Exquisitely Broken (A Sin City Tale Book 1) Read online

  Exquisitely Broken

  Copyright 2019 M. Jay Granberry

  Cover design: Najla Qamber Design | Najla Qamber

  Cover Photography: Depositphotos | Improvisor

  Editor: Write Divas | Lauren Schmels

  Proofreading: Write Divas | Jeanine Savagae

  Formatting: Champagne Book Design | Stacey Blake

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the production of the author’s imagination or are the used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  “Maybe we’ll meet again, when we’re slightly older and our minds less hectic, and I’ll be right for you and you’ll be right for me. But right now I am chaos to your thoughts and you are poison to my heart.”

  —Unknown

  For the imperfect lovers that believe in perfect love.

  NOW

  Sinclair

  “Times up, kids. The Hotel is expecting an answer by the close of business today. I’ve given you all my reasons why this residency is a good idea, but if we do this, it has to be unanimous. For a band like us, a year is hella long. Have we ever spent a year anywhere?”

  Adam Beckham, the lead guitarist of our band Sin City and my songwriting partner, asks as he paces the narrow path between the seats of the jet we boarded after closing a festival in Mexico City.

  “Remember that time back in ’02 in Mr. Cooke’s class? That was a year, right?” Daniel Xu, our drummer, shrugs as he rips the top off a bag of M&M’s and upends it into his mouth.

  “Since when did a school year last twelve months? And bro, tenth grade was like fifteen years ago.” Adam’s voice is a low rumble barely audible above the hum of the engines on the opposite end of the jet.

  “The point of that tickle to your memorables is to remind you that we have indeed been somewhere for a year,” Dan says around a mouth full of candy.

  Adam turns for the new leg of his next lap up the center aisle. “Tenth-grade band in Pahrump, Nevada, isn’t exactly where I was going with this, but I feel you,” he says, running his hands through his chin length blond hair and tucking it behind his ears. “I’m talking more about the grind. We’ve been in grind mode for so long, I’m not sure we know how to stop. Or if we even want to stop?”

  “This constant touring shit is for the birds. Seriously. I mean when we were twenty-one, going to sleep in London and waking up in Belgium was an adventure, but now? Not so much. We’re in our thirties. Three. Zero. Thirty. This one,” Dan says, pointing a drumstick at our bassist, Miles Anderson, “is supposed to be my wingman, but since he put a ring on it, he’s only interested in one set of tits and ass. And you two,” he says, twirling the stick through his fingers, stopping the rotation to point first at me and then at Adam. “Get mobbed everywhere you go, and that is an even bigger cock block than his pussy pining. So, I get to go home, tap a whole new market, and make money doing what I love with my best friends.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m only twenty-nine, asshole, and those tits are a masterpiece,” Miles interrupts as he dodges the crumpled yellow candy bag Dan throws at his head.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, my vote is not just yes, but ha-ha HELL YES!” Dan shouts loudly in the mostly empty cabin.

  “Okay, that’s two for the residency. What about you?” Adam asks with a lift of his chin toward Miles as he turns to walk down the aisle.

  “Man, my wife and kid are in Vegas. My answer is easy. I’ve wanted to be home for a long time.”

  “I need to hear the word, Miles. Is that a yes?” Adam stops his pacing long enough to stare at Miles.

  “Yes,” he says with an eye roll worthy of a heroine in a telenovela.

  “Good deal. So that’s three for, and what about you Sin?” He starts moving again, his eyes boring into mine as he passes my seat. His blue eyes are still as piercing as they were the first time I saw him on the other side of the dinner table in the group home, and he took me under his wing and told me how my new home worked.

  What about me?

  No, I don’t want to do a residency in Las Vegas. In not so polite words, fuck Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas needs to stay there. And live there. And never see the light of day there. I’ve avoided that city like it’s ground zero of the zombie apocalypse.

  Four years ago, I left on the first thing smoking, and although I’ve been back for a couple of concerts because the other members of the band have ties to people in the city, I only stayed long enough to get on stage and back to the airport once the show was over.

  That shanty desert town means the world to the men that mean the world to me, and no matter how far I travel or how long I’ve been away, it’s still home. How can I say no? Adam just got a notice from child protective services that his mother overdosed, leaving his sister at the mercy of a broken system that tried its damnedest to break us. Miles’s wife is three months pregnant with their first baby, and although Dan tries to act like all he cares about is pounding his way through the female population, I know better. His entire family lives in Las Vegas, and his grandmother’s Alzheimer has gotten significantly worse.

  Saying no would be selfish and nasty in a way that I’ve never been. I’ve looked at this situation from every angle, and no matter how I slice or dice it I can’t come up with a valid reason or at the very least a convincing excuse to decline the offer. Other than I’m afraid to see my ex. Just the idea of that man makes the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  Our breakup was singularly the worst thing I’ve gone through, and I’ve had my fair share of bad luck. Jacob Johnson tore me apart from the inside, inflicted a wound that no one could see, even though I was bleeding out. But when stacked against my bandmates’ noble causes, my excuse fails miserably.

  I can’t deny that the money is good or that being on the road, if we can even call it that anymore with all the planes and trains that we travel on, is taking its toll. And I mean really what is the l
ikelihood of me bumping into the one guy I knew once upon a forever ago in a city of millions?

  Not very.

  So, I paste on what I hope is a convincing smile and pull on my big girl panties. I can do this. For them, I will do a lot.

  “Let’s do it.”

  “The same rules apply to you too, Sin. I need a definitive yes,” Adam says.

  I close my eyes tight and throw out a silent plea to the universe. Please do not make me regret this. Just a little grace. That’s all I’m asking for. I open my eyes to three pairs staring at me with varying levels of concern and expectation.

  I clear my throat and with more conviction than I feel, I plunge headfirst into a decision I pray doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

  “Yes.”

  NOW

  Jake

  I glance down at my Tag Heuer watch just to make sure the second hand is still moving. These meetings are long, tedious, and a waste of my time. As chief financial officer of The Hotel, a newer casino on the Las Vegas Strip, my job is to oversee every account, secure funding for every project, and sign my name on the dotted line to make sure hundreds of employees are paid on time, every time.

  Sitting in a meeting about the changes the beverage managers want to make regarding how they contact the extra board cocktail servers for a shift is not really my thing. Will the change improve customer service without increasing costs? Then do it.

  I glance up at Dave, the director of the food and beverage department, as he collects his notes and steps down from the podium to make room for Aaron from marketing. As soon as Aaron opens his mouth, my already frayed nerves rip to the seam. He’s animated and excited over minutia like an annoying cheerleader from high school still cheering when the team is losing by fifty points. No one is that happy at nine in the morning. Correction, only Aaron Martinez is that happy at nine in the morning. Maybe he wakes up seeing butterflies and rainbows.

  I fight the urge to roll my eyes as I glance at my watch again. This is going to be a long meeting. We’re not even halfway done and I already know I’m not making it through the whole thing. Connor Rappaport, my business partner and the CEO, requires all members of the executive team to attend quarterly meetings on the casino’s goals and progress, but here’s the thing: It’s hard to fire the money man. Finding money, spending money and, more importantly, making money for this casino is what I do.

  I learned from my father who learned from his father who learned from his father. My family moved to Nevada when Las Vegas Boulevard was still a two-lane dirt road in the middle of nowhere. My great grandfather got his first casino in a winning hand of poker and the second casino came as a pat on the head from the mafia outfit that was running Las Vegas at the time. Elijah Johnson was a hard drinker, a womanizer, a degenerate gambler but he was also a mathematical savant with a business acumen for gaming that multiplied my family’s wealth and influence tenfold. In Las Vegas, the last name Johnson is nowhere near common. It is a gaming empire. A legacy that every man in my family has upheld. A legacy that is unparalleled by any other gaming family. The Johnson men are not just shrewd in business but we have a reputation for finding water when the well has run dry.

  When Connor first approached me about opening an independent casino, I thought he was joking. Individuals almost never open casinos anymore. Contrary to its reputation, Las Vegas is no longer the Mafia’s washing machine for dirty money or the hardcore gambler’s playground. Vegas reinvented itself as a luxurious destination for playboy millionaires and socialites. Thank you, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Their type of celebrity helped kick off a new era, a changing of the guard if you will.

  Connor was poised to take the reins. If my family are the rainmakers in casinos, then his family are the brains. Connor’s father had the insight to bring big corporations to Las Vegas. Avery Rappaport is the leader of the pack. He sets the pace and dares everyone else to keep up. Conner, although he doesn’t want to admit it, is the same. He’s strategic and intelligent, always ten steps ahead of his competitors. He has a big enough ego to demand a spot at the table and enough self-confidence to own it. When his father began the process of retirement Connor was the only one capable of filling his Allen Edmond Oxford loafers. He quickly claimed a spot on the ‘Executives to Watch’ list in the local media and that was before he had the idea to open a new casino. Connor needed a little help to bring that idea to fruition and that’s where I came in.

  The first thing that any start-up needs is money. The capital needed to start a casino is astronomical. Even the most daring venture capitalists are leery about investing in a business that comes with the high degree of risk associated with gaming. That’s why most of the casinos on the Strip are publicly owned and traded. It’s easy to convince many investors to give a small amount versus getting a smaller number of investors to give large sums of money.

  Connor personally invested fifty percent of our capital. Getting the other fifty took six months, give or take, and I worked my ass off for it. I tapped every connection my family had and some we didn’t. Many of the investments came as a personal favor to my father and others came with strings loose enough to give us room to hang ourselves because a favor owed to you by the Johnsons and Rappaports in this town is better than money in the bank.

  Second, we had to reinvent the wheel. Consumers are no longer interested in Steve Wynn’s Vegas. His world of themed casinos that depend on gimmicks to get people in the door are a trend of the past. They want the opulence of the Waldorf combined with the nostalgia of slot machines and poker rooms. They want great food and the chance to be very important in an environment where anyone willing to spend money is important. Now people come to Vegas for the experience. A chance to say they walked on the same street where they filmed The Hangover or they threw dice at the table where Bugsy Siegel lost his bankroll. They want to sit in the showroom that hosted acts like the Rat Pack and Elvis and have a chance to play on the golf course where notorious mobsters out smarted the FBI.

  When we finally made our move, we vowed to do it different. Do it with fresh eyes and on our terms, which is the main reason we decided to name our casino The Hotel. The name doesn’t promise a tropical paradise or a trip to another country, but in a market saturated by the biggest, the flashiest and the gaudiest, it was our way to stand out, and it worked.

  It’s been a crazy ride, but if I could do it all over again, I’m not sure I would. There was a brief time four years ago when I thought I could walk away. Turn my back on everything. Seventy plus years of familial obligation and the weight of becoming a pillar to a community that already made my knees buckle under its weight. But I fucked up my chance, let her slip through my fingers, and the trappings of the life I’d wanted so badly to escape are now the only things I have left.

  I check my watch again. Ten minutes later, Aaron is still going. It feels more like twenty. They have five more minutes then I’m out. If Connor has a problem, he can come find me. Truth be told, he has no more interest in this banal meeting than I do, so we’ll see if he comes looking.

  Aaron is at the podium. His slight frame a wisp of color behind the heavy wood. The room erupts in applause, and I realize I’ve blocked out everything he was saying. He waits for the clapping to die down before he continues, too pleased with himself.

  “As many of you know this is a huge deal for The Hotel. Landing an artist of this caliber for a residency finally puts us in a position to compete with some of the larger corporate hotels on the Strip.”

  I’ve seen the list of local bands under consideration for the residency, but there was definitely no one of caliber and nothing to applaud over.

  “Sin City is the local band, and according to most critics and fans, they’re the architects of the “Las Vegas Sound.” All four members are native to Las Vegas, but Sinclair James and Adam Beckham have to be two of the brightest stars this valley has ever produced. We’ll be holding a press conference Friday immediately followed by a reception.”

/>   I jolt forward in my seat. The news like a cattle prod to my spine. Sin City? As in Sinclair James’s band. I rest shaking hands on the table, intently focused on Aaron. There is no way in hell I missed a memo about Sin City. I’d just met with Connor a couple of days ago to finalize the budget for the upcoming residency, and he hadn’t said a word. If the CEO didn’t know, they must have just confirmed.

  Sin City is coming back to Vegas. Sinclair James will be back in Vegas, at my casino.

  I dated Sin forever ago, long before Connor moved back to the States and we started The Hotel, way before I chose to conform and assume my father’s role. Hell, for most of our relationship, the band was a lounge act. What my mother took great joy in calling the Las Vegas equivalent to a factory worker and I was still trying to forge my own path instead of following the one that had been laid out at birth.

  It’s been years. Four years… since I’ve seen or spoken to Sin. The last time I had any real connection happened a couple of months after we broke up. A video of her singing at a studio in London went viral on YouTube. She was breathtaking in her pain, and I took comfort in the fact she was just as miserable as I was. That I still made her feel something.

  When I finally got past the visuals long enough to listen to the song, I was sick. Disgusted with what I’d done and how I’d broken us. That goddamn song was awful. All my missteps, all the regret, all the heartbreak laid bare for public consumption. I must’ve heard her sing “Exquisitely Broken” every day for months, and that was before the official video came out. One that featured a man who looked exactly like me caught in a twisted web of his own making, just like I had. I remember it like it was yesterday. Sitting on the sofa watching my TV doppelganger act out the worst day of my life. I just kept thinking, This isn’t a game, it’s my life. Even though the listening public didn’t know TV guy was supposed to be me I felt exposed. Flayed open in the worse possible way.

  The single went platinum, and so did the EP that followed. I watched her star rise just like I imagined it would, but the higher she rose, the farther she moved away from me. There wasn’t only time and space between us anymore. There was media and fans. There was persona and security. There was a completely different life I wasn’t privy to and that reality sucked.