer than point blank asking my father if he was cheating on my mother with his secretaries and then firing them when he got tired of them.

“And you are?” the woman asked blankly. She didn’t look all that interested in doing her job.

“Zach Stone,” I replied.

She merely blinked again.

“He’s my father,” I blurted because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh.” The woman pursed her cherry red lips. “Okay.” She let loose a vague gesture. “He’s that way.”

I studied her a beat—was this seriously the best my father could do?—and then headed toward my father’s office. There was no point in getting to know his new secretary. She wasn’t going to last anyway. Perhaps he’d run out of good secretaries and was now hiring on looks alone because it was easier.

I paused in the door of the open office and stared at my father. He still looked good, and not just for his age. There were shots of gray in his dark hair, but only at the temples. Women everywhere said it made him look distinguished. Since most of them were trying not to drool when they said it, I was fairly certain they meant it as a good thing.

He wore his typical Ralph Lauren suit. He had the same suit in eight colors, all a slight variation from the previous. He also had a few Armani suits, but in a rare show of personality, he said they were too small in the crotch. He winked when he said it, which was why I knew he was trying to be funny.

Ryder Stone could not pull off funny.

Dad didn’t look up. He was busy staring at something on his desk. I made a throat-clearing sound to get his attention, but he didn’t meet my gaze.

“Don’t just stand there loitering, Zachary,” he said. “Sit down.”

I held back a sigh and moved to one of the garish wingback chairs across from his desk. My father never did anything small. My sisters used to make jokes that he was overcompensating for something, and I was starting to wonder if they were right.

“You wanted to see me?” I kept my tone neutral. My father didn’t react well to jokes or nerves. He expected me to be a professional at this point in my life, and even though I felt a little jocularity could go a long way in this place, I’d given up trying to make him laugh a long time ago.

“I did.” Dad jotted something down in the ledger he was looking at and then slowly raised his chin to look at me. “You’re thirty-two.”

I waited for him to expand. When he didn’t, I nodded. “Yes. Since March. I’m a Pisces. Some people say that makes me too emotional, but I happen to think I’m just emotional enough.”

Dad didn’t crack a smile. Ah, another failed joke. Even when I say I’m not going to try, I still do. What is wrong with me?

“What does my age have to do with anything?” I prodded after a few beats of uncomfortable silence.

“You’re thirty-two,” he repeated.

“I’m not sure?—”

“Do you know what I was doing when I was thirty-two?” he asked, cutting me off with barely a flick of his eyes.

“I believe you were running this hotel and casino,” I replied. It was slowly starting to sink in where he might be going with this, and I didn’t like it.

“That’s correct. When I was thirty-two, I took over the hotel from your grandfather. Our net worth was half of what it is now.”

“Congratulations?” I was wary, uncertain where he was going with this. He was always hard to read.

The look he shot me suggested that wasn’t the response he was looking for. “What are you doing at present, Zachary?”

He never called me Zach. It was always Zachary. I swear the sound of my own name made my balls want to climb back inside my body and hide until the apocalypse was over. “I believe I’m head of casino operations.”

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