Chapter Seven
Selene
The first thing I noticed was the silence. Casinos were never quiet, not unless something had gone rotten, but that night, Aces Wild had been a graveyard. Not the dignified kind, with angels on headstones and grass kept trimmed. The kind where the bodies never left.
The parking lot had been empty except for a handful of employee cars and my Harley, which had rattled the night to pieces before I killed the engine.
I lit a smoke, let it burn to the filter while I listened.
There had been no wind. No noise at all, really, except the little tremor in my hand when I put the keys away.
Maybe that was the only way you knew something had really gone sideways—when even the rats had enough sense to keep quiet.
I stepped inside, steel-toed boots first. The doors hadn’t even been locked. And in the glow of a single flickering exit sign, I saw what they’d done to my kingdom.
Slot machines, the ones I’d rebuilt with Buck’s sweat and my own fucking blood, lay on their backs like dead horses, guts spilled in a confetti of wiring and broken glass.
Some had been split straight down the panel.
Others looked like they’d tried to crawl away before someone had finished the job with a baseball bat or a sledgehammer.
The entire center aisle had been choked with debris, coins everywhere, none of it spendable.
There were stains on the carpet, dark and spreading, and for a second, I couldn’t tell if it had been liquor or something more biological.
The gaming tables had been next. They were overturned, chips crushed underfoot, and green felt scuffed to shit.
A couple of dealers huddled by the wall, faces lit up in the weak red of a fire alarm that never stopped flashing.
Their hands were shaking. One of them, a new guy from Laughlin, was crying into his tie.
The pit boss, Boss, stood guard by the bar, face swollen and purple, blood drying in a curly mustache under his nose.
I moved toward him, shoving wreckage aside, glass crunching underfoot.
He saw me and straightened, pride and pain wrapped up in the same shaky breath. “You weren’t supposed to be here tonight, Selene,” he said, voice more gravel than usual.
“Neither were they,” I said, nodding to the carnage. “How many?”
Boss shook his head. “Ten. All men. Three trucks. Maybe twenty minutes, tops.” His right hand, the one that had once killed a man for cheating with a marked deck, was wrapped in a dirty towel, bleeding through.
“No faces. Ski masks, gloves. But they knew where the cameras were. First thing they did was smash the main board.”
I looked up at the glass eye in the ceiling. It was cracked, but the red LED was still blinking. “Not all of them,” I said, but my voice was flat. I already knew we were fucked.
He tried to hide the way he leaned on the bar for support. “They didn’t take anything, not really. Just wanted to show you who was boss.”
I barked a laugh. “Funny, that’s your job.”
Boss tried to smile, but it didn’t land. “Could’ve been worse. They could’ve hurt the girls. But all they did was yell, push, and break shit. One of them called me ‘old man’ and told me to tell you, ‘next time, it’s personal.’”
I wanted to tell him it already was, but instead I squeezed his shoulder, just hard enough to let him know he was still needed. “Get everyone home,” I said. “I’ll handle the rest.”
He gave a ragged salute and limped off, rounding up the dealers like sheep after a thunderstorm.
The back office had been worse. Every file cabinet was open, paperwork scattered, hard drives smashed to bits. The safe was untouched, which I almost respected. They hadn’t been there for money. Only to send a message.
My own office door had been off its hinges.
I stepped over it and saw that my desk had been turned upside down.
The computer monitor was dead, the screen a spiderweb of cracks.
The chair was slashed. A single, unbroken bottle of bourbon sat on the floor, untouched.
Maybe even Jack Smalls’ boys understood the sanctity of good whiskey.
I stood in the center, hands at my sides, and let the anger work through me.
It was the kind of anger that grew slow and cold, like water seeping under a house.
I clenched my fists so tight my knuckles went bone white, then even whiter.
I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted blood. It was metallic and violent.
Glitz appeared at the doorway, face smudged, one earring missing. She held up a battered tablet. “Surveillance pulled the backup to the cloud. Nines got the footage.”
“Show me,” I said.
She swiped the screen, and I watched in shaky, grainy black-and-white as the attack played out.
Ten men, all of them big and dressed for business, had walked in with military precision.
They hadn’t looked at the girls, hadn’t touched the money.
They’d gone straight for the machines, then the tables, then the back office.
Two kept watch by the doors, guns drawn, but I recognized the posture.
They weren’t there to shoot, just to keep everyone on the floor.
The last man through, the only one who walked like he owned the place, carved a crude S into the blackjack felt with a hunting knife.
“S for Smalls?” Glitz asked, voice flat.
I nodded. “Or for Selene.”
She trembled just a little, and when I looked at her hands, I saw the same bone-white grip I’d had a second ago. She wasn’t built for violence, but she liked to pretend.
“They wanted to make you look weak,” she said.
“They failed,” I said, but we both knew it was a lie.
The damage report was waiting for me on the bar, scrawled on a cocktail napkin. $100,000 in hardware losses. Maybe twice that in reputation. Vegas remembered things, even if it pretended not to.
I stalked through the floor again, boots breaking glass all over, and when I saw the bloodstain by the cashier’s cage, I realized someone had gotten hurt. Just not enough to make the news.
I grabbed my phone, thumb shaking as I dialed Stephanie. She picked up on the first ring. “You seen the footage?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s escalating.”
She sighed, cigarette exhale audible through the line. “You need to calm the fuck down. You go after Jack right now, you’ll lose more than a casino.”
I gripped the phone so hard the plastic groaned. “If I let this go, I’m a joke. I’m nothing.”
“Then don’t let it go. But don’t get yourself killed,” she said, voice steady.
“I won’t,” I said, but my jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. “I need to know you’re backing me.”
“I always do,” she said. “I’ve got chapters all around you ready to go. I’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, and hung up before she could tell me to be careful.
I stared at the ruined pit for a long time, and I wanted to scream, but all that came out was a low, thin hiss, like a tire losing air. If Jack wanted a war, he was about to get one.
***
The meeting with Stephanie had been set for midnight, but she was already waiting when I walked in.
I found her at the corner table of the clubhouse’s private back room, cigarette burning down to the filter, the Royal Harlots cut stretched across her back like a flag of war.
Her hair was pulled back tight enough to hurt, her eyes rimmed with kohl and exhaustion.
If she’d been angry about the casino, it didn’t show; her face was a mask, fixed and unreadable.
“Sit,” Stephanie said, voice soft but impossible to ignore.
I pulled up a chair. She didn’t offer a drink, so I poured my own from the bottle on the table.
“They hit you hard,” she said, exhaling, turning the air blue. She ground her cigarette into the tray, sparks jumping. “You need to be smart, Selene.”
I felt the old urge to talk back, to tell her where she could shove her plan, but I knew better. Stephanie hadn’t gotten to the top of the food chain by being soft or slow.
“I know this city,” I said. “He has connections, but I have people, too. Real people. The ones who make things work and the ones who could make them stop working.”
She considered that, lips pursed, and then reached for another cigarette. “That was true. But people bled easier than systems did. You want to take him out, you go for the heart. Not the hands.”
I stood, started pacing the room. The carpet was stained with secrets and spilled whiskey, and every step echoed off the concrete. “If I did nothing, he’d keep coming. Next time, he wouldn’t just break the furniture. He’d break us.”
And then there was Zeke. Yeah, I’d felt something between us. Something I wanted to take further. We shared a similar past and understood each other’s pain. You don’t let those kinds of people walk out of your life. But I had, whether I had a choice or not.
“You’re right,” she said, “but you can’t fight him his way. You need to be dirtier. Smarter. Use what he doesn’t know against him.”
I stopped, met her gaze. “You have a plan?”
She shrugged. “You’re the Vegas President, Selene. The first, and maybe the last. I’m not here to run your war, just keep you alive long enough to win it.”
I poured another shot, this time for her, and set it on the table. Her hand lingered over it, then pulled it close, but she didn’t drink.
“This crew is different,” she said, quieter. “It wasn’t just outlaws and grifters. It was a family, whether you liked it or not. Don’t let one old bastard tear it apart.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the door slammed open and Joker strode in, jacket half-zipped, sunglasses in her hair. “Prez,” she said, not bothering with formalities, “Jack’s guys were bragging all over the Strip. They think you’re going to fold.”
Stephanie looked at me. “You gonna let them?”