Chapter 1 The Fixer
THE FIXER
RONAN
EIGHTEEN HOURS EARLIER
Ihad a lot of names in my short, sorry life. All the children of Niall Black had them, like badges of a family where we were constantly pitted against each other.
Brendan, the oldest, was The Black Prince. The heartless heir destined to take over Blackguard Holding once our father stepped down.
Owen was The Spare, the black sheep, a.k.a. the resentful hothead who could be played like a fiddle because of his naked desire to best Brendan.
Shea was the baby, the brat, The Princess who would be treated like a child until the day she died.
And then there was me, the nonessential third son. The jester. The fuck-up. And, to a select few, The Fixer.
Little-known fact: being a perennial disappointment to the family is excellent camouflage for doubling as its executioner. No one expects the one with all the jokes to have the least to joke about.
“Ten minutes out.”
Brady MacNamara, otherwise known as Mac, former Navy SEAL and current head of the family’s personal security, was as abrupt and affectless as ever.
I liked that about Mac. The man had zero interest in small talk, moral philosophy, or literally any conversation that couldn’t be solved with a firearm or hand-to-hand combat.
I didn’t have to make jokes because Mac didn’t have a sense of humor.
Didn’t stop me from trying, though.
“Ten whole minutes? You could finish at least twice by then, Mac Daddy.”
Not even a twitch of a smile.
The Vegas skyline rose on the horizon, the lights forbidding the desert sky from showing the stars.
Once I’d enjoyed coming here. As long as I did his dirty work first, my father had never cared how I indulged the special brands of oblivion Vegas offered, whether that meant losing millions at a craps table just for the rush, snorting more unidentifiable powders than an amateur baker, or seeing just how many people I could fall into bed with before the sun came up.
I wasn’t picky about my vices. Whatever made me forget the “jobs” that had to be done first.
Like the one I was currently on my way to do.
The Rover pulled onto The Strip, heading toward the Minoan, the Greek-themed casino and hotel that used to be a Blackguard asset.
Though I’d lost the remainder of our stake a few years back in a three-day bender, I still found it in my best interest to feed the current owners, an Albanian crime family, a steady influx of under-the-table financing.
The ugly truth was that success in the business world still required connections that couldn’t be found in boardrooms or country clubs.
Blackguard Holding kept footholds like this in Montecarlo, Monaco, Vegas, St. Bart’s, Miami.
The playgrounds of the rich and very rich, intersections where one could schmooze board members and investors on the golf course by day, then acquire darker means of persuasion by night.
Ever get a photo of a senator snorting blow off a stripper’s ass?
I’d saved three on my phone last month alone.
Very handy thing, blackmail. Almost as useful as deserted canyons were for hiding bodies or a mountain of debt was for forcing signatures.
Such is capitalism.
“Run me through it again,” I said. “Who’s this guy Brendan wants so badly?”
“Billy Richards. Age forty-two. Former military, dishonorably discharged.” Mac’s jaw tightened, the only sign of judgment. “Been working private security for the Huntingtons for the last three years. Fled Vermont approximately sixteen hours ago, right after the incident.”
The incident. That was one way to describe Brendan’s fake fiancée getting kidnapped by Ezra Huntington, the son of a business rival in the Northeast, and Brendan turning into John Wick to get her back.
From what I’d pieced together early this morning—Brendan had been irritatingly tight-lipped about the whole clusterfuck—Ezra and one of his goons were dead, Vermont law enforcement was involved, and Brendan needed me to track down Billy and make sure this third goon didn’t open his mouth.
Which meant Billy Richards had something to tell.
I didn’t know any more details about what, exactly, my brother had done to protect his Vermont milkmaid. I didn’t need to know. That wasn’t the point.
Someone in my family had made a mess, and when that happened, I got the call to clean it up.
“Flight records?” I prompted.
“Direct to Harry Reid on Southwest. Paid cash for the ticket at the gate. No checked bags. Spotted at the Minoan three hours ago.”
“So he’s running scared, the dumb fuck. Thinks because the Huntingtons got in bed with the Antonis last year, we don’t have a stake with them too. Or that Lis won’t fold like a napkin for the right price.” I shook my head. “God, they’re all the same.”
Unfortunately, Billy Richards wasn’t entirely stupid.
He likely knew Ezra Huntington was dead or arrested, which meant he had exactly one asset left: information.
And in Vegas, information had a very specific market.
The kind of market that involved men in expensive suits, shit tons of cash, and a general disregard for things like federal law.
“He’s going to try to sell whatever he saw Brendan do.”
“Affirmative.”
“To the same assholes we do business with.”
“Looks that way.”
I flopped backward into my seat. “So we’re not just cleaning up Brendan’s mess, we’re doing it in front of all of Vegas. Nothing says ‘trust the Black family’ like publicly executing a guy who’s got dirt on us.”
Mac’s expression didn’t change. “Or it says don’t fuck with us.”
That was as close as I was going to get to an endorsement from Mac.
“Good enough for me. Let’s see if Ares is around. He’ll know something. He always does.”
Here’s a secret about Vegas: the most exclusive doors are the ones in shadows, not under the lights everyone else sees.
A valet was already waiting at the service entrance of the Minoan when we pulled up. “Mr. Black.”
“How’re you doing, Frankie?” I palmed him a hundred as I stepped out of the car. “Keep it running. Might be leaving in a hurry.”
“Of course, sir.”
Mac and I wove through the kitchen piled with plates of overpriced steak and lobster combos.
The cooks didn’t even give us a second glance, though two dishwashers grinned with recognition as I passed them each a twenty.
Two hallways later, we entered the casino.
It was there that I brought out the big guns.
“Hi, honey,” I greeted Denise, my favorite dealer, with a grin, acting like I didn’t notice the double-takes when I slid onto a seat at her blackjack table and put a ten-grand chip down to start.
I wasn’t Ben Affleck or anything, but half the tourists in Vegas came to watch heavy bettors. Ten thousand dollars was pocket change to someone like me, but for the other people at the table, it was more than they made in a month. Maybe two or three.
They could gawk away. It allowed Mac to scope things out without being noticed.
“Ares is running his game,” Mac said when he returned a few minutes later. “Top floor. Lis is there too.”
I grunted. “Goddamn it. I don’t really want to chip another tooth tonight.”
I was hoping to find the Ares Antoni in his office behind the casino manager’s, not the high-stakes game he ran behind closed doors.
And I was really hoping his father would still be in New York, their primary stronghold.
The Antonis’ secret games weren’t the celebrity tournaments or Disneyland tables on the main floor; they were the kinds where you could win a casino or lose your life.
Things tended to get heated as a mere greeting, and things seemed to get even worse when Lis was around.
“Your teeth will be fine.”
I grimaced. “That’s what you said last time. Lead on, Little John.”
Mac’s brow lifted. “Does that make you Robin Hood?”
“You’re right. If anything, I’m the Sheriff of Nottingham.” It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking true.
A private elevator took us to the top floor, where the week’s password and another five hundred in tips got us into a room overlooking The Strip.
Several heavies sat around a poker table, smoking cigars while topless women served them drinks.
At the head of the whole thing, melting into his chair like a double scoop ice cream cone on a hot day, was Lis Antoni.
“Black.” Lis’s thick Eastern European accent echoed off the windows as he pushed a beefy hand through his slicked silver hair. “We thought you might appear tonight.”
“Lis.” I slid into the empty chair next to him with a grin. “You’re lookin’ good. You join Weight Watchers recently?”
The big man in the corner barely moved as he took a long drag on his cigar. “Fuck you, Jester.” Then he slapped his massive belly, which jiggled like a Jell-O mold.
“Do I hear Ronan Black?”
I turned as Ares Antoni approached the table and accepted a handshake. “The one and only.”
It was easy to see they were related, even if Lis probably outweighed his son by a solid hundred pounds.
Both were nearly as tall as I was, with the same thick head of hair (Ares’s was only slightly tinted with silver), same pronounced nose, same black eyes that could have doubled as bullets.
But while Lis looked like he would melt into a puddle if splashed with water, Ares had the body and spirit of a man who took care of himself.
And also a man who would take care of you if you crossed him.
In another life, Ares Antoni and I might have been friends. As it stood, I thought at least we understood each other. Both of us were the sons of some of the most ruthless men on the planet. Both were raised to abandon any sense of ethics to preserve a fucked-up sense of family pride and honor.
“You here to lose some money, pretty boy?” he asked me.