Page 22 of Diamonds (Aces Underground #2)

MADDOX

I drop my jaw.

Uh-uh. Negatory. No fucking way, Jo-fucking-sé.

“Alissa. I can’t let you go back to that club. Not after what happened to May.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s rubbish. Rouge can’t murder me in front of a bunch of witnesses.”

“Do not underestimate the kind of terrible things Rouge is capable of doing.”

If the vision I had that night at the club all those years ago has any basis in reality, strangling and beheading a young girl is one of Rouge’s more innocuous crimes.

This woman is capable of evil. Pure evil.

But I can’t tell Alissa that story. I can’t put that on her after everything we’ve been through since Sunday night.

“I don’t care how many people she owns. She can’t do that.”

“Alissa. Even if you going back to the club was a good idea—which it absolutely is not —you can’t get in without me. And I won’t allow it.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “Oh, so you’re telling me what I can and cannot do now?”

“For fuck’s sake. This isn’t about the big strong man telling his little woman what she’s allowed to do. It’s me saying it’s unsafe, that you’ll be killed if you go to that club again.”

“But Rouge doesn’t know what we’ve been doing.” Her eyes widen. “If we don’t show up, she’ll grow suspicious. You’re there every weekend, aren’t you?”

I shift my gaze. “Yeah.”

“And Chet takes the IDs of everyone who comes in.”

“What does that have to do with…” I rub the headache springing up on my forehead. “Fuck. Our addresses.”

“Exactly.” She mirrors my movement, as if she’s got a raging headache now as well. “Chet somehow knew what drinks we had ordered that second night we were there. The night I left my credit card behind. If he knows that, I’m sure memorizing our addresses is not an issue for him.”

I inhale. “So you’re saying it’s actually safer to go to the club.”

“If we don’t want Rouge to suspect that we’re on to her, I think it’s our only option.”

Fuck. Fuck .

Alissa might be right.

God damn it.

What have I gotten us into?

We don’t have to go back. But Alissa has a point.

It would rouse suspicion if we didn’t return.

I’ve been going to Aces every weekend for the past several years.

Even after that weird night with Rouge, I kept going.

I convinced myself that what I experienced with her was just the result of a bad drug trip.

Now I’m not so sure.

We could just flee the country. Change our names. Leave this all behind. Forget Chicago. Forget Aces Underground. Forget my shop. Forget Alissa’s career. Forget Rouge Montrose.

But no.

Alissa is going to audition for the CSO next week. And I love my shop more than anything.

Well, more than anything besides Alissa.

Because as stubborn and obstinate as she’s being, I’ve fallen even more in love with this woman. Shit. If she wants to keep going to the club, I’m going to keep taking her to the club.

“Fine,” I finally say. “We’ll go Saturday.

It’s Valentine’s Day. One of the biggest days of the year at Aces.

Everyone brings a date. The place will be stuffed, and it’ll keep Rouge busy.

We can go, have a drink, and maybe look around.

See if we can find anything that my dad’s message might be hinting at. ”

“The club is open Friday night as well,” Alissa says. “Why not go then?”

“Because I want to do something else tomorrow,” I say. “I want to pay a couple of visits to some people around town. Starting with my dear mother.”

* * *

I didn’t stay the night with Alissa last night. We’ve been apart the last few nights and nothing bad has happened, so we figured we were safe.

Maybe Rouge really has no idea what we’re up to.

I knew that if I slept over, we’d end up making love until morning. And what we really needed after another late night at the morgue was a good night’s sleep. We need our wits about us the next couple of days.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to fuck her. Mad Maddox was purring against my heart as I walked her to the door. My cock was aching for release, begging to be let out of its cage and ravish Alissa until sunrise.

I’m not opening the shop today, and Alissa said she’d call in sick to the hospital.

She meets me outside my shop, holding two travel mugs in her mittened hands. “I brought you some coffee. I had to guess. Do you take yours black?”

I grab a mug. “Black as a moonless night.”

She smirks. “Poetic.”

I shrug. “Comes with owning a haberdashery, I guess.”

“I take my coffee black. Here, at least. In the UK, coffee is garbage, so I don’t ever drink it. I’ve grown a taste for it plain, and if that’s good on its own, why muddle things up with cream and sugar?”

“Couldn’t agree more.” I clink my mug to hers. “I’ll bring the car around like I did that first night.”

“I’d rather walk to the back with you. I think I can trust that you’re not a total creep by now.”

I tip my hat to her. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

We walk to the back of my building and I open the passenger-side door for Alissa. She climbs in and sets the mug in the holder.

I get in the driver’s side—shifting uncomfortably around the object I’ve hidden in my back pocket—and place the key into the ignition. The Rolls Royce roars to life.

Mom initially moved into a one-bedroom apartment downtown after the divorce.

The alimony payments covered her rent for the year after the divorce.

Of course, once Dad died, that money stopped coming in.

Mom lucked out though—an aunt of hers took pity on her and left her a decent chunk of change in her will.

It was enough for Mom to get a tiny house in Skokie.

Social security covers the rest of her bills, and I’m sure she’s taken a reverse mortgage on the house to cover any other expenses that pop up.

The house is in pretty bad disrepair. Peeling snot-green paint, crooked shutters, and a brown lawn at the front. A chain-link face with several patches missing lines the lot, and a beat-up tan sedan sits on the driveway.

I guess it’s better than a one-bedroom apartment, but not by much.

A far cry from the luxury she lived in when Dad was mayor.

I knock on the door.

No response.

I knock again, louder.

“Mom?” I call. “It’s me, Maddox.”

Still no response.

“Maybe she isn’t home,” Alissa says.

I gesture to the driveway. “Her car is here. Where else could she be?”

“On a walk, perhaps?”

I shake my head. “You’re describing something that a healthy person would be doing. My mother doesn’t exactly fit that description.” I pound on the door. “Open up, Mom, for fuck’s sake!”

Finally, a faint voice from inside the house. “Christ, I’m coming!”

She opens the door.

She’s a mess.

I haven’t seen her in a few years. She used to check in when she could, but once the divorce was settled, she started drinking.

I heard from her a lot less after that. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do to support her.

After Dad died and I started making decent money at the store, I reached out and told her that, if she stopped drinking, I would do everything I could to support her.

She refused. At that point she had a death grip on the bottle, and she wasn’t going to let it go.

I stayed steadfast. Told her that it was my one condition. I didn’t want to watch my mother waste away, become a shell of the woman she was as Martina Edwin Hathaway, the First Lady of Chicago.

That was over a decade ago.

Life has ridden her hard since then.

Her hair is long and scraggly, her salt-and-pepper roots peeking out from underneath storebought platinum-blond hair dye. She’s gained weight, and her face is puffy—though that could be from the drinking. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she’s wearing a stained sweatshirt and leggings.

She scowls at me. “What the hell do you want?”

I take a step inside. “Nice to see you too, Mother.”

“Don’t call me that. You lost your privilege of calling me your mother when you refused to help me all those years ago.”

“I see you haven’t had your morning Bloody Mary yet.” I resist rolling my eyes. “My girlfriend and I would like to speak to you. It’s about something important. We won’t be a moment.”

Mom eyes Alissa. “You must be the lovely Laurie I’ve heard so much about.”

“Laurie and I broke up over ten years ago, Mom. The day of Dad’s funeral.”

She squints at me. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“I told you about it. Around the time I was trying to get you to stop drinking.” I kick at an empty vodka bottle on the floor. “Clearly neither communication was successful.”

Alissa steps forward. “My name is Alissa, ma’am. Nice to meet you.” She extends her hand.

Mom sneers. “Not much for shaking hands, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. Of course.” Alissa drops her arm to her side. “I didn’t mean to offend. It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Hathaway.”

“It’s Ms. Edwin. I changed my name after the divorce. Just call me Marty. It’s easier.”

“Of course. Nice to meet you, Marty.” Alissa smiles.

I take another step inside. “Can we sit down in your living room?”

“Sure.” Mom points to a ratty orange sofa. “I’ll just have the housekeeper put some hors d’oeuvres out.”

“Funny.” I sweep a few breadcrumbs off the couch and sit down.

Alissa sits next to me, her jaw clenched.

An armchair riddled with cigarette burns sits across from the couch. I gesture toward it. “Would you join us?”

She falls into the armchair, groaning. “Now what, may I ask, do I owe the honor of this visit?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath in. “Do you remember the day Dad died?”

“Of course.” She scowls. “The day I was kicked off the alimony pony. Joyous occasion.”

I tent my fingers. “You seemed to think foul play was involved. You didn’t believe the coroner was telling the truth. That Dad died of a heart attack.”

“That’s right.” Mom grabs a bottle of red wine off the coffee table and takes a swig. “Still don’t.”

“Right.” I draw in a breath. “Do you remember the last time you saw him alive? Was he acting strange? Maybe acting nervous about something?”

“What the hell does that matter?”

I shrug. “Well, wouldn’t you be a little anxious if you were marked for death?”

“I’d fucking welcome it. But let me think.

” She reaches for the wine bottle again but then seems to think better of it.

“Last time I saw the bastard was a while after the divorce was finalized. Not too long before he kicked the bucket, come to think of it. He came over to that rathole of an apartment, said he had a few things that he’d left in one of my boxes.

As if he hadn’t picked me clean enough.”

“Was he being weird?”

She scratches her chin. “Come to think of it, he was. Of course, he’d been acting weird ever since he passed that HOUSE act. To this day I don’t understand what he was thinking. He told me I didn’t understand what his goals were, even after people started losing their jobs.”

“Let’s not worry about the bill. What about that day? When he came to pick up his things?”

Mom nods. “He was looking over his shoulder a lot. I figured it was because I was in a rough neighborhood, but even once he was inside, he was doing it. He nearly jumped out of his skin when my phone rang.”

“Did he say anything weird?”

“He barely spoke. Except…” She wrinkles her forehead. “He told me where to find his new will. He had it redone the day after you turned eighteen, Maddox. I mean, you know. You were there when they read it.”

I clench my hands into fists. “And him bringing his will up out of nowhere didn’t tip you off that something was wrong?”

She shrugs. “The only people who really needed to know where the will was were me and you. Really just you, since as a divorced spouse, I was considered legally dead. But the two of you weren’t on speaking terms, so I was the one who got to keep the information.

Good thing he told me, too. Not too much later he was in the ground. ”

“Did he say anything specific?”

“He was adamant that his will was crystal clear about his car. He wanted to make sure that the car was passed directly to you, and as quickly as possible after his death. He made sure that it wouldn’t have to go through probate like the rest of his money.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Why would he care so much about his car?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he felt you deserved something nice after what you did. You probably won’t believe me when I tell you this, Maddox, but a part of your father was very proud of you for standing up to him. For walking down your own path.”

I frown. It’s not adding up. If he was so damned proud of me for choosing the haberdashery, why the hell didn’t he leave me his riches? I could have opened ten haberdasheries with the kind of money he had lying around.

I never understood exactly why he left me a car. I was happy to take it—the old clunker I’d been driving around since my eighteenth birthday was years past its expiration date.

But now that I know he had a reason for leaving me the membership to Aces…

Maybe there’s a reason he left me the car, too.