Page 71 of Vegas Daddies

“Just…let’s go inside.”

Panic strikes her face. “Is my father okay?”

“He’s fine, sweetheart.” Lifesaver snakes a hand around her lower back. “C’mon.”

I step up to the porch, insert the key into the lock and crack open the door.

The thought of shattering the woman’s perfect illusion of Peter raises my temperature more than the summer sun, but a dose of reality is what Alice needs, not more coddling and lies.

17

ALICE

“You’re lying.”

“I wish we were, darling.” Lifesaver cuts a line of stitching from Match’s wounded arm. “He fucked up, to be honest. Your father saw going to the Bratva as an investment. Something that he could repay as soon as the mayor wages hit his bank. Unfortunately for him, Russians don’t have a lot of patience.”

“Debt,” Brander says, “is what most Bratva customers fall into. Few pay it off, and the rest struggle, falling into bankruptcy. It’s frustrating because your father, on a mayor’s wage,would’veactually managed to pay off the bastards, but these guys are in organized crime for a reason, and it’s because they enjoy killing.” Pity rings around his eyes. “It sounds to me like the right-hand man got the urge. Those guys get a kick out of it. I suppose to them, killing is more fun than stashing fifty thousand into a safe that’s already full of millions.”

Daddy would never go to the Russians.

He’s always been against it.

Ever since Mom’s…

Death.

I search my mind for evidence, something to prove Brander, Match, and Lifesaver wrong, a timebeforeMom’s death when he spoke about Russian syndicates, death, danger, and delirious men walking around in suits…

He never did, though. Mom, Daddy, and I used to sit around the dining room table every night discussing normal, boring shit, like if palm trees in Vegas were planted or naturally grown, or if we could transition into an animal for twenty-four hours, which one would we choose. I was only ten years old when Mom died, so my memory there could be unreliable, but Daddy smiled much more back then, and with his whole face too. He performs a sort of two-dimensional smile now, especially on TV. Members of the public might think a teeth flash and curled-up lip is a smile, but I know differently.

It’s only just occurring to me now how rarely he smiles. The last time he did properly was when I got into state college to study nursing, but the smile was very brief and was delivered with the words “All you can do is your best,” hinting that my best didn’t need to be scholarship-level straight As.

Around the dinner table now, long intervals of silence stretch between us. He used to have dinner with Levi and me back when we were together, and he would ask how the computers were holding up, like they were actual people or something. He’d reiterate the importance of always walking together when on an empty street, and question why I was driving to Target at 10:30 PM when the tracker on my phone pinged him an alert. “Craving ice cream” was never a good enough excuse.

It sort of makes sense now.

I always thought he was just a paranoid, overprotective father. We lost Mom, so tracking my location made sense.

But now I’m realizing it’s more than that. He’s paranoid that he still owes Vlad. One death doesn’t quite pay for the two taken in that Uber twelve years ago. Maybe he’s been thinking all these years that one day Vlad and his men will return for more payment. That would explain why, ever since Mom’s death, he’s been spending all day in his office relying on Gatorade and adrenaline to get him through. Maybe he’s wanting to make enough money that if the Russians come knocking on his door again he can hand over the money and shoo them away.

But maybe it’s more than that.

I see how public affirmations make him feel. Every time he interacts with a fan, there’s a stride in his step, like they’ve injected a stimulant into his veins.

He needs the public. Needs people by his side telling him that he’s a good person so he can believe it himself. Maybe it’s nothing to do with money and repayment. He does a good deed—Las Vegas praises him for it.

That would explain why he broadcasted the Bratva elimination campaign. Everyone and their mom want their home to be a safer place, so of course he chose to publish it on live TV as opposed to keeping it secret. He was probably running out of praises andwell dones. Needed something to give him a boost.

People telling him that he’s a good person distracts him from the fact that he’s not. It alleviates the guilt. Helps him sleep at night.

I shut my eyes in disbelief. This can’t be happening. I overdosed on sleeping pills one night to get some rest because the heartbreak of losing Mom wounded me. It hurt so fucking much,and it was all because two rival candidates were a better fit for mayor than my dad.

We had been happy. So fucking content, just us three. Mom would make homemade lasagna for us all to enjoy in the evening, and we’d sit eating Hershey Cookies and Cream for desert on the couch, carrying on our stupid debates about animals and palm trees until sleep took over, because I could actually fucking sleep back then.

I recline in the coach. Brander has a comfortable one, but right now I want to be sitting on my old one. The red leather one with the white fluffy cushions that Mom told Daddy to never sit on. He always did anyway because apparently “That’s what cushions are made for.”

He trashed them the day she died.

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