Mogul by Ginger Voight

was scraping the bottom of
the barrel.
    Many times he was the author of his own
destruction, just so he’d know when the blow was coming. It was so
much better than having the rug torn out from under him.
    Now that he had his happily ever after with
Andy, there could be no other outcome. He always paid the price for
his happiness in some form or fashion. That’s why he hadn’t
bothered to chase after evidence the first time Holly told him she
was pregnant. He expected things to turn to shit, that was just the
way life was for a kid from the streets.
    No one was more surprised than Vanni that she
wasn’t actually pregnant. He knew he had gotten extraordinarily
lucky. That was why he knew it in his heart he wasn’t going to be
that lucky again. That would be like winning the lottery twice.
Things just didn’t work out that way. He had a debt to pay, and the
Universe wasn’t going to be content until he paid it. He’d have bet
every last nickel he had on the fact Holly was pregnant, and he was
the dad.
    He also knew he wasn’t going to be a
deadbeat, no matter how complicated their shithole of a
situation.
    So the next day, when Andy had gone to work
at the studio with Shannon, Vanni made his way to Hollywood.
    He pulled into the motel parking lot and
parked around back out of view. He had to go into his cell phone
account to unblock her number, and he called her she answered on
the third ring. “What do you want?” she asked in a weak voice that
didn’t make him feel any more confident about the situation.
    “I need to see you,” he said simply.
    “I don’t think so,” she said. “You made your
choice, Vanni. And it wasn’t me.”
    “You lied to me,” he replied.
    Her voice was so soft he could barely hear
her. “I was afraid to lose you,” she said. “I love you, Vanni.”
    He closed his eyes and leaned against the
headrest of the seat. “What room are you in?”
    She paused and he could almost hear her
thinking on the other end of the call. “221,” she finally said,
then disconnected.
    Minutes later he was on the second story
landing in front of her door. She opened it quickly and pulled him
in before anyone could see. The room reeked of smoke, and looked as
though it hadn’t been renovated since the 1970s. The carpet was
drab and brown and short shag, the walls were paneled and covered
with tacky felt artwork.
    There was one double bed in the room, with a
sagging mattress and rumpled sheets. A rickety table and two
upholstered chairs completed the ambiance, illuminated by a lamp
with a stained yellow shade with burn holes on the sides. It was a
depressing little hovel of a place, but it looked considerably
better than Holly herself.
    She had lost at least fifteen pounds she
couldn’t afford to lose. There were dark circles under her eyes and
her pallid cheeks had sunken in. Her hair was tied back in a greasy
ponytail, and the cheap clothes she wore practically swallowed her
whole. There was no pregnancy glow like Andy, who was nurtured
every day and spoiled rotten with every benefit he could afford to
provide. Holly looked as though a stiff breeze would have blown her
over.
    She motioned for him to sit before she
flopped down on the sagging mattress. “So why did you come here,
Vanni?”
    “I need to know the truth. And I need you to
tell it to me.”
    She sighed as she pushed a stray tendril that
had escaped from her ponytail out of her face. “When we had sex on
Thanksgiving, I truly thought we had conceived. I was so in love
with you by that point, and I wanted it to happen more than
anything. I thought I saw the signs, I even missed my period. When
that first test came out negative I thought maybe I had just tested
too soon. But by then I knew if I wasn’t pregnant, you would have
bolted. And I didn’t want to lose you. Not after I finally had
you.”
    “So you lied.”
    “I thought maybe if we had a bit more time,
you’d come to love me too. I knew I could make you happy, to