I’d only been sixteen then, and within a few months I’d lost my mother, and my brother and I had been forced to live with our stepmom and her daughter. I hadn’t coped well with the way my father abandoned my mother, but I would’ve found a way to deal with it. I even would’ve played nice if my stepmother hadn’t asked my father to stop paying for Mom’s medical bills.
I thought my brother and I would be able to save Mom. I thought he’d be on my side. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My stepmother has her claws in him so deep, she’s got him convinced that all I’m doing is wasting money on a lost cause. I barely recognize Matthew anymore. I left home as soon as I turned eighteen, but he stayed.
I’m lucky that my mother set up a trust fund for me that’s allowed me to keep her alive. Until now. This time, I don’t have the money. I literally don’t have the money to keep my mother alive, and I can’t help but burst into tears.
I regret buying myself those couple of drinks at the bar earlier, even though I know it wouldn’t have made a difference. I’ve run through more than eight million dollars in hospital bills over the last six years, often paying roughly two-thousand dollars per day on days that she doesn’t have complications. Eight million dollars is the exact amount of my trust fund, and I’m at my wits’ end. The few belongings I had helped keep her alive a little longer, but I don’t know how I’ll be able to pay for next month’s bill. I have no valuables left. I’m well and truly broke.
I hold my mother’s hand, hoping she’ll squeeze my hand back. Of course, she doesn’t. Every single time my hopes are dashed, yet I never stop believing.
“Mom, please,” I whisper, sounding as broken as I feel. “Please wake up. Don’t do this to me. I really need you. I can’t give up on you now, but I’m not sure how I’m going to get enough money this month. Please wake up, Mom. Please, ” I beg, trying my hardest to suppress a sob.
No matter how much I plead, she never wakes up. Part of me believes that she’ll wake up when she realizes I’m really in trouble this time, but realistically I know she won’t. If only I could harden my heart. Would life be easier if I were more like Dr. Johnson and Matthew, and faced reality and the probability of my mother’s recovery?
I rest my head on the edge of her bed, my hand desperately clutching hers. I cry my heart out, my lungs burning, and it’s not until I feel someone patting my back that I realize I’m not alone in the room. I sit up and take the tissue nurse June hands me.
“I didn’t realize you were struggling with the bills, honey.”
She pats my shoulder, her eyes laced with concern. I try my best to smile at her, but I can’t bring myself to. I can’t bring myself to pretend that I’m okay.
“How long have you been struggling, sweetie? I had no idea that it’s been hard on you financially.”
I nod and wipe at my tears, my eyes on my mother. “It gets harder every year,” I tell her honestly. “This time… this time I—” I can’t even finish the words. I can’t say what I know to be true. After years of fighting, I might… I might lose my mother. I sniff loudly, fresh tears in my eyes. Helplessness unlike anything I’ve experienced before overwhelms me and I inhale shakily, trying my best to remain positive, to keep my thoughts in check.
June takes a black business card out of her breast pocket and hands it to me, looking unsure.
“The sister of one of my other patients told me about this place,” she says, hesitating. “When she struggled to pay her sister’s bills, they helped her. I think it’s a gentlemen’s club or something like that. She… she told me they pay quite handsomely for innocent types.”
June looks devastated, and it’s obvious that she doesn’t want to be telling me this.
“I hope you won’t need to use this card. But if you do, know that there’s no shame in doing what it takes to keep someone alive.”
I nod and stare at the card. It just says Vaughn’s , with an address. No phone number or other information. The card is thick and heavy, the letters gold. It looks incredibly luxurious.
I stare at it, praying I won’t need to use it, and knowing I probably will.
Chapter 4
A lexander
I pace in my bedroom, exhausted. I’ve been up all night, trying to figure out who Diana is. “Find her,” I tell Vaughn, the owner of Inferno and almost every other nightlife establishment in this city. “She told me her name was Diana. Long brown hair, dazzling green-brown eyes… and that smile. I doubt she’s a regular. She looked far too sweet to frequent your seedy places.”
Vaughn laughs. “Since when are you into sweet girls?”
I bite down on my lip, unable to shake the thought of Diana. I can’t even pinpoint what it was about her. I didn’t even kiss her. All I know is that I want to see her again. I want to see her again and find out why she called me Alec . “She was different. I don’t know.”
Vaughn and I have been friends since we were children. He knows as well as I do that girls like Diana are far from my type. I usually go for alluring, sexy, and confident women. Not that Diana wasn’t sexy… she was hot as fuck. But she didn’t exude sexuality, almost like she didn’t even realize how beautiful she is.
“I’ll try, man. I’ll have my bouncers keep an eye out for her, but damn. Long brown hair and unique green-brown eyes? You’re not exactly giving me much here. I’ll have my men go through the security footage.”
I groan. “I can’t believe I didn’t get her number. She knew me, though. She called me Alec. It can’t be that hard to find her if she’s someone from our circle. There’ll be someone that knows someone that knows her.”
Vaughn clears his throat, falling silent. “Talking about the type of girls you usually go for,” he says carefully. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’d rather you hear it from me instead of the press.”
My heart drops. There’s only one topic he’d be this careful with. There’s only one person he’d never mention to me under normal circumstances. My heart twists painfully at the mere thought of her, the feeling quickly replaced by rage.
“Jennifer got engaged,” he says, sounding pained. “To Matthew Rousseau. They picked a wedding date already. They’re doing a low-key secret wedding in the Bahamas next year… on June 20th.”
June 20th. The day she was supposed to marry me. It can’t be a coincidence. She clearly picked that day intentionally; another way to stab me in the heart and twist the knife like the vicious bitch she is.
Jennifer is the one I thought was different. The first girl that didn’t seem to be after my money, that saw me for who I am, and not what my name is.
I was wrong.
Oh, so wrong.
I still don’t know if anything we had was ever real, or if it was all a game to her. I know she’s the one that stole corporate secrets, making me lose a multi-million-dollar deal that I’d been working on for years to Matthew Rousseau —but she’s clever. Or so she thinks. She hid her tracks well, but not well enough. Over and over again, I’m tempted to turn her in, but I can’t submit illegally obtained evidence. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I would never do that to her. Despite everything she’s done, I don’t want to see her behind bars.
“I’m sorry, man,” Vaughn says. “I knew you’d find out one way or another. Pretty much everyone in our social circle knows already, so I knew the news would get to you eventually. Knowing her, there’s probably going to be a media spectacle from the second they announce their engagement to the press, right up to the wedding day. She’ll want every second of the limelight.”
She would. Life is one big show for her. It always has been—I just didn’t realize it until it was too late.
“Look, I gotta go,” I tell Vaughn.
“Alexander—“
I hang up, my veins thrumming with barely restrained anger. I’d probably be able to get over everything she did to me. Hell, I might even have forgiven her. I couldn’t care less about the money she lost me. I was ready to make her my damn wife .
But no. She just had to cheat on me with Matthew Rousseau. That asshole has been attacking my company for years now. Every decision I make, every project I pursue, he’s always right behind me. This time it wasn’t an acquisition he was after, though. No. This time, it was the love of my life, and she went willingly.
Would it have made a difference if she left me for someone else? I’m not sure. I don’t think the pain would be any less, the betrayal wouldn’t sting any less. I pick up the photo I keep on my nightstand. It’s a photo of Jennifer and me, both of us smiling—a reminder of what happens when I allow myself to fall in love, when I allow myself to be weak. I keep this photo here for moments like these—moments where I temporarily find myself fascinated by someone, tempted by girls like Diana.
I put the photo frame back on my nightstand, my heart twisting painfully. What Jennifer and I had… was any of it even real?
I’ll never know.
Chapter 5
A lexander