“Trenton has been missing for nearly a week, and I know you've pinned it on Grotto—but, Ace, the man's hands are clean.” Mark says, trying to ease me out of his office.
“That's bullshit, and you know it.” I stand in the hallway, outside Mark's door, feeling like I've been punched in the gut. What does it say if even Mark Denzel won’t stick up for me?
“What are you doing with him?” I ask.
“He is seeking legal counsel. He came to ask about retaining me.” Mark holds up his hands apologetically. “Look, Ace, I want the best for you, but business is business.”
“It's not business. Not everything is fucking business in this town. I thought you were family.”
“I'm not family. I'm your lawyer.”
“Then I'm the fool you I thought I was.”
“It doesn't have to be like this, Ace. I can represent you both.”
“He’s the one trying to get that property from me. You know that, right?”
“I also know I advised you to drop that plan of yours.”
“Fuck this. Go suck Grotto's dick, Mark. You're dead to me.”
I walk away, not wanting anything to do with Mark if he’s going to have a client like Grotto. I don't want to see his face if he’s a double-crosser like that.
Mark goes back to his office and shuts his door.
I'm reeling. Punching that bag at the gym feels a million miles away.
I pause at Sherry's desk, needing some kind of lead.
“Why is Grotto looking for a lawyer?”
She must see the intensity in my eyes, the desperation. I would beg her for the information and she knows it. She shows me the mercy I’m looking for.
Leaning into close, she whispers, “He's being called in for questioning. Apparently there was a car crash, and a girl ended up in a coma. They think he may have been driving the car.”
My head falls back, feeling like everything is spinning out of control.
Emmy's sister. Bullet. Grotto. Trenton's murder. The shit on my family.
Emmy leaving.
Me wanting her to stay.
It's all too much.
“Thanks, Sherry,” I tell her. “I'll have my assistant get you passes to the club and a restaurant.”
“Thanks Ace, but you don't need to do that. Being nice to an old lady like me might ruin your bad-boy image.”
“There are enough bad boys in this town, Sherry. I don't want to be one of them.”
EMMY
The hospital is quiet. It always is.
I sit here with my sister.
Her days are numbered.
I've begged the doctor. Pleaded with the nurses. Asked for more tests. More labs. More time.
But all I get is sad looks and shakes of the head.
The decision has been made.
Janie will be unplugged from life support in two days. The state has helped cover her hospital expenses, but it’s cruel to keep her hooked up when she is all but dead.
It’s time to let her go.
So here I sit. My hand in hers. Remembering. Wishing everything had been different.
I never had a real family. Never really had anyone, for that matter.
I always clung to the hope of a relationship with Janie, longed for a connection with her, but she always pulled away.
Maybe it feels worse knowing she’s been with a man like Ace, a man who uses women, used her.
Is that what her life amounts to?
The daughter of addicts and the escort to the Boss-man?
It's not enough. She deserves more.
But she isn't going to get it.
I told the detective on the case about Ace … how I thought he was Bullet. He took the information, but said it wasn’t solid. That they can't arrest a man for having a nickname.
I told him that Ace admitted to knowing Janie. But he just told me, hands folded on his desk, that he would see what he could do.
If that isn't fucking anticlimactic I don't know what is.
So I sit with her.
In the quiet hospital room.
Wishing for her eyes to open, wishing for her to squeeze my hand.
Wishing for my sister to come back to life, come back to me for the first time in her life.
16
ACE
Standing in the large, vacant space, I see potential. The building doesn't need to be torn down completely, just rebuilt. The foundation is solid.
I wonder what sort of fucking metaphor this is supposed to be.
“What do you think?” The real estate agent, Stacy, asks us—Landon, McQueen, Jack and me. She’s a no-nonsense type of woman, in her fifties, and a typical cougar. She is eyeing us so hard she’s practically purring. And no one has even made a move.
And we won't. We take this meeting seriously.
“What’s the business we’re investing in, exactly?” Landon asks. “I don't really give a shit … but this money is actually my father's. He was quite proud at the notion of me wanting to be a venture capitalist. I just had to evade his questions about what the venture itself is.”