OK, you want to play hardball? I get what I want.
“With all respect, ma’am, I need—”
“Next!”
Bitch didn’t even look at me when she called out next. It was like I was a computer program, having been handled and now moved on to the next task.
Well, fuck that. I never fucking got told no, and some Wynn associate wasn’t about to be the first to deny me what I wanted.
I scowled at the woman, who still did not look at me. I suppose if anyone had experience handling rich assholes like myself, it was someone working at a five-star hotel and casino in Las Vegas, but fuck. I stepped to the side and pulled out my phone, scrolling through my options.
The first name that popped up was my uncle, Gio Nimico. A friendly, if not boisterous and ruthless man, I knew full well that he had some ties to organized crime that “officially” did not exist. Gio never boasted about it, but when I confronted him one day with my suspicions at sixteen years old, he pulled me to the side and told me what the deal was—as much as he could, at least. I understood both that it was my place to only know what I needed to know and that what I needed to know was if I ever needed my ass saved in a situation, Uncle Gio could pull some strings.
The only time I could ever recall him failing was with the death of my father, his brother. And even that had not been a total loss. He always said there’d be a time and place for him to exact his revenge.
But pissed as I was at Megan, I didn’t need a criminal incident on my hands. She wasn’t violent or dangerous, just fucking stupid and an annoying thorn in my side. I needed her less to have her ass kicked and more to have her ass woken up about what needed to be done.
I called my lawyer.
“Brad, how can I help you?”
The lawyer, named Nick Ricci, was about Uncle Gio’s age, maybe a little bit younger, and worked just outside of Summerlin, a wealthy suburb of Las Vegas. Nick was a guy who had absolutely no room in his life for pleasantries, and I respected the shit out of that. If I called, it wasn’t to ask him if he wanted his In-n-Out fries animal style or not.
Nick was also someone who had worked with us for so long, he might as well have been family. Though he was prone to sometimes jumping the gun, he always did so with our best interests in mind. Rarely did he go wrong, and when he did, it was rarely so far out that we got upset.
“I’ve got a fucking problem,” I said. “I got married last night. Drunk and stupid mistake.”
“Do you have the woman with you?”
“No.”
“Shit. Do you know where she is?”
If I did, I wouldn’t be fucking calling you.
“Somewhere in the hotel. I think she’s just having a freak-out moment. I don’t think she’s run off.”
“Get her back with you. That will make things a million times easier. Once that’s done, or the evening has passed with no contact, give me a call.”
“Got it; thanks, Nick.”
I hung up. I stared at my phone for a few seconds with a hint of pride. No one fucked with the Nimicos.
And yet, Megan had with me, and she was seemingly getting away with it. Granted, I was sure in some fucked up way she meant no harm, but it wasn’t exactly like she’d meant to order me vanilla and gotten me chocolate instead. She’d fucking married me.
I called Megan again. Again, I got no response. I was starting to reconsider if a little Nimico family pressure wouldn’t work best. Not all shakedowns had to end with a body in the trunk of a black car, after all. Some just needed to come to their senses.
But I was in my fucking thirties, not some teenager who’d been ripped off by a shady car salesman. I needed to handle this myself if I could. I—
My phone rang.
But it was not Megan. It was not Nick. It was not even Uncle Gio.
It was my mother.
Bad timing, Mom. I answered anyway.
“What do you need, Mom?”
“Brad? Are you still in Las Vegas?”
The tone in her voice had me a bit on edge. I recognized it from far too many occasions—it was the tone she took when she wanted to butter me up but not make it sound obvious. Although I loved my mom, there was always an edge to her that felt like she constantly had to prove things or suck up to me. I had never figured out why, and to some extent, it didn’t really matter.
Or, more like, you don’t want to find out why.
“Yeah, why?”
“I…I’m a little short on cash. I was hoping you could swing by the house and drop off some money.”
Short on cash? This hasn’t happened before.
Well, then again, she has been saying odd things about how money has become unexpectedly tight recently.
“Why do you need cash?”
I could hear her gulping on the other end of the line.
“I can’t really go into it right now, Brad, but I just need some money to get me through the next little bit.”
“What the hell?” I said. “Are you in danger?”
“No, no, heavens no, I am fine, it’s just…I’ve got something that will be sorted out and taken care of soon. I just need some cash to float me in the interim.”
I knew my mother didn’t have any expensive vices, aside from the occasional indulgence in a steakhouse dinner or a nice dress. She didn’t drink much, she didn’t do drugs, and her luxury indulgences were on dresses worth several hundred dollars, not cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that didn’t mean that what she said didn’t raise a whole lot of alarm bells.
“Mom, you need to tell me what the hell is going on,” I said. “Why do you need cash right now? And what is going on? What will be taken care of soon?”
“I…look, Uncle Gio is taking care of it.”
Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
If Uncle Gio was taking care of it, as much as I cared for and liked my uncle, that meant the odds that my mom was involved in some sketchy shit had shot through the roof tenfold. This was no longer a concern about my mom’s financial situation. it was now a concern about her life situation in general.
“You’re really not going to tell me more, are you, Mom?”
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” she said. “But I promise no one’s life is in danger, no one is being threatened, and it will be taken care of shortly. I’m just dealing with a little mess in the short term.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say considering Uncle Gio is involved.”
My mother sighed.
“I know, I know, sweetie. Just trust me on this, OK?”
I thought about it for a second. I really, really did not feel good about this. It didn’t help matters at all that I had my rational side of me fucked over by what was still going on.
But it was my mother.
“OK, I—”
My phone dinged to alert me I had another call.
It was Megan. She was finally calling me back.
“I’ll help you get the money, Mom, I promise,” I said before I hung up on her as she asked for me to get it to her as soon as possible.
I was going to get my mother the money. That wasn’t an issue. I had too much of it, and on top of that, I’d already been serving as the family breadwinner for several years now. I fucking hated that that was my role—and I was convinced it was a big reason why she and I didn’t get along as well as we could—but I’d get it to her.