Chapter 11
JUDAH
“We’re not open yet,” I barked at the woman who was strolling across the casino floor like she owned the damn place.
We should have been open hours ago, but Valentine had gotten a little bloodthirsty the night before when one of his underworld connections tried to walk out of the high roller room without accepting the shitty deal that had been offered.
Unfortunately, before Valentine had me oversee the body dump, blood had been spilled inside the casino.
A lot of blood.
All over the casino.
The cleaners Valentine paid handsomely to have on retainer and look the other way when stains were—shall we say—questionable had only left an hour ago. Now, it was all hands on deck to reset the floor so we could open for business.
He needs to stop treating this place like a backroom and clean it up. The man has more money than God—he can afford to spruce up the public-facing side of the joint.
That’s where I never understood Valentine’s ego.
On one hand, he expected the finer things in life.
On the other hand, he didn’t care if this place was up to par with the rest of the casinos in Atlantic City.
But I wasn’t about to be the one to tell him he could make more money if he just gave the inside a decent paint job and replaced the carpet.
The woman stopped dead in her tracks, looked me up and down, and laughed.
I cut my eyes at Jeremiah, who looked at me with the same mix of confusion and irritation.
“Did boss man get a new mistress?” Al asked as he appeared behind us.
John Valentine definitely had a type when it came to the women he entertained outside of his forty-year marriage.
Box blonde. Body like a winding West Virginia road. Facial features that came out of a syringe. And a complete disinterest in whatever he was doing between the hours of midnight and five a.m., just as long as she got her allowance.
Unfortunately, tonight, I didn’t have the patience to onboard his new flavor of the month.
I was running on very little sleep after dumping a somewhat-alive body at a dead drop on the outskirts of Pennsylvania’s Amish country so that he could become someone else’s problem.
Was having a boring night too much to ask? Just one night where I didn’t have to drive across the fucking state, scrub blood out from under my fingernails, and didn’t have my ears ringing from the sounds of someone’s screams?
The earplugs I kept on hand hadn’t helped in the slightest.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Ma’am, you can’t be here yet. The casino opens at seven today.”
She looked me up and down. “Must be a shitty casino if it doesn’t open until seven.”
“It is,” I deadpanned.
Her lip curled in amusement. It was the only part of her face that showed any expression. “Well then. Allow me to change that.” She stuck out her hand. “Jolie. I’m the new dealer.”
My hands stayed firmly planted by my side, but she didn’t seem all that bothered by it.
Jolie raised her extended hand in a silent statement of surrender. “I get it. It’s a boys’ club. I’ve worked at plenty of those.” Her lashes were as fake as her demeanor. They flicked up and down. “Let me guess . . . Security?”
“Something like that.”
Amusement danced in her eyes. “Well. Don’t let me stop you from . . .” She looked around. “Securing an empty room.”
I glanced at Jeremiah and cocked my head, giving a silent order for him to show Jolie to the back, where everyone clocked in, and the row of decrepit lockers where everyone kept their shit.
I hadn’t used my locker since my first day, choosing to come and go with nothing but my car keys and phone.
“Dealer, huh?” Al said as he watched Jolie strut across the casino.
Well, as he watched her ass before turning to me.
I glared at him. “What are you looking at me for? Do I look like I’m in charge of hiring around here?”
Al reared back. “Someone’s grumpy today. You need to get laid.”
I needed much more than getting laid, but honestly, that would be a good start. My bed had been cold for half a decade. For a few years, the celibacy hadn’t bothered me. I didn’t want to answer questions about why I was gone all hours of the night or why I barely slept when I was home.
I needed a vacation. Getting laid would be nice too. Maybe both.
One was a long shot, the other was a pipe dream. Both together? Inconceivable.
But those few stolen moments sitting beside Amelia on the beach felt like a vacation. Honestly, talking to her felt better than sex.
It felt like I could breathe.
But Amelia was the one person I didn’t want to see here tonight.
Thankfully, the ritualistic security checks, money counts, and reviews of the banned patron list offered a mental reprieve.
This wasn’t my dream job by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, I was surprised I was still in it. Then again, when you sell your soul to the devil, you do it without an expiration date.
Al yawned as we headed back to the security office to get the night started. He’d start at the door while I manned the video feeds from the office. “What’s got you tired?” I asked. “You didn’t work last night.”
He cupped his hand over his mouth as another yawn stretched out. If he didn’t cut it out, I’d be yawning too. “Boss had me run an errand up the coast.”
My brows knitted together. Why hadn’t John told me Al was doing something that crossed state lines? Then again, I had done something that crossed state lines last night. John just didn’t know it.
I dropped down into the desk chair and pulled up the camera feeds, studying the line that had begun to grow at the front doors.
“Oh yeah?” I scanned the casino floor, spotting Jolie getting cozy at the blackjack table closest to the bar.
Jerry was hauling buckets of ice from the back to stock up while the barback sliced lemons, limes, and oranges.
Al chuckled as he pulled his phone out and showed me photos of a car that was wired to explode. “Some of my best work, if I do say so myself. Big boom without a blast radius. The cars beside it didn’t even get singed. Fucking beautiful.”
Wait . . . That car was familiar. The lot was familiar.
I had been there. Last week.
“Boss is early,” Jeremiah clipped through the feed that filtered into our earpieces.
Shit.
I hit a button to print the most current banned patrons list for Al so he could head to the door. “Whose car was it?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“That kid who didn’t pay up. The one you visited last week.”
And by “kid” he meant Joel Hawthorne. A thirty-year-old man who should have been responsible for his own choices, yet his sister was skirting John Valentine’s radar just to get him out of it.
“Nice work.” I handed him the door list as the other man working the entrance with him began to let patrons inside.
“Almost got made too,” Al said as he swiped across the screen and showed me another photo of a silver sedan pulling into the lot. The next photo was of Amelia getting out of the vehicle. “But I kept a low profile.”
Goddamn it.
I glanced at the video feeds as folks filtered in, immediately clocking an undercover cop.
“5-O heading for a drink,” I said across the line that connected everyone working the floor.
On the video screen, I watched Jerry spot the man. Those thick-soled black shoes were a dead giveaway every time. And the man’s outfit looked like he pulled it out of a lost-and-found bin.
Jerry turned away from the man and pretended to check the bottles in the well. “Cop or ABC?” he asked.
“Cop is my guess. He looks green. ABC walks in like they own the fuckin’ place.”
“Who’s acting like they own my place?” John Valentine said as he sauntered into the security room.
“We got a cop sniffing around,” Al said as he set his phone on the desk and pointed at the screen, where the man had gotten a Coke from Jerry.
Of course he wasn’t drinking. What a fucking idiot. He might as well have walked in wearing a beat uniform. He should have at least gotten a beer and pretended to drink it.
Valentine glanced at Al. “You do that job I asked you to do?”
“Yes, sir,” Al said, picking up his phone to show John the proof of his handiwork. He probably expected John to praise him. Or maybe a “good job.” Or even a grunt of approval.
But John frowned. “The fuck is wrong with you? I told you to send the guy a message, not follow the girl who’s been cleaning up the blackjack tables.”
I stiffened at the mention of Amelia, and John noticed immediately. Shit. I was usually better than that. I knew how to stay neutral.
“Got something to say, Jude?”
“No, sir,” I said coolly as I scanned the feed, keeping an eye on the cop.
John was onto how well she was doing, and that was not a good thing. It was best to be forgettable to certain people. The only way to escape their hold was by never getting into it in the first place.
That was the truth I didn’t want to admit to myself. No matter what the plan had been when I first got involved with John Valentine, the end date to my tenure here had long since passed, and I was in it for the long haul.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted him studying the slightly blurry photo of Amelia.
Maybe he’d decide it wasn’t her.
“Cop’s moving over to the poker tables,” I said, trying to draw his focus away.
“Good. The girls will make sure he loses enough money to not come back.” John handed the phone to Al. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the door?” There was a growing edge to his voice that diminished my hope that he’d forget about Amelia.
Al scrambled out of the security room like his ass was on fire as John braced one hand on the desk and one hand on the back of my chair and studied the screen. Al had just appeared on the video feed when someone else caught my attention.
Amelia walked across the screen in that little black dress she wore the first night, when she’d pretended to be a jilted bride. The expression she wore today—it wasn’t fake.
She wasn’t here to play pretend.
She was here to beat the house.