Amberleigh and Leo decided to make a quick pit stop back at The Cobra Club to collect the money Head Goddess was so graciously loaning to the cause. They wanted to keep up appearances and Leo wisely suggested they actually collect all the ransom money. They needed Courtney to believe they were still giving a hundred and ten percent in their efforts. Grayson’s life depended on it right now anyway. He would be an instant dead man if the kidnappers thought otherwise.Amberleigh’s goal was to slip in and out of the club as quickly and quietly as possible. It was closing in on sundown and she needed to hit the streets in the cover of darkness. She used the back passages in the club and avoided all the popular hotspots. She could still hear a remix of Christmas music blaring from The Rainbow Room even from the bypass of the inner workings of the club. But all be dammed if some nosy, ass snitch didn’t see Amber creeping through the employee passages. Because when Amber made it out of the c

It came as no surprise to Amberleigh that Courtney had made zero effort to clean up her fucking mess. That went beyond just the kitchen. The bitch had made minimal efforts at best to raise her husband’s ransom money. And it seemed unlikely the evil cunt would have a change of heart and call the whole murder her new husband plot off. It wasn’t like she was used to getting her hands dirty anyway. She was used to letting others do it for her. And that was unlikely to fucking change.They found the heiress seated on the barstool scrolling through her smart watch. She’d given up on working the latte machine. And apparently had ordered herself some overpriced coffee, set to be delivered to the lobby. What. The. Fuck.“Leonardo, I just wanted to inform you, the doorman will probably arrive soon to bring my Starbucks order up. I also called that maid and told her we needed her here tomorrow for a couple hours in the morning.”Leo leaned down against the counter. Amber could see the visibl

Amberleigh and Leo took a while to try and process, understand, sort through their emotions on the kitchen floor. Grayson had given up. He was depressed. He was feeling miserable from the withdrawals, both of which put him in a bad state of mind. He’d already told Amber he was exhausted not only with this diagnosis looming over him, the symptoms which were already beginning, but also from the pressure of living up to the expectations placed upon his shoulders. And Grayson was only twenty-four-years old.Grayson saw this as a way out. He never wanted to become a burden. To have to be cared for by others or lose all the parts of himself that made him who he was. More importantly, he didn’t want Amber or Leo or anyone else he loved to have to go through it either. To watch him go from an independent, reasonably healthy man in the prime of his life turn into someone else, some angry, bedridden stranger with no quality of life. In the billionaire’s mind, this was the perfect opportunity. I

It was around six thirty p.m. when Amberleigh walked inside the crowded bar called the Bottoms’ Up. And that had certainly more than one meaning in a seedy joint like this. This place was a fuck em’ out by the dumpster in the back or in the bathroom kind of place. A real high class establishment for sure.A couple women in the back corner were already dry humping and tonguing each other. Feeling the love and Christmas spirit. Hopefully that was all they shared with each other tonight. The herpes was going viral in The Fringe again, or so Amber had heard. It was the gift that kept on giving for sure. But on the bright side HIV was down to an all-time low, as the preventive drugs and condoms were given out in all the schools, churches, shelters, clinics, and food pantries. It was an initiative funded in part by The Godwin Foundation. Amber scoped the place out, eyes alert for any signs of Giovanni. She noticed a man with potential near the jukebox. The old jukebox had a cracked scre

Julian stared Amberleigh down, no doubt trying to assess if she could be telling the truth. Looking for anything familiar in the face of the woman he saw before him. He’d last seen his cousin as a scrawny toddler in need of a bath with tangled hair and peanut butter stains on her shirt. Amber remembered making herself a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast that day after Krystal had been passed out from an all- night bender. There were no napkins of course, so she’d just wiped all the extra peanut butter from her tiny fingers onto her shirt. “I haven’t seen my cousin in almost twenty years. And with that mother of hers, I question that my cousin even survived her childhood. How do I know you aren’t full of shit?” he asked. “Let’s see the last time I saw you Julian, it was at I think Cora or maybe Kaya’s Birthday, I always mixed those two up. You had a picture of a girl with a blond pixie cut as your screensaver and Kandi had walked in on you jerking o