Page 25 of Shameless in Vegas

“Is that all you know about her?” he demands, throwing his hands in the air and letting them fall at his sides. “Where is she from? What is her job? Who is her family? When did you meet her? Why the hell did you suddenly decide tomarry someoneafter doing nothing but sleeping around yourentireadult life? None of this makes any sense at all!”

He abruptly marches across the study and grips my throat. “Did you get herpregnant?”

“Holyfuck,” I cough. “No.”

He pins me with dagger eyes for a couple of beats before he gruffly lets go, shoving me backward in the process. “Thenwhy, Joaquin?”

The truth will suffice for this one. “She needs me.”

“Oh.” A sardonic chuckle shakes his shoulders. “Oh, I’ll bet she does. She needs all those goddamn dollar signs in your inheritance. She needs that credit card with no limit.” He flips his hand at the room. “She needs this multimillion-dollar estate to put her pretty little feet up.”

I clench my jaw. “It’s not fucking like that, Papá. You don’t know what she’s dealing with. You don’t—”

“Andyoudo?” He laughs again. “Every time I think you can’t get any more stupid, you prove me wrong. Andthat,mijo, is the most impressive thing you have ever accomplished. I amsoimpressed that I think I’m going to show you something right now.”

Pursing my lips in impatience, I lean back against the sofa and fuckingwait. He goes to his desk, stoops behind it, and there’s a jingling of keys before the sound of a drawer opening. Standing up straight again, he approaches me, holding a large, wooden box, and then sets it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa where I’m sitting. He sits down in the large, brown, throne-like leather chair with massive, eagle-claw shaped feet that’s positioned on the opposite side of the antique coffee table and levels his gaze on me.

“Open it.”

I already know what’s inside, but I appease him and lift the lid.

Two glinting Desert Eagles with a mirror-like finish. Both pistol grips are inlaid with gold and ivory, and spelled out in encrusted diamonds is the word,Familia.

“Part of the inheritance from my father,” Papá explains, information I’m also well aware of. “He left me three. One for myself. One for my first-born son, and one for the husband of my first-born daughter. I presented one to Malachi the day I gave him my blessing to marry her. It was less than ideal circumstances, but in life, we must adapt.”

Again, more shit I know. Isla and Malachi had been teenage sweethearts, and Papá caught them fooling around in the boat house, and then Malachi was required to go through the motions of proving his intentions to Papá. It happened right here in this study. And Malachi left with the third Desert Eagle.

“The tradition is to present the pistol on the night before the wedding, but Malachi’s insolence forced me to abandon that tradition,” he goes on with an edge in his voice. “And nowyourinsolence seems to be forcing me to abandon tradition yet again. Which is making me reconsider the tradition all together. After all…”

Papá leans back against the sofa and stares at me with a set jaw and a flash of anger in his eyes. “There is another wedding in this family’s near future.”

Indignation and shame cause heat to creep up my neck.

Again, I already know where he’s going with this.

In fact, if I’m honest with myself, I should’ve known he’d do something like this. The signs have always been there, pointing me down the road to him tossing me aside in favor of histruefavorite.

The kid my family took in out of an act of charity, but who ultimately became an unofficially adoptive member of my family—and my own best friend.

SCHOOL WAS NEVER MY thing. I liked sports. I was always effortlessly adept at any sport I tried because of my natural athleticism and large build. And while I was competitive on the football field or in the boxing ring, I was never interested in actual competition that might have turned any of it into something serious. I wanted to play the game, put in the twelve rounds, then hit the showers and go find a girl.

Because of this, my grades were never anything special, and I didn’t give two shits about college. I wanted to live large on my father’s dime while I enjoyed the company of as many beautiful women as I could find.

But my father had other ideas. He had expectations. He required me to go to college because he wanted me to take over for him at his company one day. I had no interest in that. But what Papá says goes, so I was headed to college.

Due to my less-than-stellar GPA and zero meaningful extracurricular activities, I’m pretty sure Papá had to “make a donation” to my university in order to get me in. And once I was there, my academic performance wasn’t any better than it had been in high school, and I got a call from Papá on a weekly basis reminding me of his disappointment in me.

“How do you wind up with aDin Economics101?” he’d snapped at me. “It isliterallythe bottom rung of everything you have to understand in order to not squander the wealth of this family when you’re the head of it. How utterlystupidare you?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m fuckin’ stupid. Whatever.

I had to repeat classes more than a few times, which caused my four-year degree to take almostsix.

By the beginning of my fifth year, the phone calls tapered off to nothing, which weirdly didn’t feel like a relief; it was more like subtle dread that sat heavily in my stomach. I thought maybe the shitty feeling came from worry that he was going to cut me off, but I knew Papá would never allow his reputation to be marred by having a vagrant son milling around New York City, bouncing from shitty job to shitty job. But something inside me knew better.

I might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I knew every kid had an innate need for approval from their parents; especially sons from their fathers. I’d never had it. And going into my fifth year of college, it was looking like I never would.

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