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dance. If that tape got out, I really would be a colossal joke for anyone out there who had an opinion.
    And I already knew that just about everyone did.
    I sighed as I put the DVD back in the desk. I opened my email and replied to my birth mother.
    “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Las Vegas, Nevada
    May 26, 2012
     
     
    Jace insisted that he go with me to meet my biological mother, and honestly I was relieved that he offered. It had been bad enough to be pruned unceremoniously from my previous family tree, but that was nothing compared to the frightening free fall I experienced being tied to nothing whatsoever. I was about to meet a total stranger who, by some cosmic twist of fate, gave birth to me nearly two decades before. I had no idea who she was, where she was from, or whether or not I traded the evil I knew in Marianne Hemphill for the evil I couldn’t predict in an entirely new person.
    That person, I found out, was named Maya Palermo. I spent much Saturday night digging through the web for whatever information I could unearth. I traced her all the way back to the East Coast, New Jersey in particular. Unfortunately the paper trail was sparse. I could do a simple background check and trace her trek from Jersey to Vegas, but it didn’t do much to fill in the gaps.
    The most surprising revelation was a custody battle that involved her and a man named Ronald Diego, which took place in Clark County, Nevada in 1998. There was a restraining order filed against him, asserting physical harm to her and her dependent child.
    That meant I not only had a new mother, but I had a half-sibling as well. It had been my fondest wish when I was a little kid, now it was frightening as hell. I was barely ready to meet Maya, much less a brother or sister.
    Scarier still, I learned that Ronald Diego was serving time in a N evada prison for armed robbery and assault against a police officer.
    None of this bode d well for my meeting. Jace suggested maybe we hold off until we knew more about the situation we were walking into. “You’re famous, Jordi,” he said as he held me close in our bed. “You know better than anyone the kind of people that brings out of the woodwork.”
    I thought about Eddie with a shiver. Yes, I did know. I also had Vanni’s horror stories to consider. Once you became a target, everyone else was suspect by default. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
    But I decided to go forward with my plan. With my hero Jace at my side, I knew I was in a much stronger position than I had been in the past. And all my questions about whom I was and where I came from deserved to be answered.
    That didn’t stop the nerves from nearly strangling me as we pulled up to a run-down house near downtown Las Vegas, far beyond the flashing lights of the strip. The exterior of the boxy dwelling was an ugly, dull yellow, indicating the small, one-story house hadn’t been painted in a while. There was a simple, chain-link fence surrounding the property. What passed for a yard was a dull swath of earth, littered with discarded food and drink containers along the sidewalk. Small groups of people congregated near the corner, and graffiti marred the decrepit city street which featured more empty lots than actual buildings. The whole neighborhood resembled a war zone. It was hard to believe that mere miles away, people were reveling as they pissed money away like water, drinking away the worries and monotony of their normal lives back home. I myself had stayed in one of the finest hotels just months before, when I finally broke free of my life as Mrs. Eddie Nix.
    And here I was, once again at a crossroads, as I stared at the house that could have very likely been mine had this woman not given me to my father and Marianne.
    To say it was a bit of culture shock was an understatement.
    The Hemphill house in Oswen had been modest, but tidy and well-kept. There were flowers lining the sidewalk to a fastidious house kept neat