Chapter 7
JUDAH
“You got blood on my boot,” I said in offense as I stared down at my beloved leather motorcycle boots. After years of blisters, they were broken in and soft as hell. I could run a damn marathon in them if someone had a gun to my head.
The pulp of a man in front of me peered through a swollen eye. “You punched me,” he wheezed.
“Just part of my job,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Which you knew when you tried to skip out on your payments to Mr. Valentine.”
“I—I just—” He coughed, spattering more blood across the asphalt. “It’s too much. I’ll pay what I can. I just—”
I gave him a swift kick to the abdomen. “No. You’ll pay in full. Consider this the last and final warning from Mr. Valentine.” With that, I turned and headed for the back entrance to the casino, leaving him in a heap on the blacktop.
I paused and used the heel of my boot to snuff out a still-burning cigarette someone had dropped beside the bucket full of sand that was meant for butts.
But they just couldn’t be bothered to drop it there.
That shit drove me crazy.
I elbowed my way in the door and headed for the janitorial corner, where a spigot was set up over a floor drain for filling mop buckets. I kicked the handle up, turning on the water so I could wash the blood off my hands before it dried.
Muffled music and laughter echoed through the walls as I dipped into the bathroom and washed properly with soap and hot water.
I made a point not to get blood and other unfortunate bodily fluids where the cleaners would have to deal with the mess.
It wasn’t fair to them.
“Jude,” Valentine said as he moseyed down the hall. “Did you take care of that errand?”
Errand. As if beating a man until he pissed himself was a trip to the corner store.
“Yes, sir,” I said, though it was mostly a grunt.
John Valentine wasn’t the type of mobster to have a sprawling organization full of cells and networks. He had learned the art of consolidating power from his predecessors—or what was left of them.
He was the only one to give orders, and everyone answered directly to him.
There were no vice presidents clawing their way to the top, only a dictator and his subjects.
Frankly, it wasn’t a bad way to protect himself.
There were no ladder-climbing backstabbers itching to take over, and he had rather creative ways of striking the fear of God into those who did his bidding.
Some of us, like me, came willingly. Others were working off debts that would never be cleared, no matter how close they got.
“Good man,” John said with a friendly chuckle as he slapped my shoulder.
The smell of fryer grease wafted from the kitchen. Usually, I would have dipped in and pilfered some leftovers. I was hungry, but the tactile reminder I had been ordered to administer had erased my appetite.
John turned to head back to the casino floor, and I caught a whiff of something distinctly different from the fryer grease.
Different from the rancid sewer smell that floated up from the floor drain.
Different from the cigarette odor that lingered on the floor because John smoked at the table he was parked at night in and night out.
For a man who was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, he had shit taste in smokes.
I guess the old saying about money being unable to buy class was true.
But his poor taste in cigarettes wasn’t the fragrance that gave me pause. It was light. Something sweet. Delicate.
Amelia’s back.
After not seeing her anywhere near the casino yesterday, I had—stupidly—thought she’d gotten the hint and cut her losses. I didn’t know what that meant for her brother, but he knew what he was getting into when he took a loan from the boss.
If I was a betting man, I’d put money on Valentine keeping Joel alive. Having another inside man in the finance world was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Joel was computer savvy enough to be useful to someone who had realized that the old methods of extortion and blackmail were out of date. On top of that, Joel had more financial know-how than most people.
John Valentine was the last of a dying breed and he knew it. Gone were the days of physical gunrunning, going door-to-door to collect protection fees, black market deals, and backroom drug operations.
He was a traditionalist when it came to running his criminal enterprise. One would think he would have aged out of the game by now, but he was adept at keeping up with the times.
The streets might have fewer bloodstains now than they did under the heyday of his regime twenty years ago, but that didn’t mean things had settled down. He was nothing if not innovative and had no problem reinventing himself to stay on top.
Maybe that’s what made him even more terrifying now than when I’d first started with the organization. Things were much quieter, and that was unsettling.
There’s a certain adrenaline rush on the battlefield. The sound of gunshots and ordnance explosions kept you on your toes. But when everything goes silent? That’s when fear really sets in.
Valentine would probably get Joel a new job at a firm that was friendly with Valentine’s criminal interests and have Joel laundering money before the end of the summer, all while dangling Amelia in front of him from the end of a stick like a carrot.
A really pretty, really smart, really annoying carrot.
But apparently, she wasn’t that smart if she was back here, trying to win money off the very man her brother owed it to.
That, or Joel Hawthorne hadn’t told her who he owed money to.
I had a feeling it was the latter.
Instead of heading out to the floor, I dipped into the security room. Technically, I wasn’t on the schedule for the casino tonight. I could have gone home.
I should have gone home.
In my line of work, days off were few and far between.
Instead, I found myself parked in front of the camera feeds, watching her win hand after hand.
She was too memorable. There were certain places you didn’t want to be a regular, and the Four Horsemen was one of them.
I watched as Amelia finished her hand—she won, of course—and added her chips to the pile in front of her. But instead of playing another hand, she said something to the dealer.
I tapped the button that turned on the audio feed as she asked him to hold her spot at the table until she came back from the restroom.
She had brought a bag with her—a velvet drawstring pouch. I watched as she filled it to the brim with her chips, slipped it around her wrist, and scooted away from the table.
Valentine’s gaze followed her until she was out of sight. He made some kind of motion at the dealer, probably just small talk, as everyone stretched and mourned their losses. Had anyone else been watching the cameras, they wouldn’t have seen the small white pill he dropped into Amelia’s drink.
But I did.
She was winning too much, and it was time for her to go.
I ran smack-dab into Jeremiah as he rotated in. “What the fuck, dude—”
But I was out before he could finish. I walked calmly through the casino, staying in the shadows.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
The old mantra was always at the forefront of my mind, no matter what I was doing.
I slipped from one dark corner to the next until I slunk into the hallway that housed the bathrooms. My timing was flawless.
The moment Amelia stepped out of the women’s restroom, I was pulling her into the supply closet.
Before she could say a word, I pressed my palm over her mouth and braced my body against the door to keep anyone else from coming in and her from getting out. The bathroom entrances were the only blind spot in the entire casino, but I still had to make this fast.
“You’re winning too much,” I said, keeping my voice stern but soft.
Her pupils widened. Whether it was from the shock of what I had said or just her eyes adjusting to the darkness, I wasn’t sure. Frankly, it didn’t matter. I kept my hand over her mouth. It would be just my luck that I’d trust her, she’d scream, and we’d both become chum.
I wanted her to leave this place for good, and then I wanted to go take a goddamn nap.
Amelia’s breath caught against my hand.
“Do you have a cell phone on you?”
For a second, she was frozen. Then she nodded.
“When you leave this closet, you’re going to have your phone in hand.
You’re going to walk quickly to the table and tell the dealer that your ‘cheating ex-fiancé’ found out where you are and you have to leave right now.
You’re going to go to the cashier, cash out your chips, and then you’re going to ask the guy at the door to walk you to the car.
Look terrified. And under no circumstances are you to even touch the drink you left behind at the table. ”
Amelia took a minuscule step back. When she didn’t immediately call for help, I removed my hand. “Why do I feel like this isn’t a request?” she said in a choked whisper.
“I’m not in the business of making requests.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth. “And what if I stay?”
My gut churned with acid and anxiety at the thought. “Do not touch your drink. Don’t even pretend to sip it the way you usually do.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you helping me?”
“Who said I’m helping?”
“Isn’t the saying that the house always wins?” She looked me up and down. “You’re the house.”
Now I was the one licking my lips, because the charged air between us was blazing hot and bone-dry. I turned, trapping her between me and the door. Her heartbeat thumped against my abdomen as she stared up at me, eyes wide with a mix of surprise and intrigue. But there was no fear. None.
“I’m not the house.” I grunted. “Even if you walk away tonight. The house will still win.” I tucked a lock of sandy hair behind her ear. “The house always wins, so don’t come back.”
For a moment, we did nothing but stare at each other. She was so goddamn beautiful. Too beautiful for a shithole like this. She needed to go back to her Ivy digs and never cross the state line again.
She needed to stay in her cocoon of goodness that nurtured beautiful things and allowed them to grow.
I didn’t come from the land of beautiful things. She knew it just as well as I did, which was why I slipped out first, hoping she would heed the warning.
A moment later, Amelia dashed out with her phone in hand, not even sparing me a second glance as she put on the performance of a century.
I lingered in the ether between beauty and pain, the eternal gatekeeper that allowed her to live in blissful ignorance of the true darkness that lingered around her.