Sneak Peek Chapter One of “King of Spades”
“Yes?”
Behind me, a man squirmed with tape over his lips. I had moved far enough away that I felt quite confident no one would hear him. Shit, I could barely hear him.
But it was still mighty inconvenient that Cassius had decided to call right now. I was just about to wrap things up, remind this cocksucker of the Morrils that we were not all PR-fighting soft warriors. Fucking with us had very real—and inches away from very fatal—consequences.
“Where are you right now?” Cassius said.
The honest answer was I was somewhere in an abandoned warehouse in east Las Vegas.
It was an area that the former King’s Men had taken as a crime ring hideout but had since been a bit gentrified.
Fortunately for me, “a bit” still allowed a lot of wiggle room for activities not quite best in daylight.
But the perks of keeping things close to the vest, of saying only what needed to be said, of being the quiet brother gave me a ton of wiggle room here. And I intended to use it.
“I’m taking care of a couple things,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“Does it have to do with the Morrils?” Cassius said. “I’d prefer if any action we took as a family was decided as a family.”
“I’m not doing anything on behalf of the family right now,” I said immediately. “Just for me.”
A bit of a half-lie. What I did for me, I did for the family. There was absolutely nothing more fucking important than blood in this life; the thought of losing one of us in the way I had lost Virgil was unfathomable. I’d sooner never get laid for the rest of my life than lose one of my brothers.
Fortunately, we were decades away from that being the fucking outcome.
“Just for him?” Adrian said in the background.
I almost chuckled. Why was Adrian suddenly so concerned? Shouldn’t he be off in Reno, chasing ass from someone that had probably just given up on saying no, realizing anyone willing to go to fucking Reno for love was not someone who would be denied?
“Ah, Adrian is with you, appropriate,” I said.
Fuck.
That was not the wisest thing to say.
Adrian probably had the sense that Dante and I weren’t huge fans of his love for… the fuck was her name. Danny? No, Delilah. The journalist.
Oh, she was hot as hell. Damn good at her job. She’d cornered me at a gala a couple times to get comments; I was the most natural at speaking without saying anything, but she saw through my bullshit well.
Did that mean I would fall in love and propose to her?
But now that was out. So, I had to do something that I had gotten quite good at.
“What you all are going through right now has made me think a lot,” I said, slowly, as if making a tough confession. “Makes me think of what I might need to admit to.”
I could just see my two brothers sharing a look of utter confusion, worry, and fear. Given the silence that followed when I said that, I knew I’d achieved my goals.
“But that,” I said, “is a story for another time. Soon. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything.”
The thing that I was quite good at?
Misdirected rubber necking.
Or, put another way, I was very good at getting people to look one way, sure they were about to uncover something terribly dramatic, only for the real dramatic thing to take place over their shoulder.
I hadn’t had to use it with my brothers in quite some time, but given their newfound softness and the growing threats from beyond—threats they did not seem to take seriously—it was a skill I needed to brush off.
“Everything?” Cassius finally said on the other end of the line. “The fuck does that mean? Lucas, why don’t you come back home? We’re celebrating Adrian.”
I chuckled.
“I said I would tell you everything soon. And sure, that sounds lovely. Just give me like fifteen minutes. Is that reasonable?”
“Yes,” Cassius said, but there was a hint of a warning in his voice. A warning that said it had better be fifteen minutes, or he’d have a lot of questions.
I could be there in ten. Fifteen was just to cover my ass in case things went awry here.
The phone call ended a moment later. I looked at my phone, smirked, and put it back in my pocket. I walked over to the man, stood over him for half a beat, and ripped off the tape. He had some facial hair under it, which could not have felt very good, but you know what else wasn’t good?
Working for the Morrils.
“Mr. Vernon,” I said. I knew well this man.
He was their VP of Business Development, a title that put him close to expansion efforts.
In other words, he may not have been the man tasked with overthrowing my family’s empire, but he was one of the lead foot soldiers tasked with executing on that.
“Here is what is going to happen when you go to work tomorrow. You will explain that you got too drunk last night and picked a fight, looking to feel alive. Everyone in the office will believe you. Everyone knows that you are a loner alcoholic who just got divorced.”
All true, by the way. Like I said, I was the most ruthless of them all. Sometimes, that was less about punching people in the face and more about finding the holes in the psyches of men.
“If anyone asks who you got in a fight with, you will say you have no idea who, you were just instigating with whoever you could,” I continued. “And if you lie, it will get back to me. How do you think I was able to find you?”
Again, misdirection. Make him think that a mole had sold him out; not that he was dumb enough to boast on social media about his professional accomplishments and what that would mean for the Morrils and my family.
Although, in this case, we did have moles in the Morril empire. Of course, they did in ours too; I was still trying to get to the bottom of someone embezzling from us. They had taken a few million and somehow done it without an obvious trace. It was thrilling and frustrating in equal parts.
“Please don’t hurt me any more,” Mr. Vernon said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “I’ve heard that line many times before. It sounds nice. And then you actually ask someone to do something, and the cold feet suddenly appear. Funny, right? ‘Whatever you say’ quickly turns into a lot of strings attached.”
“Please! I swear!”
“Right,” I said. “Here’s where I’m left in a bit of a conundrum, Mr. Vernon.
There is no way for you to show me right here, right now that you’ll do whatever I say.
Sure, I could put a gun to your head and tell you to give me all your money, but that only gives me money I don’t need.
If I want information I do need, you’ll either lie, or you’ll be pissing yourself so bad you won’t be able to recall it.
But luckily for you, there’s a way where you get to leave tonight and I get what I want. ”
“There is?” Mr. Vernon said.
God, I loved this part. Complete control, almost perfect anonymity, almost no attention paid to the seedier side of your life. It was amazing what you could get away with just by being quiet, unassuming, and in nice clothes all the time.
“By the end of the day tomorrow,” I said, “I want the name of a source who knows more about what the Morrils have planned. And don’t be fucking stupid. Don’t play a game and tell me ‘Leo Morril.’ You and I both know that is cheating the game to give me a name I cannot bring here. I want—”
“What about now? What about now!” Mr. Vernon shouted, almost on the verge of tears.
Interesting.
Alright.
I’d play along. I extended my palm out, inviting him to continue.
“Talia Harper. She’s always near the Morrils. I don’t know if she’s a secret lover or what, but for her position, she shouldn’t be around them as much as she is. She works in marketing, she got the job because of who her mother is.”
“And that is?”
“Some artist, I don’t know! Someone famous!”
Fascinating.
A source who was the daughter of someone just as powerful and wealthy as we were? A source for our hated rivals? What fun and delightful danger this little game could present.
“And how can I know that you’re not just throwing the first name out there?” I said. “How can I know that Talia Harper is a real person?”
“Look her up! Please! I’m not lying!”
I actually believed Mr. Vernon by now. I knew the fakers from the beggars, and Mr. Vernon was a beggar. Not in the literal sense, but for his freedom from pain, torture, and captivity? Oh, he didn’t have the fucking balls for a paid escape room, never mind something like this.
But to give him that benefit of the doubt now would be a fucking stupid decision.
People like Mr. Vernon had a tendency to blab at some point, either to their therapist, to a police officer, to their wife or mother…
it didn’t matter who. What happened tonight would spread in direct relationship to how soon I released him. So, not yet.
I pulled out my phone and looked up Talia Harper, half-expecting what Mr. Vernon had said to be loosely true. That the “famous artist” would be a one-hit wonder from the 80’s that none of us—
Wait.
This Talia Harper?
The one who was very close friends with Sarah and Delilah?
How the fuck could I have not connected the dots?
Granted, the Morrils did not run a small business. There could have been a half-dozen women named Talia in marketing alone. But still, fuck, how did I miss this one?
She was fucking beautiful, for one. She’d make a great lay. And she looked just charming enough, just fun enough that I wouldn’t have to feign being religious or saving myself for marriage to fuck her.
And when I did, oh, the information that seemed plausible enough to get out of her…
“Looks like you were indeed telling the truth Mr. Vernon,” I said.
“Here’s the deal. In fifteen minutes, someone is going to come and set you free.
You will not speak a fucking word to them when you leave.
Trust me, I will find out if you do. In the meantime, in the coming days and weeks, I am going to see just how valuable of a source Talia Harper is.
If she proves to be as well-connected as you say she is, then this is the last time you’ll ever hear my voice.
If she is nothing more than an intern, a number on a spreadsheet to that family, then you and I will be convening very soon. Do you understand?”
“Yes! Yes!”
I looked at my watch. Fuck. I was already going past the fifteen minutes I’d promised Cassius. I guess the sight of Talia Harper captured me so that I couldn’t fucking help it.
Taking care to make sure I did not let Mr. Harper see me scamper off, I casually but quickly left the room, making a beeline for my ride as I exited. When I got in the back seat of my pickup, I was all smiles.
The night had gone far better than I ever could have expected.
I had more information about the next attack the Morrils had planned.
I had Cassius and Adrian gawking like idiots at a nebulous piece of information that would have nothing to do with what I actually did tonight.
And, perhaps most importantly, I had the information of one of the most attractive women I had ever seen in my life. Really, either just pussy or information would satisfy me; the thought of having both was enough to get me raging hard in the back seat.
Not that I’d inform anyone.
Not that anyone would ever know, really.
As far as anyone else knew, I was reading somewhere, gathering information, being a good quiet Vale.
It was nice that the half-truth about Lucas Vale was bought as the full truth by anyone who could have done something about it.
It made life a hell of a lot easier for the King of Spades to have even more tricks up his sleeve.