One Night in Vegas

Escape Velocity

Chapter 2: Escape Velocity

Lucas clicked to the next slide. The projection lit up the mahogany walls of the Hawthorne Innovations boardroom, and fifteen faces watched him from around the table — investors, board members, his grandfather at the head like he'd been bolted there since the building was constructed.

Lucas flashed his trademark grin, the one that made shareholders relax.

"Our AI division just secured partnerships with three Fortune 500 companies," he said. "Revenue projections for Q2 are up eighteen percent, and beta testing for the neural network platform is ahead of schedule by—"

His left hand trembled.

Just a slight shake, fingers twitching against the remote, but enough. Heat rushed through his chest. The room tilted a fraction, colors bleeding at the edges of his vision. He gripped the table's edge and kept talking, kept his voice smooth and level.

"—two weeks. We're on track to launch in May."

He let out a small laugh, like he'd just remembered something. "Sorry. Too much coffee." He reached for his water glass, took a slow sip, felt the cold travel down his throat. The tremor stopped. The room steadied.

Nobody reacted. Or if they did, they were polite enough not to show it.

He always knew when it happened. The disease was like that — patient, content to announce itself and then retreat, leaving him to wonder when it would return and how far it would go next time.

"Impressive work, Lucas," said someone from the far end of the table.

"Thank you," he said, and smiled like nothing had happened.

Elias Hawthorne cleared his throat. The room went still. It always did.

"Before we adjourn," Elias said, eyes fixed on Lucas. "There's another matter. The company's future stability."

Lucas felt his jaw tighten.

"You're thirty-two years old," Elias continued, leaning back with the ease of a man who'd spent sixty years never being told no. "Brilliant. Accomplished. Unmarried. The board needs assurance of continuity. Legacy. An heir."

"Grandfather—"

"This isn't a request," Elias said. Flat, final, the way he ended every conversation he considered beneath him. "The Hawthorne name doesn't end with you."

A few board members nodded. Others found reasons to study their notes.

Lucas leaned back, kept his voice easy. "I think we can table the matchmaking discussion for another time. I'm fairly busy running the company."

"Time," Elias said, "is something you don't have the luxury of wasting." A beat. "Find someone suitable. Soon."

Lucas said "understood" because it was the fastest way out of the room, and because arguing with Elias Hawthorne in front of the board was like arguing with weather.

Julian was waiting in the hallway, shoulder against the wall, white coat, hands in his pockets. Dr. Julian Park — neurologist, oldest friend, the only person who knew the full picture.

"You had an episode in there," he said quietly, falling into step beside Lucas.

"It was brief."

"Lucas."

They'd been doing this for two years now, this particular exchange, and Lucas still hadn't found a way to win it. He unlocked his office, stepped inside. Julian followed, closed the door.

"Sit."

Lucas sat. Held out his wrist without being asked. Julian pressed two fingers to his pulse, eyes on his watch, and the silence between them had the texture of a conversation they'd already had a hundred times.

"The left side again?" Julian asked.

"Vision blurred maybe five seconds. Cleared fast."

Julian let go of his wrist. Didn't say anything immediately, which was worse than if he had.

"How much faster?" Lucas asked.

"We don't know yet. But the frequency—" Julian stopped, rubbed the back of his neck. "You can't keep doing this. The schedule you're running, the hours—"

"What's the alternative?" Lucas stood, moved to the window. Thirty-fourth floor. The city spread out below, indifferent and enormous, and somewhere down there were nine million people who didn't know his name and didn't need anything from him. "I sit around and wait for my hands to stop working? Watch the board hand everything I built to someone who didn't build it?"

"I'm not saying that."

"Then what are you saying, Julian? Because I've got a grandfather who wants me to produce an heir I don't have time to father, a board that needs me to pretend I'm invincible, and a brain that's been quietly betraying me for two years. So I'm genuinely asking."

Julian was quiet for a moment. That was the thing about him — he didn't fill silence just to fill it.

"I'm saying you're spending all your time on things that are going to outlast you anyway," he said finally. "The company will exist after you. The Hawthorne name will survive. But you only get this." He gestured vaguely. "This specific version of your life, right now, while you're still in it."

Lucas looked out at the skyline. A plane crossed the pale sky, slow and silent from this distance.

"I need to get out of the city," he said. "A few days. Somewhere I can't be reached."

"Good."

"Don't make it a prescription."

"I'm not," Julian said. "I'm just agreeing with you for once. Go."

Lucas sat in his car in the parking garage an hour later, phone in hand. He opened a flight app without quite deciding to, scrolled without seeing, and then the word appeared on his screen like a joke the universe was telling.

Las Vegas.

Loud. Anonymous. Neon bright enough to drown out the voice in the back of his head that had been whispering time's running out since the diagnosis. Nobody in Vegas knew his name. Nobody there needed anything from him. He could be just another person in a crowd for seventy-two hours, and the thought of that felt like setting down something very heavy.

He booked a first-class seat on the early morning flight, told himself it was for networking, potential investors. The lie came easy. It had been coming easier lately.

Confirmation loaded. Flight 2891 to Las Vegas. Departing 7 AM.

He exhaled slowly, set his phone on the passenger seat, and sat in the quiet of the garage for a moment before starting the car. The airport was bright and loud the next morning, the particular chaos of early travel — rolling suitcases, coffee cups, children already exhausted. Ava sat at her gate with her duffel between her feet, staring at the departure board like it might change its mind.

Flight 2847 to Las Vegas. Boarding in twenty minutes.

She pulled out her phone. I'm really doing this.

Mia replied in seconds. HELL YES YOU ARE. Do something crazy. I love you.

Ava smiled in spite of the nerves. Across the terminal, Lucas moved through the crowd with his carry-on, sunglasses on despite the early hour, and found a seat near the window at gate C12. He watched planes lift off into the pale sky one after another, each one disappearing into cloud. The engines came to life beneath Ava's seat, and the city she'd spent five years making herself smaller in fell away beneath her. Lucas accepted a glass of champagne he didn't really want, looked out at the clouds stretching white and endless in every direction, and felt the pressure in his chest ease for the first time in days.

Whatever was waiting for him in Las Vegas, it wasn't any of this.

That was enough.