She hid her face in her hands. “Violet.” She grinned behind her fingers.
“You know I wrote a song about you?” Tommy said, sending her into a flurry of giggles.
As Tommy spoke with the little girl, Layla looked at Mateo. “We’re heading to New York tomorrow, but tonight we’re all going over to Aster’s new place to watch the Oscars. Do you guys want to join us?” She looked at Mateo’s friend, making sure to include her.
Mateo looked at Layla, then reached for the girl’s hand. “Thanks,” he said. “But Maria and I are just going to hang with the family tonight.”
Layla nodded, then took one last look at the beach. She loved New York City—the hectic pace was a good fit. Still, LA would always be home, and nothing could ever replace it.
She leaned forward and hugged Mateo to her. She had so many things to tell him, but none of them mattered. Not anymore.
She and Tommy were heading for the car when Mateo called out to her. “I forgot to ask—am I in the book?”
Layla
glanced back with a grin. “Guess you’ll have to read it and find out.”
With Tommy’s hand in hers, she turned away from her past and headed into her future.
FIFTY
THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD
Ira Redman sat behind his desk in his office at RED, looking over the list of potential A-list guests begging for the chance to either form their own narrative, or simply indulge their deepest voyeuristic fantasy.
Thanks to the tragedy, Ira’s clubs had never been hotter. But at the moment, none was hotter then RED.
He looked away from his papers and fiddled a bit with his phone, scrolling for Tommy’s text. Shame how everything had gone down just exactly as he’d planned, all except for that moment when Tommy was forced to reveal Ira was his dad.
Of course he hadn’t controlled the outcome. It had never been his to decide. Still, as a keen observer of people, he found he was rarely surprised. From the moment he determined Heather was behind it, he figured she’d also inadvertently orchestrate her own demise.
It was the cartoon cat that gave it away.
Heather had come to him with an idea for a line of T-shirts, greeting cards—an entire product line—and asked him to help fund it. She wanted to call it Socio Cat, a sort of demented version of Hello Kitty.
Ira had done his best to explain why the idea wasn’t one that interested him. But Heather was persistent, and he’d finally taken a meeting where she’d left a prototype behind.
The day it fell from his desk and he saw the way Tommy reacted, Ira knew it meant something more and decided to do a little digging.
Though he’d never intended to be held hostage inside his own club, much less all the bloodshed, he realized now he should’ve expected as much. Still, the latest rumor that the club was haunted with Heather’s ghost had guaranteed that Halloween at RED would continue to be the hottest ticket in town for years to come.
If Ira had one regret, and he wasn’t one for regret, but if he did have one, it would be the way Tommy had been forced to say what Ira had known from the start—Tommy Phillips was his son.
What Tommy had no way of knowing was that Ira had spent the last eighteen years watching from afar. Walking into Farrington’s that day was anything but random.
Some might say he’d been too hard on Tommy. But Ira would disagree. Maybe he wasn’t paternal in the usual way, but there was no doubt he played a large part in the sort of man Tommy had become.
Into his phone, he typed:
Thought I’d stop by and say good-bye before you leave. That okay?
Tommy was quick to reply:
Sure. We’re at Aster’s new place. I’ll text you the address.
Ira wrote:
Got it. See you there.