Chapter Thirteen
Zeke
The room stank of copper, a sharp tang clinging to the silk wallpaper, pooling in the carpet around his body.
Jack Smalls sprawled across the base of his desk, legs twisted, lips parted, eyes rolled half-closed in what would pass for sleep if he wasn't already leaking out onto the rug.
The suit, a custom Italian design, was ruined. The man inside, even worse.
I felt nothing for him. Or maybe I just didn't have the energy left to hate.
I sagged into the nearest chair, one of those executive models made for men with more money than backbone, and held my guts, counting the steady ooze of blood through my fingers.
It was warm, wet, and real. I'd spent my whole life feeling like a ghost; now I was more alive than I'd ever been.
A minute passed. Maybe two. Somewhere in the casino below, a siren started up.
It was one of ours, not the city. The place had a warning system that piped in a special frequency, just loud enough to get under your skin and set your teeth on edge.
The women at the bar would hear it. The security guards might, too, if they hadn't already run for the hills.
The only one who cared about me now was my sister, and I doubted she'd show up for anything less than a funeral.
I wiped my hand on the inside of my jacket, slicking blood across the lining. The movement sent a knife of pain up my ribs. I grunted, then laughed. It sounded like a cough with no sense of humor.
I'd killed my father. There was nothing left to say about it. I doubted that he would see my mother where he was going, but in the chance he did, I hoped she would kick his ass.
Outside the office, the marble floors were cold and silent.
I heard the sound before I saw her, the click of Simone's heels, sharp and measured.
She walked with the same precision she'd had since we were kids, always balancing, always calculating the risk in every step.
The door creaked open, and the light from the hallway cut a long, thin blade across the crime scene.
She stopped in the frame, one hand still on the knob. Her other hand covered her mouth. Her eyes—Jack's eyes, but with all the violence bred out—went wide as she took in the blood, the ruined carpet, the corpse.
I tried to look at her, but my neck stiffened up. I settled for staring at her feet. "He made me," I said. "It was him or me."
Simone didn't answer. She edged around the slick on the marble, each step deliberate, every muscle tight.
She wore a navy skirt suit, designer, the kind you could only buy if you had blackmail on three county supervisors.
Her hair was up, not a strand out of place.
She looked like she'd come for a business meeting, not to watch her brother end their family line.
She stopped two feet away, just past the blood halo. Her eyes flicked to the phone, then the gun, then my hands. She didn't ask if I was okay. She didn't have to. We weren't the kind of family that checked on each other's wounds.
"I called the cops," I said, voice rough. "I told them it was self-defense. They'll believe it, or they'll pretend to."
She nodded, not looking at me. Her eyes stayed on our father's body. The old bastard was finally out of her life, but from her face, I couldn't tell if she wanted to weep or light a cigarette and toast the occasion.
"Did it hurt?" she said.
I barked a laugh. "He didn't even feel it. I made sure of that."
The silence crawled up the walls, filled the corners. I tried to stand, but the blood loss hit me with a dizzy left hook. I gripped the desk, hissing as the pain doubled down. Simone made no move to help. She just watched, calm as a judge, taking in every detail.
"You can have the casino," I told her. "All of it. The money, the assets. Even the house. I don't want any of it."
She blinked, slow. "What do you want?"
I had to think about it. The pain in my side made it hard to concentrate. I wanted a bed, a bottle of cheap whiskey, and somewhere to sleep for a month. More than that, I wanted out. I wanted to be someone who could leave the city and never look back. But I didn't say any of that. I just shrugged.
"Doesn't matter. I won't be around long," I said.
For the first time, she looked straight at me. Her eyes were wet, but the rest of her face was stone. She walked closer, careful not to slip in the blood, and knelt beside the chair. She reached out and pressed her palm to my cheek. Her fingers were ice.
"You don't have to go," she said. "You could stay. Start over. Let the past die here with him."
I almost laughed. "The past is in my bones. It always will be."
She let her hand fall away, stood, and straightened her skirt. "I'll fix things," she said. "I'll make it look clean."
"I knew you would," I said, and meant it.
She walked to the body, stood over it, then nudged the head with the tip of her shoe. For a second, she looked like she might spit on it. Instead, she just shook her head and sighed.
"I have to leave," I said, rising from the chair. The pain was sharper now, a stiletto under my ribs. "When the police come, tell them I ran. Tell them whatever makes it easy."
"Where will you go?"
I didn't know. Vegas was the only place that had ever made sense to me, but now it felt like a haunted house with all the lights broken.
"There's someone I need to find," I said, surprised at how true it sounded.
Simone nodded. "Don't get killed."
"That's the plan," I said, and limped to the door. My hand slipped on the handle, leaving a fresh smear of blood. I thought about wiping it clean, but decided against it. Let them see what I'd done. Let them know I could bleed.
Outside, the sirens were louder. I made it to the stairwell, body protesting every movement. The lobby was empty, all the dealers and showgirls gone, just the echo of my boots and the wet slap of my own blood tracking across the tiles.
I stopped at the exit and looked back up the stairs. I pictured Simone in the office, already arranging the scene, already rewriting the story for the morning news. She was better at this than I ever was. She'd survive. She always did.
Me? I had a Harlot to catch. And if I was lucky, she'd still want me, even with the blood on my hands and my heart beat to shit.
I stepped into the night, blinking at the neon and the noise, the pain in my side flaring up as the wind hit it. I laughed, tasted iron, and started walking. I'd made it out alive. For now.
The city didn't get quieter after midnight.
It just changed frequencies. The foot traffic outside the casino shifted from desperate losers to shiftless predators, and the air grew thick with the hot stink of weed, exhaust, and sweaty people.
I limped around the block twice, letting the wind peel some of the sweat off my face.
Every other step made my side throb, but I kept at it until I couldn't feel the ache anymore.
I circled back to the employee entrance, one I used to sneak in and out of when I was a kid, and my father still believed in locking doors.
The security panel still beeped on the old code.
It was my birthday, the only day the man had ever remembered, even if it was to ruin it. I palmed the latch and let myself in.
Simone waited in the corridor. She'd cleaned the blood off her hands.
Her face was raw and damp, and I realized she'd spent the last ten minutes alone with the body, doing what needed to be done.
She held a glass of whiskey in one hand, neat, and the other clutched a phone, already dialing through our father's contacts.
The way she stared at the display, you'd think she was trying to memorize every name before she deleted it forever.
"You came back," she said, not looking up.
"Forgot my jacket," I lied.
She snorted. "He used to say only idiots lose their coats in summer."
"He said a lot of things." I walked over to her, keeping my hands in my pockets to hide the tremor.
She finished the call, thumbed it off, and drained the glass in one motion. "I called the lawyer," she said. "Also, the fixers. They'll take care of the office and the other bodies. The cops will arrive in ten minutes, maybe less. We don't have much time."
I watched the liquid in her glass wobble, the ice chattering against the crystal. "I'm not staying," I said. "It's yours now. The money, the debts, all of it."
She smirked, but there was no joy in it. "I've been running this place for a year already. All you did was make it official."
"Good," I said, and meant it. "You deserved better."
She set the glass down hard. "We all did."
We stood there, two orphans in a suit of marble and glass, neither willing to admit how fucked up we were.
I looked at her, really looked, and saw for the first time the woman she’d become.
Hard, beautiful, brittle, and sick with the same poison that had twisted me.
We were different, but cut from the same raw material.
"I don't want to do this anymore," she said, her voice a splinter. "Maybe we should just sell everything. Dump it all on some dumbass from Dubai and walk away."
"Sounds good," I said. "You think they'll buy it?"
She shrugged. "Vegas is full of rich men who want to pretend they're gods."
I nodded, then looked past her to the dark smear of blood trailing from the office. "What about the past?" I said. "You really think you can leave it behind?"
Simone traced a finger around the rim of her glass. "We can try. That's more than he ever did." She stepped closer, so close I could smell the sharp tang of her perfume and the burn of the liquor on her breath. "Are you going to be okay?"
It was the first time she'd ever asked me that. I could have lied. Maybe I should have. But the pain in my side was honest, and for once, I decided to match it.
"No," I said. "But I will be. I think."
We stood like that for a long moment, the silence hanging heavy. I wanted to tell her about Selene, about how she made me feel alive even when we were fucking each other to pieces. But I didn't know how to explain it. Not to someone who'd only ever known love as a liability.
So I just said, "I met someone. She's… different."
Simone raised an eyebrow. "Selene?"
I grinned, and it split my lip. "Yeah. She's trouble. But she makes me want to live."
For the first time all night, Simone smiled. Not the cold, court-mandated version, but the real thing, the one from when we were kids and still believed in running away together. She reached up and ruffled my hair, and I let her, even though it hurt.
"Go find her," she said. "Don't let this place eat you alive."
I nodded, and she pulled me in, hard, for a hug. We weren't a hugging family, but it felt right. We held on until it hurt, and then a little longer. When we broke apart, there were tears in her eyes, and I felt something warm drip down my own cheek. I didn't wipe it away.
And then we shared a kiss the way we did when we were teenagers, when we only had each other because nobody else wanted either of us with a father like Jack Smalls. The kiss was warm, deep, and passionate because, back then, we were our greatest teachers.
I turned to leave, then hesitated. "What about the lawyer?" I said.
She grinned, showing a mouthful of wolf. "He works for us now."
I grabbed my jacket from the coat hook, ignoring the blood stains.
I shrugged it on, and every inch of my torso screamed.
But I walked out anyway, into the neon and the smoke and the chaos of the Strip.
Behind me, the sirens were closer, maybe three blocks out, the red-and-blue bounce already lighting up the sky.
I didn't look back. I never did.
Instead, I limped toward the only place in Vegas that had ever felt like home, knowing she'd be waiting, knowing she'd probably punch me for making her worry. Knowing, for once, that I wanted to survive whatever came next.
Maybe even enough to deserve it.