Savage Protector (Elite Men of Las Vegas #3)

1. Grayson

GRAYSON

It was almost impossible to believe what was happening—sitting down to lunch across from a man who, at one time, was closer to me than a brother but was now a stranger.

The best friend I ever had when we were kids.

The sort of friend a guy could share his secrets with.

I had no idea how many hours we had spent back then playing video games, sitting side by side, able to confess the kind of things it wasn’t so easy to talk about when we weren’t both staring at a television.

Back then, we had a lot of things to figure out, the sort of things we were too young to understand, but we had tried to navigate that shit together.

That was then. More than twenty years had passed since those preteen days.

Now, I was thanking our server for a glass of iced tea while my childhood best friend accepted his scotch on the rocks.

Looking at Dominic Garibaldi now, I could hardly believe he was ever the kid I remembered.

There was a hardness to him, something in his eyes and the tight set of his mouth that hinted at a life spent doing the sort of shit we tried so hard to understand back in the day.

He had stayed in that life, living the way our fathers had while we sat back and wondered—why they sometimes didn’t come home at night or why sometimes they were bloody or bruised when they did show up.

Years of being exposed to that had formed a shell around him.

Then again, there was a shell around me too.

Nobody stayed as innocent as they were when they were kids, no matter what line of work they happened to get into.

I made my living wrangling freelance security professionals, digging up intel for Las Vegas movers and shakers, and protecting businesses and people who needed help.

Somehow, we’d ended up on opposing sides of the dividing line between good and bad, decent and dishonest. He made a living off human misery. I didn’t have to know the specifics to understand that much.

“You’re looking well,” he told me, nodding in approval. Sunshine made his jet-black hair gleam when he did. “Healthy. You work out?”

The next thing I knew, he would ask me how much I could bench press. “I try to stay active. You?”

“My trainer is a sadist. Still…” he patted a flat stomach, shrugging, “… the results are worth it.”

“I’m sure somebody as busy as you doesn’t have much time to devote to long workouts.

” Maybe I was probing a little, or maybe I just wanted him to know I was onto him.

Of course I was. I might have left that life behind, but that didn’t mean I was unaware of how things turned out after I said goodbye.

He had risen through the ranks of the Garibaldi family, making his bones in the years immediately following my exit.

His father’s disappearance had left his small, ragtag crew in need of a leader, and Dominic had picked up the slack.

If there was one thing men like my father and his associates had always appreciated, it was those who could leave their feelings behind and focus solely on what needed to be done.

Dominic hadn’t allowed a thirst for vengeance against whoever had caused his dad’s disappearance to get in the way of growing and solidifying what had been put in place.

“From what I understand, you’re a busy man too,” he pointed out, picking up his fork to flake some salmon away from the filet before him.

“Which is why I thought of you immediately when this problem reared its head. It’s unusual for me to go into deep detail, especially in public, so you’ll understand if I find it challenging.

Opening up, I mean. It has nothing to do with not trusting you. ”

“I appreciate that.” Though I doubted he trusted me. I was an outsider and had been for more than a decade.

Sighing, he began, “See, there’s a woman.”

“There always is,” I pointed out with a smirk, which he returned, chuckling softly.

“Yes, and there are always problems, aren’t there?” he asked. “In this case, though, she’s in trouble. It’s my fault.”

“What do you mean?” It was good the way he got to the point.

I didn’t want to sit here all through our lunch meeting with the past and present overlapping in such an uncanny way.

The broad-shouldered, black-haired man who’d been groomed and polished to within an inch of his life sat opposite me, but I also sat across from a kid who couldn’t seem to get his acne under control or lose the last five pounds of baby fat left behind after puberty hit.

A kid with a prominent Adam's apple that bobbed every time he swallowed and who used to plan Dungeons and Dragons campaigns until his seventh-grade crush announced that guys who played D&D were losers. That was all it had taken for him to decide he didn’t like it anymore.

“You know how it is sometimes.” He sighed, picking at his salmon while I did the same with my turkey club.

“You do everything you can to keep somebody away from the uglier parts of life, but they insist on learning more than they need to know. That was Scarlet’s problem.

Scarlet Bowers,” he added. “One T in the name. She was a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos, and we met there. Lovely girl. Pretty, great personality, nice ass.” He sipped his drink before picking up his fork again.

“We had a lot of fun. There’s something about a woman who doesn’t ask for much, you know? ”

I understood, at least in theory. Women weren’t exactly a major part of my life. Work tended to steal most of my time, not that I would ever complain about a healthy client list.

“Anyway, she got a little too curious. They always do in the end,” he mused, his voice taking on a dark note.

“No matter how much they swear they’ll mind their own business, not ask too many questions, curiosity always ends up fucking everything.

That’s what happened here. She overheard too many conversations, she saw too many things she shouldn’t have, and eventually, word got around. She knew too much.”

He slid an almost apologetic look my way. “I hope you understand why I can’t give you much more detail than that. There are certain things you can’t know about my business.”

Yes, because we were on opposite sides now.

Not that I would have considered myself some agent of justice or anything like that, and I was no cop, but I had spent more than a decade doing everything I could to be the sort of man my father used to laugh at, pity, even despise at times.

He would say things like… “Fucking do-gooders think they’re going to change shit when they’re not.

Because they don’t have the first-fucking-clue how the world really works.

” He was always the one without a clue, but he never understood that. Neither did I until it was too late.

“I don’t need all the details,” I assured Dominic, noting the exquisite watch he wore and the quiet sense of luxury about him.

He was a hell of a lot more refined than either of our fathers ever were, a pair of low-level soldiers in a much bigger organization.

They couldn’t have dreamed of the dark gray bespoke suit he wore now.

No doubt there was plenty of high-level shit going on around him, and therefore countless opportunities for a bystander to hear something they shouldn’t, especially if that bystander was determined to satisfy her curiosity.

“She ran off after receiving threats,” he explained, releasing a deep breath that seemed to deflate him somewhat.

“And I’m worried. You’re probably the only person I would ever admit this to, maybe because we’ve been out of touch for so long.

It’s just…” Strain pinched his features almost like he was in pain.

“I can’t help but remember Dad disappearing.

What if it’s the same thing with Scarlet? ”

A lump threatened to lodge itself in my throat at the mention of those dark days when Dominic had spent nights at our house, sitting up until all hours in hopes of his father reaching out. His phone never rang. “So you want me to look for her? Make sure she’s all right?” I asked.

“As far as I know, she is still out there somewhere,” he tells me.

“And she must be terrified. I have reason to believe members of another family would use her to get to me. They’re our biggest rivals at the moment, and it’s most likely she would have overheard key information regarding my dealings with them. ”

He had a way of making everything sound so official, above board, when we both knew it was anything but.

I wondered if he would be more forthcoming if we were alone rather than seated in a restaurant and decided he would not.

Silence was golden, always. The less someone revealed, the better for everyone involved.

“Scarlet Bowers. Blackjack dealer.” I made a note of this, along with getting a physical description of her—medium height, sandy blonde hair, hazel eyes that leaned more toward green than brown.

“Here. I do have a photo of her.” He pulled it up on his phone and placed it on the table for me to see. She was cute with a peaches and cream complexion and an ear-to-ear smile. She looked carefree, young, innocent.

She wasn’t so innocent anymore. “How old is she?” I asked.

It was surprising that he had to think about it. Then again, if they were dating casually, he might not have known for sure. “Twenty-eight? No, twenty-nine. She said something about turning thirty on her next birthday.”

I made a note of that, as well. “Let’s say I find her. Do you want her to know you were looking for her?”

“No.” No hesitation, no moment to think it over. “No, tell me immediately. Tell me where to find her. I have to make things right. I need to apologize for ever putting her in any jeopardy or making her feel like she had to run away.”