Prologue
Cash
Pulling off my sunglasses, I walked into the empty elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. It was late, well past visiting hours, so the halls were eerily quiet as I stepped off moments later. Unease twisted in my gut, my palms sweating in a way they never did before I took the stage with my bandmates. I had played for hundreds in the beginning, and more recently, tens of thousands of people, yet the thought of seeing one tiny woman was making my heart pound so hard my stomach was unsettled.
The halls were intricate, so I stopped in front of a nurses’ station for directions. An older woman in green scrubs with her hair pulled back into a severe bun lifted her head from the charts she had in front of her when she heard my footsteps. “Visiting hours are over,” she clipped out.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving her the smile I’d learned from my father during all his campaigns over the years. This smile had gotten me and the guys out of some pretty deep shit over the years. It worked on everyone, with the exception of Emmie Armstrong. She saw straight through my bullshit, and every time she saw that smile, she put me on merchandise detail. “I’m sorry for that. But my grandmother was admitted yesterday, and I jumped on the first available flight as soon as I could. But there was bad weather out west, and my plane had to set down in St. Louis and I came straight here from the airport.” I could see she was wavering, her eyes full of sympathy. I pouted my bottom lip out ever so slightly, going in for the kill. “I would have waited until tomorrow, ma’am, but I have to get back to work tomorrow night or I’ll get fired.”
It was all bullshit, but she didn’t need to know that. Even as popular as Tainted Knights was, with our latest single already sitting in the top ten on all the charts, I doubted this woman recognized me. The guys and I had been keeping our noses clean, staying out of the spotlight, unlike some of the other up-and-coming musicians lately. After the hell Emmie had raised over Kale ending up in the tabloids a while back, we were all a little scared of the hot redhead.
“Who’s your grandmother?” she asked, still thinking it over.
“Doris Mathias,” I supplied.
Eyes rounding, she looked at one of the screens in front of her and struck a few keys. “She’s in 310, straight down this hall, take the left, and it’s the third door on the left. Don’t overtire her, though, and make sure you let me know when you’re leaving.”
I turned up the wattage of my smile. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Room 310 was a private room. I knew that before I even tapped on the door. Gigi sharing a room with anyone was never going to happen. She would have demanded to be taken to another hospital, no matter how sick she was.
“Come in,” a hoarse voice commanded, and I pushed the door open enough to stick my head inside. The light over her bed was still on. She was seated upright in her bed, with half a dozen pillows that looked as if they had come straight from her own bed propped up behind and around her. Dressed in a robe with her hair perfectly coiffed, she looked like she was just as comfortable here as she would have been at home.
“Hi, Gigi,” I greeted her with a grin.
My grandmother’s eyes shot up from her book, warmth instantly filling those normally chilly brown orbs. “Cash.” Closing the book, she waved me in, her arms lifting for a hug.
I crossed to her in a handful of steps and wrapped my arms around her slender shoulders. As I hugged her, I inhaled deeply, breathing in the scents I’d always associated with this woman. Eucalyptus and white gardenias. The eucalyptus had always been to help decongest her. Even when I was I kid, she’d had lung issues, so when I got the call she was in the hospital with pneumonia, I wasn’t all that surprised. That she was asking for me, however, had shocked the hell out of me.
But I loved this old lady more than any other person on the planet, so I’d let go of her part in my past and grabbed the first flight to Virginia.
Her arms belied their appearance of frailty as she hugged me tightly, then pushed me back a few inches so she could see my face. “Don’t you own a razor, boy?”
Laughing, I straightened. Thrusting my hands into my jean pockets, I grinned down at her. “Well, you don’t seem like you’re at death’s door. You look like the same Gigi as always.”
She scoffed, waving her hand and rolling her eyes like she wasn’t inwardly pleased with my compliment. Not much had changed with her in the years since I’d last seen her in person. Other than the IV in the back of her left hand and oxygen tube up her nose, she didn’t look like she was sick. But then again, Gigi was never one to show her weaknesses.
The woman could put the fear of God in a person with a look cold enough to refreeze the polar ice caps. My friend Caleb always joked that my grandmother could put an end to global warming with just a glare in the right direction. I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. Gigi wasn’t like my mother. She didn’t bow down to anyone, ever. She took shit from no one and gave zero fucks about who she hurt as long as she got her way.
I used to be just like her—and my father by proxy. But after taking a long look at myself, I realized I didn’t like the person I was turning into. That, along with the fact that my father had told me to pick his path to follow or get out, was why I’d really walked away from my old life. I changed my name so that my career couldn’t touch Dad’s political aspirations—and his couldn’t touch mine. I didn’t want to ride the coattails of my father’s name, even in the music world.
“How are you really, Gigi?” I asked in a quiet voice, concerned for her, but more curious as to why she would suddenly call Emmie as a go-between to ask to see me.