CHAPTER ONE

NINE YEARS EARLIER

"Yes, yes, it's true. I did the damn thing. Yes, I did. Yes, I did."

"What are you talking about girl?"

"We've been invited y'all. We have an invitation!"

They were party girls of the first order so they gladly jumped up ready for whatever. Except for Vivian. She was a party girl, too, but she needed more information. "Invited where, Nay?"

Nayla, her best friend, who had just come downstairs into the hotel's lobby where they all were waiting for her, started waving around a piece of paper that was nothing more than a receipt for the room service she ordered late last night. "We have an official invitation to attend a party at a mansion, ladies. That's where!"

The ladies started jumping up with even more excitement. "A mansion ?"

"Are you serious ?"

"A real live Beverly Hills mansion ?"

"Yes, a mansion. I told you I got y'all." Nayla started parading around as if she were a peacock. "Give me my flowers now. Give me all them hero cookies. I did the damn thing!"

They were staying at the luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel in California. The only reason they were able to afford such an uber-expensive place was because they all saved every dime they could for well over a year, pooled it all together, and were able to afford cheap airline tickets and one hotel room for four nights where all six of them slept. Their plan: find fun parties in Beverly Hills and pretend they were invited. That way they could have a blast, eat great food, and it wouldn't cost them anything.

It worked like a charm the first night. They were able to crash two parties right there at the hotel and had the time of their lives. This was the second night. They had, so far, turned up blanks. Now they just wanted something to do.

An invitation felt like winning the lottery.

But Vivian still had questions. "You say we're invited to this party, but who invited us, Nay?"

"This movie producer I met on the elevator. He's getting married in a few days, but tonight his frat brothers are throwing him a party. They all came to town for his wedding and he's upstairs getting them now. He said if we're the kind of girls who wanna have some good old-fashioned fun, we can ride to the party, in a limo - yes ma'am I said limo - with them."

The girls jumped excited over the idea of riding around in a limo.

"I told him hell yeah we wanna have fun," Nayla continued. "I told him you got the right girls now. We ready. We been ready. Who doesn't wanna have that kind of fun?"

"Vivian," said one of the other friends. Vivian didn't know her very well at all. She was one of Nayla's friends. That was why she ignored her.

"Was this producer good looking, Nay?" asked yet another friend.

"He's aw'ight. Not my type, but passable."

"Was he a brother?"

"No, girl. White boy. But they know how to get down too now."

The ladies laughed. But Vivian knew she was the oddball out. She and Nayla were best friends and close since grade school, but she didn't know the other four girls like that. But she liked to party with the rest of them, and it did sound like it could be loads of fun.

"But like we said before we left Newark," Nayla added, "this is an all-inclusive girls' trip. Which means all of us have to agree to whatever we decide to do, and all of us have to go to wherever we decide to go. And watch each other's backs while we're there. So what's the decision ladies?"

"I'm in," said the first friend. At twenty-four, she was the youngest of the bunch. Everybody else were either about to turn twenty-eight, or already twenty-eight.

"I'm all in," said the second friend.

The other threw their hats in the ring too.

"And you know I'm saying yes," Nayla said.

Then they all looked at Vivian. Nayla knew her four other friends didn't care for Vivian one bit. And she also knew their dislike wasn't just because of Viv's cautiousness. It was also because Vivian was the best looking one of all of them without even seeming to realize her beauty, and they were jealous. "What about you, Vee?" Nayla asked her. "You're in?"

Vivian hesitated, but she was only messing with them. She smiled too. "Hell yeah I'm in," she said as she jumped up too, and they all laughed, sighing relief as they did, and high-fived.

But when the producer finally came into the lobby with five other men, Vivian was surprised that they were so much older than she had expected. She and the girls were in their upper twenties, but the guys looked to be in their forties or damn near close to that. And all but one of them were white. She'd never hung out with white boys before, and especially not fortysomething white boys. She began to wonder if this was a good idea after all.

"Ladies, are you ready?" asked the cheerful movie producer Nayla knew only as Mark.

"We're ready," Nayla responded happily, and they all began heading out of the hotel's exit.

A super-stretch limousine was waiting just outside the door, and they all hopped in. There were seats on both sides facing forward, so the ladies sat across from the men.

All of the men were talkative and friendly and more than passable-looking, if Vivian had to say so herself. But one of them, seemingly the leader of the pack, a man who wore the most expensive-looking suit she'd ever seen, had an intense, tortured look about him that made him less attractive than the others. And unlike them, he had little to say. Never smiled. Barely spoke a word. Which automatically made him more intriguing to Vivian than any of the others.

She knew it was his limousine they were in: The producer thanked him for letting them use it. And compared to the others, he seemed bored and restless. He had an air of cockiness about him, too, as he sat there with his legs crossed, looking at Vivian and her friends as if he was superior to every one of them. He either wasn't that crazy about black people, Vivian decided, or just not crazy about them . But whatever it was he had going on: she wasn't digging his vibe at all.

But when that limo pulled up to that Beverly Hills mansion, and they saw that the party was already filled with people just trying to have fun, Vivian's mood lifted too. Because she wanted to have fun as bad as the next girl. It was all she knew. But she also knew that she and Nayla flunked out of college partying too hard. They'd been in that kind of lifestyle since their teen years. And although Nayla wasn't trying to take her foot off the gas pedal any time soon, this was the last hurrah for Vivian. After this, it was get-serious-and-stay-serious-about-her-career time.

But that was after this trip. Tonight was fun time!

They all got out of the limo filled with cheer as they happily took drinks from the trays of waiters who were waiting at the limo to serve them, and they all mingled easily. They were pleasantly surprised to see many people who looked like them at the party too. It was hitting on all cylinders. They were in the massive backyard, with the grills fired up and the music blaring, enjoying themselves.

But Vivian kept noticing that the odd guy, the cocky one, was staring at her. That same sourpuss from the limo, the one that seemed to look at them with disdain on his face, seemed to not be able to take his eyes off of her. Every time she glanced his way, he was standing there or sitting there staring at her. While she danced with different guys, he was staring. While she ate a little food, he was staring. While she laughed with her girlfriends and goofed off, he was staring.

It got so bad that the next time she caught him looking at her, she was going to go over there and shame his ass.

It didn't take long. Within minutes, when she was trying to play table tennis, she looked over and saw him staring once again. She sat the peddle down, told the guy she was playing tennis with that she'd be back, and she made her way over to the man she now inwardly called Sourpuss. And she wasn't trying to look friendly either. "May I help you?" she asked him.

He perused her body as if he was assessing her. "I doubt it," he said, as if she failed his assessment.

A part of her felt hurt when he put it that way. Guys always treated her badly, which was why she always felt she wasn't good enough, and he was yet another guy that confirmed it. But she held her head high. "If you don't want anything to do with me, then why were you staring at me every time I turn around?"

"Who says I was staring at you?"

"I say it. My eyes say it!"

"Perhaps you need to have your eyes examined."

He was gaslighting her and she knew it. But before she could respond to him, somebody jerked on her arm. It was Nayla. "We about to get in the pool, Vee."

"The pool? We didn't bring bathing suits. What are we getting in the pool with?"

"That's the beauty of it. Everybody's going skinny dipping, girl."

Vivian looked at Nayla as if she'd lost her mind. But she remembered Sourpuss was still standing there. And instead of taking the hint and looking away from Vivian, he was once again staring at her.

But she ignored him. Nayla wasn't thinking straight. "You do realize what skinny-dipping is, right?"

"Of course I know what it is."

"Then are you nuts? I'm not getting naked in some pool with all these strangers."

"They're good peeps though. They really are. And besides, everybody's gonna do it."

"I'm not doing it! And you shouldn't either, Nay. What if it ends up on social media?"

"Girl bye! Why would it end up on the internet? Your problem is that you never take risks. Be daring for once in your life," she said, disappointed with Vivian, and then she left.

Vivian could feel Sourpuss still staring at her, but she wasn't thinking about him now. She hurried and grabbed Nayla's hand. Sourpuss could hear their conversation, and he wasn't pretending not to listen. He stared at them and heard every word.

"Don't do it, Nay," Vivian was telling her friend. "We're just getting our little business off the ground. That stuff can come back to haunt you."

"What stuff? And what business? We clean motel rooms for a living. What kind of business is that?"

"We're just getting started. Once we get it off the ground, we'll get bigger and better contracts. Besides, isn't exposing yourself in public illegal? You could go to jail."

Nayla rolled her eyes. "Just give it a rest, Vee, alright? Stop being so old lady! Skinny-dipping is no big deal at all. You should try it. Besides, a lot of guys already been asking if you were gonna do it too. You have a lot of fans at this party."

"Guys who want to see me naked are not fans, Nay. They're creeps. And you should know that."

Sourpuss was impressed with Vivian. Her friend was right: she was being very old lady-ish in her objection to something so nothing burger as skinny-dipping. But he liked that she didn't go along with the crowd. He liked that she was her own woman and didn't check her morals at the party door. Not that he had any morals of his own to mention. But he liked to see it in others.

Another one of Nayla's girlfriends came over and pulled her away from Vivian. "Why you always begging her to do stuff? We should have left her trifling butt in Newark. For real though. Just forget her and let's go do this," she added.

And although Nayla looked back at her best friend, she kept on going with her other friend.

Vivian hated that she was the way she was. She wished to God she could cut loose and be fancy free like they were. But she had a baby brother back home to take care of. She had a business she was determined to make successful. They were twenty-eight years old now. It was high time they put away all that partying and childishness and get serious about life. But telling that to Nayla was like telling it to a brick wall. She wasn't trying to hear it either.

When Vivian turned back around to the creep that had been staring at her, he was still staring! But she thought she saw something like compassion in his large blue eyes. They weren't as hard and scary the way they had looked when she first approached him.

She glared at him. And just as she noticed in the limo, he just seemed so damn cocky and above it all. That was why that look he was giving her, as if he suddenly gave a damn, annoyed her. It didn't fit. "Didn't your mother ever tell you it's rude to stare?" she asked him angrily, and then she walked away.

Giorgio Janardi watched her walk away. He knew he had been staring at her from the moment they got in his limousine, and he knew it was rude to do so. But he couldn't look away from her. There was something about her that tugged at him. And it wasn't just sexual like it always was with him. She was most attractive and had a slender, curvaceous body that he knew men adored, but he rarely went for ladies with her body type. He liked models. Tall, svelte, not-an-ounce-of-fat-anywhere-on-their-bodies gorgeous girls of every ethnicity. He dated only the top of the top supermodels. She didn't fit the profile at all.

But he couldn't stop looking at her. Every time he looked elsewhere, checking the ladies out to find somebody interesting enough to take back to his hotel suite, his eyes kept going back to her. She didn't like it, but that was too bad. He couldn't help it.

And the way she refused to go along with that skinny-dipping nonsense impressed him too. Most ladies in her position would jump at the chance to show their wares to rich, established guys like the ones at that party, hoping that they could get a leg up on their competition. But she wasn't like most ladies. He saw that already.

And he continued to watch her as she went over to her friends and attempted to get them to change their minds. But it was becoming a contentious argument. So contentious that he didn't hear the other argument further over. The one that involved a group of guys. The one that ended up with one of those guys pulling out a gun and shooting at everybody in sight.

He ducked as soon as he heard the gunshots, and pandemonium erupted as people screamed and ran for cover. His first thought was to get out of there too. Each man for himself was always his motto. But then he thought about the young lady that had been the object of his interest all along, the one her friend called Vee, and he immediately looked to see if she was okay. But so many of the partygoers were screaming and running past him, shoving him side to side, that he couldn't see anything for their fleeing bodies.

But by the time he ran over to where he last saw her, there were three people that had been shot. None of them were in her girl group, and her girl group was running away like everybody else. But Giorgio was amazed to see Vee down on her knees next to a younger lady that had been shot. She placed the young lady's head on her lap and was trying to calm her screams. "It's going to be alright," she was saying as she was rocking the scared young woman. "You're going to be just fine."

But then panic gripped Giorgio as he realized how exposed she was to the violence. He ran over to Vee and tried to pull her away from the injured girl, but she snatched her arm away from him and continued to console the girl. Anybody else and he would have told them to kiss his ass, then, and ran for cover himself, but he already knew she wasn't anybody else or he wouldn't have bothered to help her in the first place. He looked over where the gunshots had originated from, and when he saw that the gunman had been subdued by other partygoers, he exhaled. The threat was neutralized.

But Vee didn't seem to care if it was or not. All she cared about was making sure that young lady's last breaths on earth weren't going to be spent in terror, or alone on that lawn.

But it didn't look good. That girl was badly injured. The blood made that clear. She wasn't going to make it. Even Giorgio saw that. But Vee kept on holding the girl and rocking her and telling her she was going to be just fine. That everything was going to be alright. Until the girl stopped moving. Stop crying. Was gone.

Vivian's heart dropped when she realized the young lady she saw get shot by multiple bullets had died in her arms. And suddenly all that strength she displayed for the sake of that girl broke within her. And now tears were running down her face. Now she was crying.

And Giorgio Janardi, a man known for his lack of empathy for anybody but himself, felt her pain. He literally felt it! And it stunned him.

For several seconds he just stood there, not knowing what to do. It was unchartered territory for him. But when Vivian looked up and saw him, and he saw that anguishing pain in her huge green eyes, he didn't hesitate. He went to her, gingerly removed the dead girl from her small lap, laying the girl on the ground for the paramedics to take care of, and then he stood up and reached out his hand to Vee.

The first thing Vivian noticed was how large his hand was. Then she saw a tattoo on the back of his right hand that appeared to be a tiny pink rose. Which didn't fit the image she had of him at all! But then she looked up into his eyes. She knew it was Sourpuss. She knew it was the same man that couldn't seem to take his hard, harsh eyes off of her.

But that look in his eyes had changed. It wasn't sour at all. His eyes seemed soft and kind and so filled with compassion for her that she took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. And when she stood up and was within an inch of him, and when she looked into his big blue eyes, she broke again. And the tears began dropping down her face again. That was when he pulled her into his arms.

For several minutes she cried in his arms. Even as paramedics and police arrived, she continued to cry and he continued to hold her. Until the police told them that unless they saw exactly what happened, and knew why it happened, they had to clear the area.

They never found her friends.

It wasn't until Nayla had phoned, checking on her, did Vivian realize they all had hopped into cars and took off. They were no longer at the mansion.

"I thought you got in one of the cars too," Nayla said.

Vivian wondered why she would think such a thing when she knew Vivian would never have just left her. And what happened to everybody sticking together and having everybody's back? The only person that seemed to have her back that night was the man she was standing beside. The man she least expected ever would.

But Nayla, who seemed surprisingly upbeat given what happened, kept talking. "You want us to come back and get you girl? We're going to this club that's supposed to be fire."

A club at a time like this? A girl just died. Others were shot too. How could they even consider it? Then Vivian looked at Sourpuss who didn't look so sour anymore. He helped her. He stayed there with her. And to her own amazement, she felt safe with him. "No," she said to Nayla. "I'm going back to the hotel."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"Okay girl. We'll see you when we see you." Then Vivian could hear one of the other girls say we don't want her with us anyway in the background, which hurt Vivian, and they all laughed. Then Nayla said her goodbye and ended the call.

Giorgio, who heard that little nasty background comment too, could see that she was hurt by it. And he didn't like it. What kind of friends were they? But it deeply offended him when he usually didn't give a damn.

Maybe because of how her so-called friends treated her, or how tenderly she treated that dying girl, he felt obligated to help her. He bizarrely, inexplicably, felt as if she was his responsibility. "We'll take the limo to the hotel," Giorgio said to her, since it was his limo.

He was uncharacteristically pleased when she didn't object.