I put the car back in park and turned to face him. “You mean you haven’t been home since she went into the hospital?”
He shook his head without looking at me.
My lips pursed as I processed the information. I said nothing as I put the car in reverse and I drove him straight to my hotel. “What are we doing here?”
“This is where I’m staying,” I informed him. “You’re not staying at the Y.”
“Who are you to make that choice?” he demanded.
“Your sister,” I said with a pointed look. “You can’t claim that only when it’s convenient. That’s not how it works. Remember?”
He was struck silent by my comment, which essentially used his own words against him. He followed me without complaint through the opulent lobby toward the elevators, and said nothing in the elevator all the way up to the VIP suites.
I let us into the suite, which had brand new flowers scattered around the sitting room. I smiled. I knew Jace was behind it, I didn’t even have to check the card.
I turned to Diego, whose wide eyes drank in the luxurious surroundings. It was probably grander than anything else he’d ever experienced.
“The couch pulls out into a bed,” I told him. “TV guide is next to the remote. Bathroom’s through that door. Feel free to help yourself to the minibar. No booze,” I amended as I turned back toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get your clothes,” I answered.
“Sonny’s at home. He’s not going to let you take them,” he warned.
“Sonny won’t have a choice,” I replied before I closed the door behind me.
Las Vegas, Nevada
July 12, 2012
I sat in front of my mother’s apartment building for a good five minutes, mustering my nerve to walk to the door. I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t a helpless six-year-old anymore. I was a grown woman, who outweighed Sonny by at least fifty pounds. I didn’t have to be afraid of this man, though that was my first instinct
. I inhaled deeply as I opened the car door and stepped out.
I held my breath as I let myself into the darkened apartment. My heart sank as I looked around the dimly lit living room. Empty beer cans and bottles littered the brand new coffee table I had purchased for Maya. Flies hovered over half-eaten food out of containers I already knew Sonny brought home from the restaurant wher
e he worked. The whole place stank from beer and decomposing food.
I held my breath as I inched
toward the dark stairway leading to Diego’s room on the second floor. I tiptoed carefully past Maya’s room, where I could hear heavy snoring just beyond the closed door. As quietly as I could, I slipped up the stairs and into the second bedroom, using my phone to light my way to Diego’s closet.
Nothing was hung on the empty rod just inside, nor were there any clothes in the chest or nightstands. There weren’t even sheets on the bed. The walls were covered with black posters featuring the bands that Diego loved, and he had blacked out the room with a sheet covering the window. I knew immediately that he had done that so he could sleep during the day, when Sonny was at work. I remember trying that trick once after Shane had moved into the house with us. Unlike Maya, who had been too sick
to stay on top of things, Marianne Hemphill didn’t abide late risers in her home. Day-sleeping ranked right up there with sloth on her list of seven deadly sins.
I investigated Diego’s
room further. There was nothing one might find in the typical bedroom of a teenager. No computer, no television and no game systems. The only things of any value Diego owned were things he could easily take with him, namely his guitar and his cell phone. In fact, the only personal evidence that Diego had lived there at all was a hamper full of clothes that needed to be washed.
This made it easier for me to grab and go, so I could hardly complain.
I hoisted the cheap, plastic hamper onto one hip and inched back out of the room, taking care to close the door behind me as quietly as possible.
I crept softly and carefully by Maya’s door, where I made the disheartening discovery that the loud snoring had ceased. My heart was in my throat as I sneaked down the hall toward the front door, which now felt like it was a mile away.
Worse, there was a little sliver of light coming from the kitchen. I heard the clinking of glass bottles, and so I immediately surmised that Sonny had gotten up to get himself another beer. It was inevitable. Our paths were going to cross.
I switched on the light so I wouldn’t run into him in the dark, which somehow scared me more. Shane had gotten away with heinous, unspeakable crimes under the cloak of darkness, teaching me from a young age that the worst monsters really did dwell there.
But it wasn’t Sonny who emerged from the darkened kitchen. It was a young woman with teased, fake red hair and smeared makeup. She wore a man’s T-shirt and nothing else. In her hands, which had almost comically long nails, were two bottles of beer.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked, as if she had any right at all to do so.
“Maya’s daughter,” I informed her coldly. “Who are you?”
“She’s a friend,” Sonny’s voice ran down my neck like a tangle of snakes. I whipped around to face him in the hallway. His robe hung open, revealing his boxer briefs. Fear seized my vocal cords when I realized he stood a mere foot away, completely within grabbing distance.
Instantly I felt Shane’s clammy hands grabbing me in places no six-year-old should be touched, as his hard body poked at me like the weapon it was.
I backed away, using the full hamper in between us like a shield. I knew my eyes flashed with terror, like a cornered rabbit. I could see it in his eyes as he grinned triumphantly. He finally had me right where he wanted me. It was clear as day with the way he advanced toward me. “
I’m not a kid anymore
,” I frantically told myself even as I inched backward. I kept reminding myself I wasn’t at his mercy. I wasn’t at anyone’s mercy.
Instead I reached a little deeper, into an untapped reservoir of anger. I had to do whatever it took to protect Diego, as it was increasingly clearer I was the only one in his life that could do so. It was my turn to be a hero, the same way Jace had galloped in on his white horse to save me.
In fact, Diego was really the only person in my life I could save. I walled up my will with all the guilt I felt leaving Shelby to the wolves – namely the one named Eddie. I narrowed my eyes at Sonny as I asked, “Does my mother know about your
friend
?”
He didn’t bother to close his robe as he approached me steadily. “Your mother and I have an understanding,” he informed me. “She knows I have needs and she can’t meet them anymore. She’s not young,” he pointed out as he glanced me over. “Like you.”
I shivered. He didn’t have to touch me to inflict damage. His behavior simply shadowed what had already been imprinted a long, long time ago. “Stay back, Sonny,” I warned, holding the hamper higher between us.
“What’s the matter?” he wanted to know as he placed his hands on the basket in my hands. “It’s not like you haven’t screwed everyone from New York to Los Angeles. My dick not famous enough for you or something?”
I glared at him. “Don’t believe what you read,” I informed him coldly. “Reports of my promiscuity have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Really?” he asked. “I saw the previews of your video. Some mighty hot stuff, daughter dear.”
“You’re not my father,” I grit between my clenched teeth.
“Closest thing you got,” he said as he bent closer. His beer breath wafted over me in a moist, hot wave. “I could teach you so much,” he murmured as his hand slid over my hand and along my arm. I jumped back like I had been burned, which knocked me flush against the front door.
“You touch me again and I swear to God I’ll throw you out of here so fast you won’t know what hit you,” I hissed.
He laughed at my threat. “No, you won’t,” he countered easily. “Because you don’t want to upset your poor, sick mama. She needs me, sweetheart. You’re going to take off again, like you always do, chasing your jet-set life and all your famous friends who can do so much more for you than some sick old woman. You can only play
Florence Nightingale for so long before you’ll get that itch to chase after what you really want, and it isn’t this buried, tangled root of your family tree. That’s why you haven’t bothered to come clean with the public why you really came to Las Vegas. It’s much better if they think you’re sleeping around, which is why you never correct the story.”
I gulped back any retort. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right to some degree. I hadn’t
challenged any rumor PING had dropped about my “romantic liaisons” in Sin City, even when I had a legitimate reason to be here.
His face broke apart in a sick grin. He knew he hit his target. So he dug the knife in for a deeper cut. “S
he’s going to be here all by herself. Her worthless son won’t even stay here with her. It’s only me.”
Mentioning Diego was his first mistake. “Diego won’t stay here because of you,” I spat.
He nodded. “I’m sure he’s told you all sorts of lies already, turning you against me like I’m some kind of monster. He tried that with your mama before her first hospital stay.”
“There’s a difference between Maya and me,” I informed him. “I have nothing to lose by believing him.”
Sonny shrugged. “Then take him with you next time you leave,” he offered. “I don’t give a shit about some punk kid. It was my job to instill the discipline that she never could. It’s a thankless job. You’re welcome to it.” He still wore a triumphant smile as his gaze feel across my chest, on display with the corset top I had worn for the concert. “But you may want to check your mama’s will. Because I get custody of Diego if anything happens to her. That means you’re stuck with me, sugar. So you better get used to the idea.”
“Wills can be changed,” I said as I reached behind me for the doorknob.
He nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “But your mama knows she can’t count on you anymore than Diego can. I’ve been here the whole time. You’re still a stranger. And you have no desire to be anything else with these people.” He backed me out of the now opened door. “So good luck convincing her how awful
I
am, when you can’t even fix your own press.” He blew me a kiss and slammed the door in my face.
I was shaking all the way to the car. I gunned the engine and sped from the complex
, grateful for the traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard if for no other reason than to get my feelings under control. Sonny’s words rang in my head like clanging bells, echoing all the things Shane used to whisper to me in the dark of night to convince me not to tell anyone about our “alone” time. These were words I had spent an entire lifetime burying, but just five minutes with Sonny and every ghost burst from its hiding place to remind me of the desperation and the humiliation I had felt, forcing me to allow continued abuse as if I had no other choice.
Sonny needed me to feel backed into a corner, helpless and at his mercy, just like Shane
had so many years ago. And there was just enough truth in what he said to manipulate my emotions, exactly the direction he wanted them to twist.
He was right. I hadn’t gone public with this new family. I thought I was protecting them, but in truth I was probably protecting myself as well. I had no idea what was going to happen from one day to the next, and I needed the privacy to work it all through. PING was going to fill in the blanks however they damned well chose, I already knew that. No matter what I did or didn’t do would get skewed in their “investigative reporting,” which was tantamount to a huge game of Telephone. They repeated every rumor they heard, whether or not it was real. Just raising a question was enough to write a titillating headline, and a hungry horde would gobble it up just like mindless zombies, serving after serving, choking on the glut of gossip to tear down anyone who dared to enjoy any notoriety at all.
If they were wrong, it was the source’s fault. They took no accountability for the way they tore down the lives of people who had the misfortune of being famous.
So was I further protecting my already tarnished image? Was it better for me to be linked in the headlines with countless men, whether I slept with them or not? Everyone from Graham to Iris told me that a sex scandal wouldn’t kill my career, that there was
no such thing as bad publicity; that the worst thing that could ever happen was when the audience stopped talking about me at all.
Had I carefully hidden my family away
because their sob story couldn’t do anything for me? Was I waiting to carefully polish them up before I trotted them out when my reputation needed the boost the most?
And why the hell did it matter what that sonofabitch Sonny said, anyway?
I dropped off Diego’s clothes with the front desk so they could send them out to be cleaned before heading upstairs. All the way up to my floor I prepared the conversation in my head, to ask Diego what he wanted me to do, even if it meant “outing” my new family in the press.
Why did I have to go through this alone? That was the benefit of having a family… other people got to contribute in the process and no one person had to shoulder every decision or singlehandedly carry the load.