Page 83 of Vegas Daddies

He stares at the TV for a moment before directing his gaze back to me. “Now look at me. You and your outlaw friends have takenher in because she’s safer with…criminals than she is in her own home.” He picks up the bottle of brandy and messes with the half-peeled sticker. “I know it’s too risky, the Bratva knowing where she lives and all, but I dunno…” He shrugs. “I guess I just don’t know how to feel.” He concentrates on my face. “You’re the only one I can talk to.” He sighs. “I suppose I should start by saying sorry.”

“For what?”

I want to hear him say it.

“For being ashamed of you, and for not introducing Alice to you sooner. I wanted to protect her and keep her out of harm. You know just as much as me how cruel the world is.

“The world is cruel to cruel people.”

Peter freezes.

I continue. “If you want to start with an apology, start with Alice.”

“She’ll never forgive me.”

I take a seat on the couch across from him, and look around the room. The whole house is exquisite. Definitely has mayor’s wages written all over it. An antler chandelier dangles from the ceiling (though Nevada doesn’t even have deer) and the huge flat-screen TV lights up the entire room. Even the carpet beneath my feet has a spongy feel to it, and the bottle of brandy—I focus my eyes to read the label—is Hennessy.

But none of it is real.

If not for the car “accident” twelve years ago, this house probably wouldn’t even exist.

I stare at my best friend. He used to run around my yard catching balls every time I whacked them with the deadbeat baseball bat we stole from the local park one day. He looks in no fit state for a game of baseball now.

Doesn’t even look like he has the mental capacity to watch one.

My heart will always love the guy. I’ll never despise him.

Always respect him.

Which is why I just can’t keep this next sentence in.

“I told her.”

Peter’s face screws into something scary. “Youtoldher?”

“I’m sorry, man.” I hold up my hands when I say it. “She deserves to know the truth.”

“You had no right to tell her.”

“And you had no right to keep something like that from yourdaughter.”

He shoots up, anger pulling at his lip. He knows he can’t beat me in a fight, so he just stands there, hands at his sides, his entire body shaking like a leaf. “Why are you involving yourself? None of this has anything to do with you.”

If only he knew…

Do I let the other, bigger cat out of the bag?

No. That one will ruin me forever, and would probably cause Peter to slide back into Vlad’s messages with a request to set one of his contracted killers onto me.

I wouldn’t blame him for doing so.

But with Match, Brander, and me gone, who would be left to protect his daughter?

Best I stay shut for now.

“I’m getting involved because your daughter deserves the truth. Keeping her sheltered might feel like the right, paternal thing to do, but a life based on lies isn’t a life.”

“No. But it’s one where she’s happy.”

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