The amount of time it will take me to walk from the front door to my father’s home office is not long enough to come up with a good excuse for what happened three nights ago. It’s Saturday. My father should be out golfing or having dinner with some of his sleazy—I mean, respectable business partners. He shouldn’t be lecturing his lowlife son yet again on going clean and presenting a good image for the company. But that’s exactly what he’s going to do. I know this because this is no less than the tenth time we’ve had this discussion in the last two years.

As I walk down the first floor corridor, I pass the door to the music room, the room I used to spend most of my time in until Vanessa overdosed. I consider peeking inside, to see if the baby grand piano is still facing away from the window. I used to love sitting there with the sunlight pouring in, warming my back as I wrote a song. My mom always threatened to move the piano away from the window. She claimed the sunlight was dulling the glossy finish. I wonder if she’s moved it. Probably not. I think she’s waiting for the day she’ll walk in there and find me playing again.

Like that piano in that room, music is something you either turn toward or away from in dark times. I’ve turned away from it, choosing instead to immerse myself in the world of high stakes gambling. It’s a world where the thrill is as high as the risk and the girls come easy. Well, they come easy when I’ve got my cock inside them.

A squat woman in a maid’s outfit comes out of the parlor on my left, her face lighting up with delight when she sees me. “Cash! How come you don’t come here no more?” Her Spanish accent is one of my favorite things about Meli, my parents’ housekeeper.

“Hey, what’s up, Meli?” I say, bending down to hug her squishy body. I take a step back and smile at her. “Ah, you know I’ve been busy with work. But I’ve missed you the most.”

She waves off my comment and the rag in her hand gives off a strong whiff of lemon-scented wood oil. “Oh, you don’t have to be so nice to me.”

“Okay, it’s your tacos I miss the most.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Maleducado.”

I laugh at her insult, which basically means I’m ill-bred or ill-mannered. “Hey, it’s only been, like, six months since the last time I was here. That’s not long enough to forget all the Spanish you taught me.”

She smiles. “Forgive me. I made some of your favorite breakfast burritos this morning. They’re in the réfri.”

“I’ll grab one on the way out. Is my dad in his office?”

“Yes, he’s waiting for you,” she says, turning to walk away. “Good luck, pendejo.” Good luck, asshole.

Nice to see Meli hasn’t changed since the last time I was here. I chuckle to myself, shaking my head as I continue down the corridor, where I find the tall double doors to my dad’s office wide open.

My dad is sitting at his desk with his laptop open in front of him. His silver hair is combed neatly to the side and he’s wearing his usual Saturday attire: a polo and khakis. His face is serious, one of his salt-and-pepper eyebrows cocked, as he reads something on the screen, probably watching the stock ticker on CNBC. Westbrook Oil has been trending downward ever since my latest indiscretion; not plummeting, but slowly and steadily declining. I consider waiting for him to look up, but then I might be standing here all day.

I clear my throat and he looks up. “Morning, Dad.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a good morning. Have you read any of the articles?”

“You know I don’t read tabloids,” I mutter, my gaze focused on the back of his computer screen.

“Yeah, well, you made the Review-Journal today. The business section.”

My eyes snap up to meet his. I’ve been in the celebrity section multiple times, but I’ve never been in the business section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. This can’t be good.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I reply, my voice cracking. “They don’t print gossip in the business section.”

He shakes his head again. “This isn’t gossip, Cash. This is business. Someone leaked to the press that the board is considering pushing you out.”

“What?” I shout, taking a few steps closer to the desk. “They can’t push me out. This is our company.”

“You know damn well we’re a publicly held company. The board has the final say on this and they are tired of the bad press.”

“They’re tired or you’re tired?”

His mouth is pinched in a hard line across his sunburnt face. He spends all fucking day golfing and drinking with his buddies and somehow that’s more acceptable than me having sex and gambling my own money.

I know the situation with the girl who overdosed looks bad, but I didn’t give her any drugs or alcohol. She latched onto me as I was on my way out of the party. I can’t be held responsible for her inability to know when to cut herself off.

“This isn’t about this one isolated incident. This is about everything. Your gambling, your drinking, your reluctance on the Union Oil downsizing. Your judgment is being called into question.”

I laugh at this. “My judgment? That’s rich coming from a board that seats a former cocaine dealer and an acquitted human trafficker. And Union Oil… Are you telling me I’m not supposed to feel conflicted about laying off 122 people?”

He heaves a deep sigh as he sits back in his desk chair and folds his hands over his flat belly. “We can’t afford to hesitate. The industry is changing quickly. There—”

“Save me the speech on the energy industry dad. I’ve heard it enough at the board meetings.”

“You haven’t been to a board meeting in months,” he replies, his face slack with disappointment. “Your economics degree will only get you so far in the real world. You have to show up and do the work and stop forcing other people to clean up your messes.”

I think of the promise I made to myself the other night after the police officers questioned me and my bodyguards. My promise to protect others from me.

“I know I’ve made mistakes, Dad, but forcing me out is not the solution.”

“Son, you’re a liability to this company.”

“That’s bullshit. I’ve made more money for this company than any of those saggy nut sacs.”

He slams the lid of the laptop shut and shoots out of his chair. “You’re twenty-seven years old, Cash! You’re not in college any more. You’re a grown man! It’s time you start acting like one or you’re cut out—of everything. The company, the estate, the will. Gone. You can take your stock and gamble away every dime for all I care.”

I stare into his gray eyes, my nostrils flared and chest heaving just like his, and I know this is it. I’m finally being given the ultimatum I never thought would come. The threat of being cut out of the family business has been lobbed at me before, but this time it’s different. If my dad is getting pressure from the board, he can’t forgive me the way he always does.

I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly, gritting my teeth as I realize it’s time for supplication. “What do I need to do…to make this right?”

He shakes his head, his mouth taut with disappointment. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done.”

“There has to be,” I reply with sudden desperation. “I can go to rehab. Gambler’s anonymous.”

“Again?”

The desperation quickly turns to frustration. “What do you want?” I demand. “Just name it, I’ll do it.”

He narrows his eyes at me, pausing to think about this before he takes a seat in his desk chair again. “Where is this coming from? Why am I supposed to believe this time you’ll finally change?”

I let out a deep sigh and look around the room. My father’s office is flooded with natural light from the wall of French doors to my right and the eight-foot-tall windows behind him. The wall to my left is lined with modern white bookcases that stretch all the way to the fifteen-foot ceiling. But I don’t give a shit about any of this. I don’t care about losing my job because of the money. I’m already a billionaire. In fact, I was born a billionaire.

If I take my trust fund and my stock, I could buy myself a private island and build my own village, with a casino, and still live comfortably for the rest of my life. But, like I said, I don’t give a shit about the money. It’s the project I’ve been working on with Kevin Massey I’m worried about.

I met Kevin at a blackjack table in the high limit room at the Aria hotel. He was wearing a T-shirt with a logo of some beach resort and his hat was on backwards. Looked like a typical Vegas tourist, but I could tell right away that he didn’t belong there. His hand trembled as he placed a single $1,000 chip on the table. All I could think was this guy was either betting his life savings, trying to pay off a debt, or he was only there scope me out.

Now, I’m an attractive guy. In a well-cut suit, I’ve been told I look like a young James Dean — the actor, not the porn star. I’m used to getting hit on by gay men. But this guy didn’t look gay. He looked nervous. So, my next suspicion was the next most common reason I’m approached by men. I thought he was a relative of a jilted lover or someone I’d laid off during the Union Oil budget cuts. That suspicion turned out to be wrong, as well.

Kevin Massey stuttered a bit as he struck up a conversation with me about the crisis of a lack of clean energy in Africa, particularly the country of Chad. But I listened intently and we took the conversation away from the blackjack table.

We had a few drinks in the bar while discussing his project to bring clean, renewable energy to millions of sub-Saharan Africans. He was passionate and smart, two of the three qualities I look for when deciding whether or not to invest in something. The third quality being honesty. I appreciated when Kevin admitted that he came to me because of rumors he’d heard that I was a dissenting voice on the Westbrook Oil board of directors.

For the past seven months, Kevin and I have been working on developing a solid proposal to present to the board. We need at least a $3.1 billion-dollar investment in Collectric, Kevin’s company, to get the project going. But if I’m kicked off the board, all our work will have been for nothing, and all the investors that Kevin turned down over the past seven months may not be too keen to work with him again.

I look my dad in the eye and I know I can’t tell him about the project until we’re ready. He’s never been especially great at seeing the potential in clean energy, especially in foreign countries. But I have to find a way to buy Kevin and me some time.

“You can’t fire me,” I declare, standing up straight.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I’m getting married.”

He laughs. “Son, I don’t have time for jokes.”

“This isn’t a joke. I’m getting married and I planned on bringing her to meet you next month. She’s on vacation in Europe for the next few weeks.”

He shakes his head. “This is not the kind of thing you can lie about just to buy yourself some time.”

“I’m not lying. As soon as she gets back from Europe, we’ll plan a meet and greet.”

He leans back in his chair. “Well, if she’s coming back in a few weeks, you can bring her to the company retreat at Lake Las Vegas. If the board sees you’re ready to settle down, that could make a real impression on them.”

I swallow hard as I try to keep the panic from registering on my face. “Sounds great. We’ll be there.”

I turn on my heel and set off to find myself a wife.