Chapter Thirty-Six
Ally looked around the nightclub. The lunchtime crowd was back, a lot of the same people she’d seen weeks ago, when she’d been last here. The waitress had remembered her and delivered a club soda with a smile and a promise to let Dylan know she was back.
Now all she had to do was wait.
She ran a hand through her short blond locks, trying to center herself. It’d been a trying few weeks spent between Las Vegas and New York City, culminating in her going out on her own to build a future without her family.
It was possible the next time she met any of them would be in court.
She studied the surveillance camera, discreetly mounted in one of the lighting tracks over the bar. It hadn’t been hard to find once she knew what to look for, and she’d remembered the angle from her previous visit to Trey’s office.
Ally turned the business card over in her fingers, relishing the feel of the embossed letters. She’d already handed out quite a few since arriving back in Las Vegas that morning, mostly to business associates who had expressed their interest in working with her.
It killed her to witness the company she’d helped build and prosper getting torn apart. Except she was already reaping the results, the businesspeople from the presentation willing to take a chance on her new, smaller outfit to complete their project.
The risk was worth it to be her own boss. She was running on a tight budget as the lawyers fought through splitting the company into two equal parts. Many of the employees had chosen to go with her, grateful for real leadership, even though she warned them it might be a long time before they would see a boost in their paycheck. They believed in her, and that realization held her steady through the negotiations and confrontations over the past few weeks.
She was running on adrenaline and raw terror, the sensation of freedom making her almost giddy.
Especially coming here.
After landing at McCarran, she’d come straight to the club, looking for Trey. She wasn’t going to call him on the phone—this was something she needed to do in person.
But he wasn’t at the Devil’s Playground.
Dylan explained he’d taken a side trip, and Ally returned to her hotel.
The next morning, she’d been the first in the door and hadn’t left.
“Hey.”
The single word brought her around on the stool to stare at him, her breath escaping in a combination of a sigh and a gasp.
He looked…
Edible.
Gorgeous.
Handsome as hell.
He wore his usual black T-shirt and jeans, his hair a bit longer than she remembered.
The memory of that one night together shot straight to her core, sending a surge of heat through her veins.
“The card.” He stood beside her. “What’s it say?”
“Oh.” She placed the card between them, the bright lights bouncing off the glossy front. “Phoenix Construction.”
“Phoenix.” The single word hung in the air between them. “What possessed you to pick that name?”
“Rising from the ashes.” It was hard to breathe, his presence sucking the oxygen from her lungs. “I heard you left town for a bit.”
“I went to see Nick’s parents.” He leaned on the bar. “I told them I found the man who killed their son.” Trey shook his head. “I didn’t give his name. They didn’t want it.”
The words caught in her throat before she forced them out. “What did they say?”
“They didn’t care.” He sat in the empty chair next to her. “They didn’t care,” he repeated. “They told me they’d moved on and had forgiven him.”
“Wow.” She blinked. “That’s incredible.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “They took me into their home and showed me what they’d done in Nick’s memory, what they’d built to remember him for the good man he was. All I had to show was five years of anger and rage spent searching for the man who hit Nick.”
“You found him in the end. You found Vincent.”
“No,” he corrected her. “I found you when Jessie asked to meet you here.”
She bit her bottom lip. “You found Vincent through me.”
“That was my goal at first,” he confessed. “We can both agree it changed as time went on. I still wanted justice for Nick, but the situation got a lot more complicated.”
“For both of us.”
“True.” He moved forward again, well inside her personal space. “I also went to New York City to find you. Ended up at Sheldon Construction.”
She chuckled. “Let me guess. It was like I never existed, and you came close to being tossed out on your ass.” She frowned, doing the math. “Damn. You barely missed the arrest warrants.”
“I did.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Mind explaining that part to me?”
Ally licked her dry lips, unsure how to proceed. She’d gone over this exact conversation in her mind a dozen times in the last few days, parsing out what she’d say to Trey.
It was all gone as she stared at him, her hunger for him almost blotting out all conscious thought.
He eyed her. “Let’s start at a bad place. How much did you overhear when I was talking to Vincent here in the club?”
“Enough.”
“I never meant to hurt you.” He shook his head. “I never, ever considered using you to get to him. I need you to know that. I was there only to see Vincent and confirm or deny he was the man I’ve hunted for years.”
“I know.” She met his gaze as he lifted his head. “I’ve spent my entire life protecting Vincent. But you pushed me to the edge.” Her cheeks burned. “In more ways than one.”
Trey smiled, his lips pulled into a tight line. “You left the club after seeing me punch Vincent.” He drew a shallow breath. “And put him in a chokehold.”
“Yes.” She brushed out a crease in her skirt, looking for something, anything to keep her hands busy. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The pain flashed through her heart, still fresh.
“His bragging, his…” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “His attitude. My God, what he said, what he talked about doing…” She closed her eyes, and she was back to that day, listening to Vincent’s rants. “I never saw the darkness in him until then.”
“He’s family,” Trey said softly. “No one expected you to.”
“I just couldn’t deal with it.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Or with you. So, I ran.”
“I understand.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” She massaged her temples, pushing away the pain simmering under the surface. She’d had more stress headaches in the past two weeks than in the past two years. “I had to break away, get some space to myself to process what I’d heard.”
“And Edgar quit.”
“Right after they got back to the hotel.” She chuckled. “Just long enough for Vincent to have one last screaming fit.”
Trey nodded, still intently raking her with his eyes. She felt naked under his stare, holding back the urge to cross her arms. “He left you alone with an angry and upset man.”
It sounded like an accusation.
“Yes.” She dropped her gaze to the business card lying on the varnished wood. She placed a finger on the card and began to move it back and forth, an outlet for her tension. “Vincent went into his room to pout and drink his pain away.” She paused. “Then I burned it all down. My family, my company.”
“How?”
She took another sip, using the cool drink to coat her dry throat. “Jessie put me in touch with this FBI agent. I told him my concerns. He passed me to a friend—a prosecutor in New York City who had this in their cold case file.”
The bartender walked down and placed a fresh water bottle in front of Trey, snapping the lid off. She smiled and retreated.
He took a deep swig, shaking his head.
Ally continued. “After I threw you out of the suite, I’d called up one of my computer experts. Told him to check and make sure you hadn’t gone into our archives, busted through our firewalls. He came back and said you hadn’t.” She couldn’t hold back a bit of a smile. “But I know you could have if you’d wanted to.”
He tilted his head to one side and gave her a sheepish grin.
She pulled the smile back, remembering the topic under discussion. “But after that, I gave him a harder job—to see if there was anything to your claims. I gave him full permission to go into the family archives, use any and all resources at his disposal to see if there was any chance your accusations were true.”
“He found something,” Trey whispered, the grin vanishing.
“Yes. An insurance claim for Vincent’s car—the one that he smashed up before we went overseas. He cross-referenced the garage that processed the insurance claim and found it to be under police investigation. He couldn’t go much further—he wasn’t as good as you were at slipping between computer firewalls and hacking into different systems to see what was going on. But the rest of your timeline held true, all of it—now verified with my own expert. I called Jessie, and she handed the information over to the FBI agent, who then took it to the prosecutor who had the inside data.”
The muscles around his neck tightened. Trey swallowed loudly.
“Turns out my uncle used a garage with some shady connections to dispose of the car that Vincent hit you with. It’s known for being a chop shop—takes them apart and makes them disappear. Odd behavior for my family, considering the insurance claim was for Vincent simply hitting a light post. There was no reason for the car to be trashed, much less go to a garage with that type of reputation. The prosecutor tugged on that string, and it started to unravel.” She drew her finger through the condensation from her drink pooling on the bar. “Then there was the tape.”
Trey nodded. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“I’m not.” She shook her head. “It might be technically inadmissible, but added in with all the other evidence I gave them…” She sighed. “It’s a long shot, but they’ve reopened the investigation and are digging again. If they can prove it’s the same car, they’ll have evidence against Vincent. They’re going to try. I gave an affidavit, as well, about how we rushed out of the country five years ago, plus about overhearing Vincent’s confession. My relationship with you might cloud things, but Mac said he’d do his best to see justice was done.”
“The arrest…what was that for?”
“The DA was worried he would flee the country during the investigation, so they brought up some old parking tickets Vincent forgot to pay years ago. He’ll be out on bail—but it’ll keep him in the country so my uncle can’t send him overseas. Not now with the construction site accident.”
“The accident,” he said. “How’s that going?”
She pressed her lips into a tight line, flashing back to the trailer. “I went to the district attorney here and told him about the discussion we had with the site manager and how Vincent told him to disregard the safety regulations.”
Trey frowned. “That couldn’t be enough.”
“The families of the workers who were killed are filing civil lawsuits. Capprelli is talking to the lawyers, trying to cut a deal, and he’s willing to say Vincent ordered him to push the workers. Vincent got nervous and refused to talk to them, even with our people present. I gave my statement, countering what the company lawyers recommended. After that, I announced I was leaving the company—taking my share of Sheldon Construction and going out on my own.” She tapped the embossed business card. “Phoenix. All mine.”
“Why?” The whisper almost undid her, the single word digging right into her core.
She drew a deep breath.
Trey didn’t wait for her to answer. “Why now? After all he’d said and done, all you’ve gone through for your family—why now?” He sat up ramrod straight in the chair, hands on his knees. “You stayed with Vincent through thick and thin. So, what was the tipping point? The bodies at the site, the families at the hospital, the news reporters pushing you for a statement?”
He was almost yelling, the words thrust toward her like daggers. “What was it?”
“You.” She exhaled the word. “You.” She pulled her fingers in, pressing her fists against the bar top. “You got inside, and I couldn’t get you out.”
Trey’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Before I met you, I thought I could work around Vincent’s issues. But you showed up and changed everything in my world.” She kept talking, not letting him interrupt. “The accident at the construction site was a chance for Vincent to show me he might have changed, reformed after hearing your accusation. Instead, he threw the blame onto Capprelli. Then I heard the confession, and I had a choice to make. You showed me I could be more. That I needed to be more. I spotted my chance and took it.”
Trey spoke after a few moments of silence. “What about Vincent?”
“If I know him, he’ll do what he can to avoid spending any time in jail, either on the construction accident or the hit-and-run. There’s no statute of limitations on manslaughter—the prosecutor said they’ll try their hardest to build a case. I think he’ll try to cut a deal, include rehab.” She hesitated. “I can’t promise you more.”
“It’s enough.” He smiled. “I learned a little something from Nick’s parents. I can’t keep looking back—I need to move on. That doesn’t mean forgive and forget—but I’ve done all I can, and that’ll have to be enough.”
“I understand.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I didn’t think you wanted to be disturbed.”
“I didn’t. But now I’m back.”
“You look good.”
“Thank you.” He eyed her. “So, what are your plans?”
Ally bit her lip before answering. “I have to go back to New York City in a few days. That’s where my home base was and will be. I’ve got connections there, and I can’t walk away from the city I love. I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I love Las Vegas, I do. I’ll be visiting to check on the projects, but I can’t stay permanently. Not yet.”
“Right.” He nodded. “I guess the next question is why did you come here?”
“I came…” Her nerve faltered for a second. “I came to see you.”
“And you have.” A smile tickled the edges of his mouth. “Let me make a bid. I’ll put it in business terms.” He stared at her. “Here’s my offer. I throw you over my shoulder and carry you to the truck, drive to my apartment, take you up to my bedroom, and rip your clothes off.”
Her mouth went dry.
He rose from the chair and stood in front of her, putting the bar at her back. He leaned forward and placed his hands on the bar itself, trapping her in his embrace. “I strip you naked, run my tongue over every inch of your body, and taste every bit of you before I make you mine forever, beginning by making you scream over and over again until you lose your voice.” One eyebrow rose. “To start with.”
Ally cleared her throat. “Ah…” She crossed her legs in a vain attempt to hold on to the last bits of her sanity. “Is there any place here for negotiation?”
“None,” he rumbled and her thighs clenched together at the possessive tone. “The only thing you have control over is how long I make you wait.”
She leaned back to try and quell the desire sizzling through her. “How long do I have to consider this offer?”
“Not too long.” The low rumble stoked her desire, ratcheted it up a notch. “And the clock’s a-ticking.”
She paused, her mind spinning.
He cocked his head to one side.
“Time’s up.”