2. Nikolai
Nikolai
FIVE YEARS LATER
The SUV stops under the covered entrance that has just been finished at my forty-story hotel. I step out and feel the Vegas heat. The front entrance isn’t finished. That pisses me off. We’re behind schedule. I don't tolerate delays.
Pasha, my best friend and right-hand man, falls in beside me.
I step inside and look at the massive area that will be the casino floor. My eyes track the changes from my last visit. Not enough progress. This place is supposed to be open in four months, which is already a month later than originally planned.
“I like the floor choice,” Pasha says.
I don’t look. I already know it’s stunning. My gaze is ahead where Frank, the foreman, is waiting for me.
He looks scared.
“What is it?” I ask.
"They hit the east wing again," he says. "Whole spool of copper, gone. Maybe two hundred feet. They left something."
I'm already walking toward the east wing, with Frank jogging to keep pace. I take in the progress on the areas that will be the luxury stores I’ve contracted with. My hotel will offer anything and everything a guest might need.
I'm giving MGM a run for its money. Not accurate. The minute my hotel opens, I'll rule Vegas. I’ll have a better location. Better margins. A high-roller room no one can match.
But there's some serious pushback from my competitors. And it isn't the property groups. It's the fucking Italian mafia. They still think this is the seventies, and that they run the show.
They haven't accepted the inevitable.
They’ve been fucking with me since I put in a bid on this property. They tried everything to stop it, but when I set a goal, I make it happen. I’ve run right over the top of them, and I’m not about to stop.
This is the fourth incident in six weeks. A stolen generator before that. A water main "accidentally" cracked by a backhoe operator who quit the next day and hasn't been seen since. They’re bleeding me slowly, one wound at a time, hoping I won't notice until it’s too late.
But I notice everything. That's the problem with people who think my lack of reaction means I’m oblivious.
Frank gestures at the box on the floor. It’s leaking. Blood.
“Horse?” I ask.
Frank grimaces. “Goat.”
“Original,” I mutter.
"You think it's the same people as the truck?” Frank asks.
"I think it's the people who've been losing this city to me for years and don't know how to lose gracefully.
" My gaze moves across the area that will be the home to three massive ballrooms. I look up and envision the chandeliers that I designed.
Hand-blown Venetian glass, every piece. I waited eight months for their arrival.
There will be twenty-three of them in this room alone.
A designer has put together some mock-ups for weddings and galas.
The chandeliers will make the space. People will pay big money to dance in my ballroom under my chandeliers.
"Tell the crew we're back on schedule by Monday, no matter what it takes."
Frank nods and walks away, already on his phone.
"They're getting bold,” Pasha says. “This isn't subtle anymore. This is somebody making a point."
"I'm aware."
"You want to hit back?"
Pasha's been at my side since we were boys, throwing rocks at each other's heads on Long Island. He knows me well enough to ask the question even though he already knows the answer.
I think he likes making me say it out loud. He says it keeps me honest. I think he just likes hearing himself talk me off the ledge.
"Not yet."
"They stole half a million in copper and product over six weeks, and you want to wait."
"I don’t want to start a war I don't need."
We continue to walk through the property.
“You want to know what’s getting old?” Pasha’s hands are in his pockets as he scans the gutted east wing.
“They’re not even trying to be clever anymore.
Copper and conduit. Next week, it’ll be the electrical panels.
Week after that, somebody will put a backhoe through a load-bearing wall and call it an accident. ”
“I know.”
“So let me put some people on it.”
“I said not yet.”
He exhales through his nose. It’s the sound he makes when he disagrees but knows better than to push. We’ve had this conversation enough times that we don’t need to use words to have the argument.
I stop in the center of what will be the largest of the three ballrooms. The ceiling soars nearly four stories above me, and even in its unfinished state, it’s something special.
I can already see what it becomes. That is my curse.
I see the finished thing before anyone else can, which means I also see every deviation from it more clearly than the men who build it.
“Your brother would have already burned something down,” Pasha observes. “I’m proud of you and your restraint.”
“Which brother?”
“Both of them, honestly. For different reasons.”
He’s right. Sergei would have made a calculated surgical strike when the first generator went missing. Maksim would have gone in loud and personal and enjoyed every second of it. Bit of a loose cannon, that one. Apparently, he has an arsonist streak now.
I am neither of them, which has always been the thing about me that nobody quite knows how to categorize. I hold it in until I can’t.
And when I can’t, few can stop me. Pasha and my brothers. That’s it.
“Sergei’s got his hands full,” I say.
A smile tugs at Pasha’s mouth. “The twins are good?”
“I guess. Says he forgot what sleep is, but he’s never been happier in his life.” I pause.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” Pasha says quietly. “And also the scariest thing you’ll ever do.”
He’s talking about his daughter. Mila is six, and he would burn the city flat for her without blinking. Pasha lost his wife, the love of his life, when Mila was a toddler. Since then, she has become the most important thing in his world.
“I’m not dragging him into this right now. Things have just settled for him. I’m not pulling him back.”
“Maksim?” Pasha starts.
“Maksim is still recovering.” I leave no room for argument. “Lila, too. The Albanian situation cost them both more than either will admit. He needs time.”
“He’d be pissed if he heard you being protective.”
I glance at Pasha. “He’ll never hear about it.”
Pasha waits.
I study the gutted east wing, calculating.
“Extra security,” I say finally.
Pasha pulls out his phone. “Done.”
“I want to know who’s giving the orders before I do anything about it,” I say. “I don’t swing at shadows.”
“And when you know?”
“When I know,” I say quietly, “I won’t need to swing more than once.”
A slow smile spreads across Pasha’s face.
We head back toward the entrance. The heat hits me when we step outside, that particular Las Vegas wall of it.
It’s so dry, a deep breath feels like it could shrivel my lungs.
Despite the heat, I’m wearing my usual attire.
Long-sleeved black button-down and black slacks.
People assume I’d be hot. I always point out how people in other parts of the world dress in the desert.
I refuse to be hot, and that’s that. I pull on my sunglasses and look up at the facade of the building. Forty stories of glass and steel, all mine.
They can steal my copper. They can crack my water mains, spook my workers, and try to bleed me out dollar by dollar.
This hotel will open.
And when it does, there won’t be a single person in this city who doesn’t know who built it.
I get in the backseat of the SUV, and Pasha climbs into the seat beside me.
My driver navigates Tropicana Avenue with ease. Pasha is on his phone the whole way, arranging the additional security I asked for.
The SUV pulls up to Imperiya’s main entrance, and I’m out before the driver stops. The valets know better than to make eye contact and try to chat me up. Nobody had to tell them twice. I don’t require warmth from the people who work for me; I require competence.
The doors slide open, and the casino swallows me whole.
Imperiya is the most profitable property I own. It makes more money than all Maksim’s clubs in Miami put together and Sergei’s many businesses in New York. Once Tatiana opens, no one will question who owns this city.
Tatiana. My brothers don’t know I’ve decided to name the new legitimate property after our mother. I don’t know what they’ll think about it, but it’s my choice.
She deserved something that would outlive all of us.
I move through the floor, cataloguing everything. Tables running. Dealers alert. Money moving.
I stop at the first security station near the main entrance, and the floor manager, Davis, materializes at my elbow. He’s good. Ex-military, keeps his reports tight and his opinions to himself unless I ask for them. I like people who don’t waste my time with words.
“Anything overnight?” I ask.
“Card counter at table nine around two in the morning. We flagged him, moved him off the floor.”
“Banned?”
“Temporarily. Wanted to run it by you first.”
“Permanently,” I say.
He nods once and taps his tablet.
I pass the high-limit room and glance through the glass. Three tables running, modest for a Thursday afternoon. The serious money comes after dark.
I know most of the regulars on the floor.
A woman in a red dress calls my name. I recognize her as the wife of a real estate developer who likes to think we’re friends because I’ve had dinner at his table twice.
I offer her a nod. She expected more. They usually do. She’s propositioned me more than once.
I stop at the surveillance hub behind the main floor.
Most guests don’t know the room exists. Connor, my head of surveillance, pulls up the overnight footage before I ask.
We go through the flagged clips in less than four minutes.
Nothing requires my direct attention beyond the card counter that Davis already handled.
Pasha catches up to me near the poker room, still on his phone, one finger raised. I wait. He wraps the call and pockets the phone.
“I’ve got four more bodies starting tomorrow night,” he says. “Two on the construction site rotating shifts, two here.”
“Here?”
“Precaution.”
I look at him.
“If they’re getting bold on the construction site, they get bold here next,” he says. “I’d rather have the people in place before I need them than after.”
He’s right. “Do it.”
We move toward the back corridor and the elevators to the executive floor.
A voice rises above the casino noise. I stop mid-stride.
Male. Angry. Coming from the main dealer stations near the center of the floor.
Pasha stops beside me. He hears it, too.
People get loud all the time, but I know the difference between noise and threat.
And this is a threat.