Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
Mercer
Not this weekend. Busy with Trevor's birthday.
I stared at the text that had been waiting in my inbox since 6:00 a.m. Either Rachel sent it in the middle of the night, or she was an earlier riser than she used to be.
Her answer about scheduling a visit with my daughter wasn’t unexpected anymore.
By now it felt scripted. The excuse didn’t matter; the outcome never changed. I hadn’t seen Molly in nine months.
Divorce rates were high for people in the service.
Spouses got tired of waiting, holding down the fort with the kids, the house, and shouldering the weight of the world we left behind when we enlisted.
Some people cheated, juggling long-distance marriages with years-long affairs while funding their lifestyle with the paychecks their soldier sent home.
Rachel was kinder than that; she just served me papers.
Her new boyfriend—now husband—was divorced too, with a kid of his own.
The four of them looked picture-perfect in the annual Christmas card, and I could never decide if leaving me on their mailing list was an act of kindness or cruelty.
Some days it felt like a punch in the gut being delivered a glossy snapshot depicting how neatly I’d been cropped out of my family’s life.
Other days, I was grateful I at least got to see Molly’s face once a year.
For all Rachel’s civility in the divorce, she wasn’t nearly as accommodating when it came to our custody arrangement. Visits were hard to schedule and easy to cancel. They were busy. I knew that. They had whole entire lives. And I had…
I sighed, letting my gaze sweep over the empty Basilica breakroom.
In fairness, I had more than just my job. I had a house in the suburbs, a garage for my bike, and the guys at the VFW who still called me Doc even though I wasn’t serving as a medic anymore.
Pocketing my phone, I stood and checked the clock. Almost time to get back on the floor. I slid my earpiece into place and made for the door, barely reaching it before a voice crackled through the channel.
“Mister James?”
The woman’s voice was familiar enough to snap my spine straight.
“Yes, Miss Rossetti?”
“I need to see you in my office.”
The dead air that followed was its own kind of order.
I swallowed down nerves as I left the breakroom and headed for the elevator.
The angels kept their offices and residences on the uppermost floors.
Maybe it was an assertion of superiority or a chance to look down on the world from their glass tower.
Maybe it was the closest they could get to Heaven.
I’d only visited Antonella’s office once after my initial hire. Since then, I only saw her in passing. I wasn’t sure she’d realize I worked for her if not for my uniform, and I was certain she didn’t know my name. She must have looked it up, which was not a good sign.
The other guards had been frosty since the incident with the demon “tourist,” though their reception had been cold from the start.
Not like my platoon. After enough deployments and sweating your mutual asses off in desert tents or inside concrete bunkers, you learned to rely on each other.
We’d been a family, tight-knit and bound by unspoken loyalty, the kind built when your life depended on the man beside you.
I missed that. Missed them. Here, I was just another uniform, invisible until I wasn’t, and that was when things usually went sideways.
When I reached the elevator, the doors slid open with a mechanical chime. Stepping inside, I hit the button for the penthouse. It had been a luxury suite before Antonella gutted it and turned it into an office from where Las Vegas’s heavenly queen could survey her court.
At the peak of the Basilica’s tower, the doors parted to reveal a showroom of space.
Marble floors stretched out before me, their polished surface reflecting the light from the windows that encased the penthouse on all sides.
The city skyline and the distant Spring Mountains sprawled beyond, glittering under a sunny sky.
I stepped out, the squeak of my boots loud in the overwhelming silence. The room was vast with minimal furnishings, leaving broad swaths of open space that made every breath echo.
At the far end of the suite, Antonella stood with her back to me, a slender silhouette framed against the city skyline.
White-blonde hair spilled down her back, pin straight and flanked by the pair of feathered wings that arched over her head and nearly dragged the floor.
They shimmered in a pearlescent rainbow that looked far gentler than the woman they adorned.
As far as I could tell, she was alone without guards or her brother, Stefano, shadowing her steps. Despite her apparent isolation, she seemed unbothered by my approach, not turning despite my steps marking my advance like a countdown clock ticking.
“Miss Rossetti?” My voice resonated in the cavernous silence.
She turned at last, a vision of elegance. Her ivory business suit had been sculpted to her form, and her white satin blouse mimicked the opalescence of her wings. Gold accents gleamed at her sleeve cuffs and throat, as if she needed any more help looking like royalty.
Her pale lips pursed, and her milky eyes swept over me. Her pinprick pupils drilled into me like twin lasers.
“Mister James.”
She let the pause hang, and I got the distinct impression she was verifying whether I was, in fact, the man she’d summoned. I gave a nod to confirm, and she returned it.
“I was reviewing security footage from earlier this week,” she said. “And I noticed we had an unwelcome guest. A demon. Intercepted by my security team. And by you.”
The tilt of her head was slight, but the weight of it landed hard.
“Though from what I gathered, you were more of a self-insert in that situation.”
“They were breaking protocol, ma’am.” I kept my posture straight and my hands clasped behind my back.
Her brow arched.
“We’re supposed to escort any demon intruders off the premises, ma’am,” I continued. “Remove them from the property immediately.”
“And what were they doing instead?”
I hesitated, the memory of the other guards’ unsubtle handling of the situation fresh in my mind. Tattling might buy me points with Antonella, but it would cost me tenfold with the people I was supposed to trust at my back.
“I’m not sure, ma’am,” I replied.
Antonella’s head tilted—opposite side, same weighty judgment. “And yet you decided to intervene.”
Warmth crept up my neck as I nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You walked the creature outside yourself.”
“I did.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Did you speak to it?”
“Briefly.”
It gnawed at me, the way people kept labeling him as though he didn’t have a name, a face, a life. Luxe, his card had said. Probably an alias, but he was not a creature. Not an “it.” He was…
“Is it the tail or lack of tits?” he’d said.
I wasn’t in the habit of sizing up other men. I saw plenty during my time in the service, in all manner of undress, and I’d never batted an eye. Then again, I’d never seen a man like Luxe.
Smooth brown skin. Lithe arms. Shapely thighs. Plump little ass…
“What did it say to you?” Antonella asked.
I cleared my throat, glancing past the angel to the city beyond before forcing myself to meet her eyes. “He works at the Devil’s Dollhouse, ma’am.”
A flicker of recognition passed over her expression. “Here gathering information, no doubt.” She stepped closer. “What else did it say?”
The next words tumbled out before I could stop them. “He’s the manager there. Mentioned a security opening at the club.”
Antonella’s colorless eyes gleamed. “A security opening,” she mused, turning the words over, tasting them. “Interesting.” She took another step, and though she barely moved, it felt like the distance between us collapsed.
“You should apply,” she said.
I blinked. “Ma’am?”
“You heard me.” She gave a faint smile. “I could use eyes inside the Dollhouse. They might as well be yours.”
It took me a second to catch up. The implications came barreling at me, but none of them landed quite right. “Are you… are you firing me?”
She chuckled. “Of course not, Mister James. You’ll still be working for me, just in a different capacity.” Her gaze slid past me like she could already see the strings she intended to pull. “You made a connection. Use it. Apply for the job.”
I opened my mouth, but the words failed to exit.
This wasn’t a suggestion; it was a deployment. Antonella wanted me embedded behind enemy lines, walking into the Devil’s Dollhouse with a smile on my face and a knife behind my back. Spy on Luxe. Spy on the club. Then feed every whisper and weakness back to her.
What would happen if I got caught? I didn’t want to piss off a bunch of demons. If Antonella and her brood were bad, Hell’s forces had to be worse.
“You seem hesitant,” the angel murmured, lips curving into a smile that felt more like a snare. “Would you prefer a formal reassignment? I’m sure we could find a place for you elsewhere.”
It was the illusion of choice. Say no, and she’d sideline me. Say yes, and I became her man on the inside.
Either way, I was already in.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll apply.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Let me know how your interview goes.”