Page 4

“Max?” My voice sounded young and scared.
I wanted him to say that the stranger was lying. He and my daddy went way back, and my father had died in a blaze of glory, just like Max had told me all those years ago. Max had said that was the only reason my father wasn’t there to raise me himself. I knew that Max gave my mama money to help us survive. But that was a debt to my daddy. That’s what Max had said. It couldn’t be a lie, could it?
“Baby girl…” I could hear the sorrow in his voice.
“You didn’t know my daddy?” My voice was hollow, the accusation rang through the air. Max was one of the good guys, one of the few people in this shitty world that was on my side.
“Now, Sutton, don’t look like that.” Max’s gruff voice held a hint ofsorrow.
“Max, did you know my daddy?” I asked him point blank.
He heaved a sigh, almost as if weighing his words before he uttered, “No, Pumpkin.”
I felt my stomach drop down past my toes.
Max continued hurriedly, “But your mama and I had a special relationship. When I found out about you, well, I tried to marry her. But you know what she was like with all the drugs and whatnot.”
I felt sick inside. I knew all about theirspecial relationship.She had plenty of special friends that would slip into our trailer late at night. I didn’t realize that they were paying for sex until someone in the third grade happily filled me in. They told me my mama was nothing more than a prostitute, and I would grow up to be just like her.
They didn’t understand, nobody did. Mama wasn’t like that. She could be fun when she wasn’t high. We laughed and sang funny songs on the radio. She took me down to the thrift shop, and we would look for fancy dresses to play princess in.
“Yeah,” I whispered, “I knew what she was like.”
“You want me to get rid of him?” Max motioned toward the businessman who had been silent during this entire exchange, his eyes never leaving me.
I shook my head and answered in a low voice, “I want to hear what he has to say.”
Gabriel puffed up, choosing now to exert his nonexistent authority, “Not now, you aren’t. You have a shift to work, Sutton. I am not paying you to sit on your ass.”
The stranger’s mouth looked pinched as he asked in a clipped tone, “How much is her time worth to you?”
“What?” Gabriel looked confused.
“I will need an hour with the girl. If she sits here at this table with me for that length of time, I will give you two hundred dollars.”
Gabriel’s jaw dropped before his eyes took on a greedy tint. “Three hundred.”
“Done.” The man pulled out a money clip and peeled off three hundred-dollar bills and then handed them over to Gabriel.
“Shit,” Gabriel said with a smirk. “I’d have done it for two hundred.”
The businessman didn’t miss a beat. “I would have paid five. Now, if you will leave us? We will need some privacy.”
Max and Gabriel ambled away, and the man motioned for me to sit across the table from him.
I folded my arms, not sure that I wanted to know whatever this man was so insistent on telling me. “Why should I?”
His mouth pressed into a thin line. “You are wasting my valuable time. Unless you have the three hundred dollars to repay me, I suggest you sit.”
My ass hit the chair faster than a freight train. I didn’t have three hundred dollars. Hell, I wasn’t sure I had thirty dollars. With a sassy smirk, I saluted him. “Yes, sir.”
His lips looked pinched again. Good. I liked that the was just as irritated as I was.
“My name is Mark Williams,” he began. “I am the CEO of your deceased father’s company, Sutton Enterprises. You may call me Mr. Williams.”
I laughed. It was probably inappropriate, but who goes around telling people to call them mister anything?
Mr. Williams sighed, but then continued on as if I hadn’t laughed in his face. “Because of certain legalities, I was forced to locate and apprise you of your father’s passing.”