Chapter 1 — The Neon Mirage #2
Maya’s anxiety curdled into irritation. He was doing it again. The same thing that had happened on her mother’s birthday, when he disappeared for three hours and came back smelling of cigarettes and defeat. But this was Vegas. The stakes were higher. The danger felt more real.
She scanned the crowd, trying to spot Kyle’s light blue shirt. She saw dozens of blue shirts, but none belonged to her boyfriend’s tense shoulders.
Her feet began to throb. She slipped one foot out of her shoe discreetly, resting it on the footrest, savoring the momentary relief—then the sharp pain when she had to put it back.
Next to her, the man with the cigar stood up, leaving a stack of chips as a tip worth more than Maya's weekly salary.
In his place sat a woman in a silver dress that looked like it was made of fish scales.
She smelled of jasmine and old money. She didn't even glance at Maya. To her, Maya was furniture. Invisible.
This invisibility began to weigh on her. Maya felt herself shrinking. She didn't belong in this world of glittering predators. She was prey that had strayed from the herd.
An hour and a half.
Maya unlocked her phone. 15% battery. She had forgotten the charger at the hotel. Of course she had.
“Kyle, please. I'm scared. Come back to the bar.”
The message failed to send. “Try again.”
She tried. It failed.
A chill ran down her spine, despite the heat generated by thousands of bodies and machines.
She was out of money. Kyle had the credit cards—both maxed out, but he claimed he had “special credit” here.
She was in an unfamiliar city, with no money, no transportation, and her boyfriend had disappeared into the belly of the beast.
She needed to find him.
Maya slid off the stool. Her legs were stiff. The alcohol, consumed on an empty stomach, had left her slightly dizzy, the world tilting one degree to the left. She steadied herself on the obsidian counter.
“Are you okay?” asked the woman in silver, without looking at her, her voice as dry as the desert outside.
“I'm... I'm just looking for someone,” Maya stammered.
“Everyone's looking for someone here, honey. Or something. Usually, they don't find it.”
The woman turned away to sip her champagne, ending the interaction with the casual brutality of someone who had seen a thousand girls like Maya get chewed up by this city.
Maya moved away from the bar and headed toward the area where Kyle had gone. The High Limit area. The red velvet ropes looked like insurmountable barriers, guarded by men who resembled granite statues dressed in Armani.
She stopped at a safe distance, craning her neck. The carpet changed there. In the main hall, it was a kaleidoscopic pattern designed to keep eyes moving. In the VIP area, it was a deep red, the color of arterial blood, soft and silent.
She didn't see Kyle. She saw Asian men smoking thin cigarettes, Western men with amber whiskeys, women who looked like ice goddesses rolling dice.
Her phone vibrated.
Maya's heart leapt into her throat. She pulled the device from her purse with trembling fingers.
Low Battery: 5%
It wasn't a message. It was a warning of imminent death.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit, Kyle.”
She walked faster, circling the perimeter of the VIP area. The crowd seemed denser now, more aggressive. Shoulders bumped against hers. Loud laughter exploded like glass shards. The sound of the machines seemed to mock her. Ding-ding-ding. You lost. You lost.
Two hours.
She was thirsty. Terribly thirsty. Her mouth was as dry as sandpaper. She saw a waitress pass by with a tray of complimentary drinks for the players. Maya reached out, but the waitress skillfully dodged, her eyes fixed on a group of men playing Blackjack thirty feet away.
Maya leaned against a marble column. Her feet screamed in pain. She pulled out her phone again. The screen was black. She pressed the side button. The empty battery icon flashed once, red and accusing, then disappeared.
Dead.
She was disconnected. Alone. In a sea of strangers who would sell their own mother for a Royal Flush.
The panic, which until then had been a slowly rising tide, now broke over her head. She needed to go to security. Needed to ask them to page Kyle over the sound system. But that would embarrass him. He would be furious. She could already hear his voice: “You ruined my luck, Maya!”
But what choice did she have?
She pushed off from the column, determined to find a uniform, any uniform that wasn't a waitress's.
That's when the atmosphere around her changed.
It wasn't something she saw immediately. It was something she felt. Like when air pressure drops before a tornado. The noise around her seemed to get sucked into a vacuum. People who had been passing near her veered away, opening a circle of empty space.
Maya looked up.
Before her, blocking the path back to the bar, stood a mountain.
It wasn't just a security guard. Normal casino security wore burgundy blazers and had visible earpieces.
This man wore a black suit, cut with military precision to accommodate a shoulder width that defied human anatomy.
He was bald, his dark skin gleaming under the lights, and his face was a mask of absolute indifference.
He had no earpiece, or if he did, it was invisible.
He didn't need technology; he radiated raw authority.
Maya took a step back, her heel wobbling on the carpet.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice coming out as a squeak. She tried to go around him.
He moved. It was a fluid movement, surprisingly quick for someone of that size. He blocked her path again. He didn't touch her. He didn't need to. His physical presence was a brick wall.
Maya’s heart pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears, drowning out the slot machines.
“I didn’t... I didn’t do anything,” she stammered, that instinctive guilt of being poor in a rich place bubbling to the surface. “I’m just waiting for my boyfriend. Kyle. He’s playing. I’m not bothering anyone.”
The man looked at her. His eyes were dark, impenetrable. He didn’t look at her cleavage or at her legs. He looked into her eyes with clinical intensity, as if confirming a description in a dossier.
“Miss Brooks,” he said. His voice was deep, a tectonic rumble that seemed to come from the floor.
Maya froze. Her name. He knew her name.
“How... how do you know my name? Where’s Kyle? Did something happen to him?”
Her mind raced through horrible scenarios. Kyle had gotten into a fight. Kyle had been caught counting cards (as if he were smart enough for that). Kyle had gotten sick.
The man didn’t answer. He simply clasped his hands in front of him, a posture that was both respectful and threatening.
“Mr. Vance is waiting for you.”
The name dropped between them like an anvil. Vance. She’d seen the name at the entrance. The Obsidian, an Ethan Vance Property. The owner. The reclusive billionaire who, according to the gossip magazines she read at the salon, owned half the city and the souls of the other half.
“I don’t know any Mr. Vance,” Maya whispered, fear now freezing her blood, turning the sweat on her skin to ice. “There must be a mistake. I’m just... I’m nobody. I just want to find Kyle and leave.”
The security guard stepped forward. Maya’s personal space vanished. She could smell him: unscented soap and contained danger.
“There’s no mistake, Miss Brooks. And it’s not a request.”
He gestured with an open hand toward a side corridor, dark and discreet, away from the flashing lights and manufactured joy of the main floor. A corridor that led away from the exit.
“Is Kyle there?” she asked, her voice trembling, clinging to the only anchor she had.
The security guard was silent for a moment, and in that silence, Maya saw something in his eyes. It wasn’t pity. It was something worse. It was the recognition of a fate already sealed.
“Yes,” he said finally. “He’s there.”
Maya looked at the bright casino floor, at the laughing people, at the distant exit that seemed miles away.
She looked at the dark corridor. She knew, with a visceral certainty that came from her most primitive instincts, that if she entered that corridor, the Maya Brooks who walked into the casino tonight would never come out.
But Kyle was there. And she had no money, no phone, nowhere to go.
She swallowed hard, tasting the metallic taste of fear in her mouth.
“Okay,” she whispered.
The security guard nodded, turned on his heel, and began to walk, expecting her to follow. And she did. She walked into the darkness, leaving the noise of the world behind, entering the silence where monsters lived.