CHAPTER TEN

Shannon extended her arms high above her head, her palms flat together, her fingers pointing towards the sky. Perfect warrior pose. Just like her grandmother beside her.

At age seventy-three, Victoria Paige showed no sign of slowing down. She was fit, trim, muscular, and determined to keep up with anyone and everyone.

“Even the dog is getting jealous of my yoga skills,” Victoria said with a wink as she and Shannon shifted poses on the sun porch of her ranch home in one of the nicer areas in the Vegas suburbs, a house that her four grandkids had bought for her. Her Boxer mix raised his snout at the two women, then returned to lounging in the sun.

“As well he should be, Nana. Your downward dog is the best,” Shannon said as they both planted their hands on their mats. Shannon had taken up yoga in college when she tore her ACL, hoping it would help rehab her and send her back to the stage. No such luck. ACL injuries were pretty much impossible to come back from. But the practice had helped her to recover, and she’d kept it up since it was one more way to stay active. Her grandmother had taken to yoga quickly too, and now it was something they did together whenever Shannon visited her, which was at least once a week.

Her brothers were in the backyard. Michael, the handiest of the crew, was fixing a fencepost with their grandfather, while Ryan and Colin drank beers and tended to the grill. The homey scene was almost enough to make anyone forget why the six of them were so close.

“I hear from Colin that you’re doing business with your old flame,” Victoria said, as they finished their final stretch. There was no judgment in her tone. No haughty raise of the eyebrow. Victoria was never like that, not now, and not when she’d taken them in when they were teens. She’d done her best to finish the job her son had started, seeing the four of them through the end of their high school years after their mother went to prison for conspiracy to commit murder, sentenced in a swift and speedy trial mere months after the killing of their father.

Shannon’s stomach clenched, as it often did just thinking of the last moments of her father’s life. Thomas Paige was shot four times in the driveway of their own home, a run-down, ramshackle house in North Las Vegas, the worst section of the city, riddled with crime. He’d been found with fatal gunshot wounds and an emptied wallet, as if a robbery had simply gone wrong. A robbery was plausible enough in that neighborhood.

Shannon and her brothers didn’t come from means. They came from desperation. They were bred from broken dreams, from a mother who’d wanted to be a Vegas star but never had the talent, so instead eked out a meager living as a seamstress, and from a father stuck driving cabs in the nightshift. But his situation started to change, and he’d thought he’d finally caught his lucky break when he began driving limos. He started making more money, and after a couple of years at his new gig, the future looked bright.

But there was no lucky break the June night he was shot after eight hours of chauffeuring rich kids from the swank suburbs to their after-prom parties.

Social services sent the pack of unruly Paige-Prince kids to live with their paternal grandparents once their mom was arrested for murder. Shannon hadn’t even started high school then, and at the time she’d never fully comprehended how horrible her grandparents must have felt. Their son was dead, his life taken at the hands of his wife, the very same woman who’d carried these four messed-up, fucked-up, troubled kids who had been dropped on their doorstep as teens—orphaned through death and then through prison bars.

As she grew older, Shannon came to understand the terrible balancing act that her father’s parents had had to pull off to raise them with love and kindness during those last few critical years. Shannon and her three brothers were grafted by murder into their grandparent’s home, united by the death of the flesh and blood that linked the two generations.

Some days, she missed her father fiercely. Today, she felt that empty longing envelop her in a split second as she stepped out of the pose, finishing their yoga session, and looked at a sun-faded photo of her father in his young twenties that hung above the end table on the sun porch. Sepia now in tone, the image showed his hands wrapped around Michael’s waist as he hoisted the toddler onto a slide. She could remember him taking her to the park, too, sometimes with his parents. He’d loved the outdoors, and loved to soak up the sun with his kids.

Her grandparents were the reason she returned to Vegas after a few years working in London, Miami, and Santa Fe for various dance companies and touring shows. Despite all that had happened, Las Vegas was the epicenter of her fractured family, her grandparents the heartbeat. Together with her brothers, they’d moved their grandparents into a new house in a safe and affluent section of Vegas. They’d made a pact as teens to live differently than their parents, to pull themselves out of the shit circumstances they’d grown up in, and to make sure they’d never be like their mother, who’d do anything for money.

Who’d done the worst for money.

Shannon looked at the picture again, pressed her fingers to her lips, and then touched her dad’s photo in the frame. Victoria did the same, and murmured, “Rest in peace.” Shannon’s throat hitched. Even now, even eighteen years later, she still felt so much emotion welling up inside her.

Better to focus on the conversation about Brent than to drift off into photos of days gone by.

“You hear correctly,” Shannon said, answering Victoria’s question about working with her old flame. “He hired my company to arrange for some dancers and choreography at his night clubs.”

They walked across the cool tiled floor to the kitchen. Victoria turned on the tap and poured some water, and handed a glass to Shannon, who downed half of it quickly. “He’s a sweet boy,” Victoria said in a whisper, first checking to see if any of Shannon’s brothers were in earshot.

“Boy,” Shannon said with a laugh. Brent was hardly a boy. He was all man, and the memory of how he’d touched her on his bar the other morning crashed back into her, like a comet of lust.

“He came back to bring me my ring, you know,” Victoria said, leaning her hip against the counter as she pushed a hand through her silvery hair.

Shannon furrowed her brow. “You never told me before.”

“I did try to tell you at the time, sweetheart. But you didn’t want to hear a word of it. You weren’t interested in any news about Brent, so I let it go. The ring doesn’t fit me anymore, but he came by and dropped it off himself shortly after you split.”

A strange sense of shock raced through her system as she flashed back in time. She remembered tossing the ring at Brent the day she’d walked out. She recalled too the red-hot rage, coupled with the soul-ripping sadness that her one true love had chosen something other than her. The days after the break-up were an agonizing blur of tears and investments in boxes of tissues, of anger and impromptu sessions using her couch pillows as punching bags. The weeks that followed were worse, the missing intensifying, the emptiness deepening, and they’d made her wish she had answered his calls earlier because his calls had stopped.

Shannon vacuumed up those memories. She knew her grandmother had the wedding band again, but she’d never stopped to find out how it came back to her. She’d always figured it had arrived by mail, never by personal courier in the form of Brent Nichols.

“He called me in advance. Made sure I was here. Said he wanted to return it to its rightful owner,” Victoria continued, as she poured herself a glass of water.

“He came to see you at your house?” she asked, processing this news for the first time.

“He did. Pulled up on his bike and came inside. I offered him some tea, and sat with him for a few minutes. Russ was at work, so it was just your boy and me. He said he didn’t want to risk putting the ring in the mail, or FedEx, or any of those services,” she said, and this little detail somehow worked its way into Shannon’s heart, chipping away at the tiniest piece of ice that had coated that organ to protect her from Brent.

“That’s actually really thoughtful,” she said softly.

“He asked about you. He wanted to know if you were okay. How you were doing.”

Her heart beat faster. She wanted to grab it and tell it to settle down. “He did?”

“I knew you’d split up, and you were busy working on West Side Story, but I think he was just trying to find out how you were,” her grandmother said, stopping to take a drink of water.

That lump in Shannon’s throat resurfaced, and tears threatened her eyes. She blinked, holding them in. What was wrong with her today? She needed to get a grip. That was ten years past, and this was now, and she was seeing the man tonight. She hadn’t told a soul about her plans for the evening.

“I’m seeing Brent tonight,” she blurted out, desperate to tell someone she could trust.

“You are? About the business deal? Or maybe about more,” her grandma said in a sly tone.

Shannon went with it, turning the moment playful. “Maybe more. We’ll see.”

“Some things are worth second chances.” Then her voice turned cold, as she held up a finger. “Other things—one must never grant a second chance.”

“I know, Nana. I know.”

Then the softness returned. “For what it’s worth, I always liked him,” her grandmother said.

“Liked who, Nana?” asked one of her brothers.

Shannon straightened her spine. Shit. Michael had just sauntered into the room with the toolbox, heading to the garage.

“Liked you, my love,” she said patting her eldest grandson on the cheek. “I’ve always liked you.”

Michael narrowed his eyes. “Hmmm. Doubtful,” he said skeptically, but continued into the garage.

Once he was out of sight, her grandma hugged her. “Some secrets are just between us girls.”

“Girl power,” she whispered, as her grandmother winked in response, then headed to her room to change out of her yoga clothes. Shannon turned the other direction to hang with her brothers in the backyard, passing Colin and her grandfather on their way into the house.

“Just going to make some more marinade,” Colin said. “My marinade rocks.”

“It’s not better than mine. We might need to have a taste test contest,” her grandfather chimed in, and Shannon smiled at their competitive ways, then joined Ryan by the grill. He pressed a spatula on top of a burger.

“Are you going to bring one home to Johnny Cash?” she said, asking about his dog.

“Of course. Nothing but the best for man’s best friend,” he said.

Like all her brothers, Ryan towered over her, but she was used to being surrounded by those sturdy men. Ryan’s brown hair looked lighter in the noonday sun, as if several strands were streaked with gold.

He flipped a burger. “You gonna eat today, Shannon bean?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t give me a hard time just because I don’t eat like a grown man or a teenage boy,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. They’d always teased her because she’d never been a big eater. With a petite frame and a dream to dance, she’d never been a big foodie. Though, truth be told, she was saving her appetite for dinner. She wanted to enjoy that restaurant, especially since she didn’t usually splurge on meals.

She’d asked for the reservation partly because she knew Brent would be able to pull it off. He loved challenges, so she’d given him the kind he craved. The consummate man about town, he was known for greasing wheels and opening doors. Shannon knew her way around Vegas, but unlike Brent, she operated out of the limelight personally. Her dancers and her shows were the star. Not her. She prided herself on being able to walk around town, up and down the Strip, in and out of hotels and casinos without anyone recognizing her.

Ryan glanced carefully at the house. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Did you hear from Mom?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s the same old, same old.”

“But is it?” Ryan asked, holding up the barbecue tongs as if punctuating a point. “What if she’s right?”

Shannon sighed and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ry, we can’t do this every single time she writes to us.”

“But what if she’s right that there were others involved?”

“Well, there were others involved. The other guy is also in prison because his fingerprints were all over the gun,” Shannon said. The details had been splashed across papers and the news at the time, and the specifics of how the local detectives had followed the trail of evidence to their mother was in black and white for anyone to find. She and Ryan had hashed this out a million times, and probably would a million more. It was an endless cycle with no answer, because the answer was this—the twenty-two-year-old Jerry Stefano, card-carrying member of the local gang the Royal Sinners, had pulled the trigger. Jerry Stefano had been in touch with Dora Prince many times, and was instructed to make the crime look like a robbery that had gone too far.

But the murder was never about the money in Thomas Paige’s wallet. Thomas Paige had a $500,000 life-insurance policy. Dora Prince was the beneficiary. And Jerry Stefano had been promised ten percent of that if he could get away with it.

It was murder for hire.

Ryan shook his head. “I know, but what if, Shan?” He dropped his voice to the barest whisper. “Listen, a buddy of mine in the DA’s office said one of the attorneys visited Jerry in prison recently. Hasn’t been there in years, but wanted to ask him some questions. See if he knew about some other crimes.”

Shannon groaned. “He was a fucking Royal Sinners gunman. Of course he knows about other crimes. He was probably involved in them.”

Ryan was undeterred. “We should at least visit her again.”

“She’ll do her usual routine. Like she did at Christmas. She’ll try to manipulate us.”

She didn’t share Ryan’s sympathies. Not one bit. She harbored guilt though. Too much guilt over her mother, and all those years when she and her mother were as close as a mom and daughter could be. Her mom had been there for her, for every dance, every recital, every performance, every moment. Maybe that was why Shannon had such a hard time severing ties with the woman in orange. Or maybe it was because she believed that her mother, in some bizarre way, loved her and her brothers.

Deeply.

Ryan seemed to sense an opening because he pressed. “Look, if you didn’t want to see her, why’d you give her your new address when you moved back to town a few years ago? So she can write to you. Michael and Colin never did. They cut her out completely. They never see her,” he said, then leaned in closer, and clasped her shoulder. “But you did, and I did. I’m not saying she’s innocent, Shan. I just think she’s our goddamn mother. The least we can do is see her again in jail.”

She gritted her teeth. Visits with her mother were exhausting. They wore her thin. But as that kernel of guilt pulsed through her veins, she threw him a bone. “I honestly don’t know if I’m up for it again so soon. But let me know when you go, okay?”

“I will.”

As she headed into the house, she glanced at the time, grateful that the clock was ticking closer to her date. She wanted to speed up the next several hours, run through them in fast forward, because she needed something that felt good. Something that was the complete opposite of her fucked up family story.

* * *

After she tied the slim strap of her charcoal gray top at her neck, she smoothed her hand across her black skirt, which hit just above her knees. The material was soft to the touch. As Shannon ran her palm across it, she closed her eyes, and imagined the feel of Brent’s hand. He had strong, solid, masculine hands that knew her. That had mapped every inch of her body. That had traveled across the terrain of her skin. Images and sensations whipped through her, and an unexpected moan escaped her lips. The sound coming from her own throat snapped her eyes open.

Was she truly so easy with him that the sliver of a memory ignited her? But the answer seemed self-evident in the way the goosebumps rose on her flesh, and heat bloomed between her legs. And, really, that was all she wanted from him anyway. That was why she’d agreed to dinner that night.

Wasn’t it?

Because he was her magic pill, her sip of champagne, her bite of smooth, dark chocolate. He was an endorphin, the most powerful, potent one she’d ever had. That was why she’d agreed to see him. For a quick hit of a feel-good drug.

She walked into her closet, perused the racks of shoes, then selected a pair of plum-colored pumps with four-inch heels, which would still leave her half a foot shorter than her date tonight. Next, she rooted around in her jewelry box and found a favorite necklace of hers. She fastened the slim silver chain, letting the ruby red pendant fall to her breasts. She laughed out loud—poor Brent. He wouldn’t know where to look first.

Boobs or legs.

Good. She didn’t mind the possibility of torturing him. Not only because she enjoyed it from a purely physical standpoint, but also because it gave her the upper hand. She wasn’t into mind games, or control, but she thought of what her friend Ally often said about relationships when she’d recap her dates. “The French have a saying: ‘In every relationship there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.’ Be the one who offers the cheek.”

Shannon ran her hands through her brown hair one last time, fluffing it out before she turned around and left the bedroom. She shut the door, too, as if that would somehow remind her of the promise she’d made to keep parts of her life from Brent. Her home was her private zone, full of letters, full of pictures, full of mementos. It was safer for her to meet him elsewhere.

Her phone buzzed on her kitchen counter. She grabbed it from its spot next to her sunflower picture frame. There was a text from her driver saying he was one minute away. Driving and parking in Vegas on the Strip was a bitch on a Saturday night, so she’d opted for Uber. She shut and locked the front door, then nearly smacked into Ally, who lived two flights up. The gorgeous brunette wore workout pants, a sports bra, and a form-fitting tank. She was laughing with her head bent over her phone as she walked up the steps to her condo.

“What’s so funny?”

Ally looked up, the broad smile still on her face. She pushed her big round sunglasses high up on her head. “This video is killing me. You have to see it. I know you’ll never look on your own, Miss Anti-Internet, so let’s start it over for you.” Evidently, Shannon needed to spend more time online hunting out videos. That was where all the action was, but she’d never put much stock in hanging out in the web world.

“Show me,” she said, because Ally had a good sense of humor, and Shannon was curious.

Ally scrolled through her news feed, then tapped a video. “Check it out. Here’s this chick eating outside at this barbecue restaurant, and her boyfriend starts...” Ally paused, lowered her voice, and whispered the rest of it.

Shannon’s jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. “Let me see,” she said eagerly, and then the two of them proceeded to crack up on the steps as they watched the clip of a woman riding her boyfriend’s hand on a picnic table bench, clearly thinking they were being sly, when instead they were so obvious they’d been captured surreptitiously by someone’s cell phone camera. Shannon shook her head in amusement. “Just another reminder that all the world’s a stage and you better behave in public.”

Ally nodded and laughed. “You never know who might be watching you,” she said, then she raised an eyebrow and looked Shannon up and down. “You look gorgeous. Date tonight?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. And thank you. I better get going. My ride is here.”

“Is your date hot? Is he good in bed?”

Shannon mimed zipping her lips, even though in her head she was answering yes.

“Shay!”

Shannon glanced back up the step.

“I have to go out of town in a couple weeks. I keep meaning to ask if you can feed my cat.”

“Of course. Just let me know the days. Nick is so cute. I love that tomcat.”

“He’s a total ladies man,” Ally said with a wink.

When Shannon slid into the air-conditioned white Nissan, she gave the Uber driver the location of the Cromwell near the Bellagio. As they drove, she decided to do a little online hunting herself. Brent had mentioned he’d had a gig in New York earlier that week—maybe a clip had surfaced somewhere. When she found a short snippet from his act at Bob’s Beer Haven and Comedy Club, she laughed, his routine cracking her up as he mocked himself so wonderfully. His clever self-deprecating style at times had always made her laugh. She leaned forward and asked to driver to drop her off at the candy shop near the Bellagio instead.

She had a purchase to make. She’d show Brent how she liked her sweets.