by S. Ann Cole
License Notes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by S. Ann Cole
All rights reserved.
Copy Editor: Karen Washo
Proofreaders: Sykora Proofing, Proofreading by Mich
Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Making or distributing copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For permission requests, contact the publisher via email: [email protected].
Visit my website at www.AnnCole.net
For Stephen.
Thank you for being a constant in my life.
I love you.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Lexi
Chapter Two
Lexi
Chapter Three
Lexi
Chapter Four
Lexi
Chapter Five
Trent
Chapter Six
Lexi
Chapter Seven
Lexi
Chapter Eight
Lexi
Chapter Nine
Lexi
Chapter Ten
Lexi
Chapter Eleven
Lexi
Chapter Twelve
Trent
Chapter Thirteen
Lexi
Chapter Fourteen
Lexi
Chapter Fifteen
Lexi
Chapter Sixteen
Lexi
Chapter Seventeen
Lexi
Chapter Eighteen
Lexi
Chapter Nineteen
Lexi
Chapter Twenty
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-One
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-Two
Trent
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-Four
Trent
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lexi
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lexi
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Trent
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lexi
Chapter Thirty
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-One
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lexi
Chapter Thirty-Six
Trent
Thank You For Reading!
About The Author
Connect With Ann
THEME SONG
Let Me by Zayn
CHAPTER ONE
“Checking me out, Lexi?”
Lexi
I’ve been bad.
And I’m paying for it.
Big time.
The glittering lights of the marquee smirk down at me, proud and triumphant. As a silent but furious retort, I tip my head back and blow vape smoke up at it. But Black Gold isn’t the only casino that’s mocking me. All along the strip, the alluring bright lights and giant letters across tall, grand edifices taunt me, gloating at my ousting.
Like I said, I’ve been bad.
I straighten up and take another slow strut through the grand canopy, lingering, tipping up on my toes in my Balenciaga heels, trying to get a glimpse of inside. But it’s futile.
One of the beefy security guards at the entrance spots me and narrows his deep-set eyes. I flip him the bird. We’ve got history, him and me. In my early days of counting cards, back when he was a freelance bouncer, he’d booted me from quite a few casinos. I think I even tried to seduce him to turn a blind eye at one point, and it almost worked. Almost.
“Go home, Lexi,” the meathead calls to me.
I keep the bird flipped at him and strut leisurely from the grand canopy while taking another slow and deliberate pull of my vape pen.
Once I’m back on the curb, I slide my phone from my purse and fire off a text to Ellie.
Me: How’s it going in there?
Ellie: Amazeballs! Up 8k. Got some suckers at this table.
Me: A little too much too fast, don’t you think?
Me: Be sure to take some losses, ok? Like I told you, things are different here, a whole diff ball game.
Me: Get the hell out once you hit 10k, ok?
Ellie: I know. Quit distracting me.
I glance out at the endless flow of vehicles cruising up and down the strip as I gnaw at my bottom lip. Ellie hasn’t been inside for forty minutes and she’s already up eight grand? I want to be happy at the prospect of that sum, but my nerves override it. We desperately need the cash, but Ellie is known to get too eager and sloppy when she’s desperate. Yet I’ve got no choice but to trust her to get out of there unscathed.
Unlike me, she’s allowed inside. As a Floridian who’d never been here before, Vegas is unchartered territory for her. Collectively, we’re banned from damn near every gambling hell across all fifty states. All we’ve got now is Vegas. In other words, all I’ve got is Ellie. Which means I’m relying heavily on her to not muck things up and get her ass ousted here, too. Small wins and big losses for survival. That’s how we have to play it right now.
I shift in my heels, the balls of my feet starting to ache, and eye the sports bar a few blocks down. I can’t keep lingering out here like a hooker waiting for a pick-up. It’s not as if I can be seen with Ellie when she comes out anyway, so I ease into a lazy stroll, questioning all my life choices with each unhurried step.
The strip is alive and pulsing—music, bright lights, and excited chatter everywhere. Gawkers and fast-walkers. Cameras flashing, drunks staggering, horns blaring. Vegas is like wonderland; a rapturous city. But linger long enough like I have and all the things that once made it magical start to annoy the crap out of you.
What should have been a three-minute walk turns into ten.
Nine-8 Bar & Grill is one of those places where you’re inside and outside all at once. Open-air, with retractable glass roofing that only comes out at closing hours or when it rains. Flat screen TVs hang above the bar and on the exterior walls, all showing various sports games. There’s more of a crowd than I would have liked, but hey, it’s the strip.
I weave through to the bar and order a gin and tonic. As I wait for my drink, I hike up on a stool and check my phone to see if there’s anything from Ellie. There isn’t, so I snap a selfie with a smile that belies how I’m feeling on the inside and begin browsing filters.
“As I live and breathe,” a deep voice comes from the left of me.
Glancing up from my phone screen, I find myself staring up into the deviant dark eyes of a Garza brother.
“True,” I say just above a whisper as my eyes rove him over. Wait, when did he get so…hot? So…ripped? Or was he always this fine and I just didn’t notice because I was head-ove
r-heels for his brother?
His plain maroon tee stretches tightly across his formidable muscles, a silver necklace with an anchor pendant resting on his chest. Sharp jawline shadowed with dark hair. Lips full and firm. Daring dark eyes, thick dark brows, and dark hair. I honestly don’t remember him looking this…well, sexy as hell—or rather, them.
“Wait,” I say. “Are you True? Or are you Trent?”
One corner of his mouth slants up, not quite a smile, but the tight narrow to his gaze tells me I’ve slighted him. “Quit playing.”
“What? It’s been a while,” I say in defense.
If he wasn’t wearing a long-sleeve tee, I could take his left arm and twist it, and on the underside of his bicep I would find either an ace of spades or an ace of clubs tattoo. It’s the best way to tell them apart. Trent, spades. True, clubs.
Someone moves, leaving an open space at the bar for him to shift to, closer to me, his jean-clad thigh brushing my bare knee. “And who’s fault is that?” he asks. “You’ve been dodging us like we’ve got the plague.”
“One gin and tonic.” The bartender finally appears with my drink and I slip him a twenty.
“Not the plague,” I say with a small grin before taking a sip. “Just related to the enemy.”
“Enemy.” He knocks his knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention who’s already moved on to another customer. “Strong word, don’t you think?”
I narrow my eyes over the rim of my glass. “He cheated on me.”
“You overreacted. Didn’t give him a chance.”
I set my drink down and clap my hands. “Trent! Totally got it wrong the first time. You’re Trenton. For sure.”
He arches a brow at me, a tiny twitch to lips. “How do you figure?”
“Your loyalty has always been a dead giveaway,” I say. “True would’ve said his brother’s a piece of shit for what he did and that’s what I get for choosing the wrong brother. Then he’d probably hit on me right after.”
At that, he chuckles. “Yep. That’s True alright.”
The bartender comes over to Trent and I drag my eyes over him once more as he orders an IPA. It’s true that it’s been a while—years even—since I ran into any of the Garza brothers, but hot damn. To think that there’s not one but two of these sexy, beastly man-meats roaming the earth.
I’ve known the Garzas almost all my life. We were neighbors. Lived directly cross the street from them. We had a small house but a large veranda. Because the house was always full, I spent a lot of time out there watching the scrawny, shouty Garza boys spar with each other in their front yard. Trent, True, and Tripp. They fought and yelled, and teased each other a lot. But they also hugged each other a lot.
It wasn’t until I enrolled at their school that we became friends. Monica—their mom, biological only to Tripp—had offered to take me to and from school with them so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. Their father, Flavio Garza, had been a renowned blackjack and poker player. A D-list celebrity, a televised tournament player. He wasn’t wealthy but was moneyed enough that their family lived in one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood, drove the nicest cars.
I was never an ordinary girl. I wore high-tops and backward ballcaps with my dresses. I wore skirts over my jeans and suspenders and bowties with my tees. I was a bit confused about my identity back then. Pretty sure the boys were, too. So they treated me like—well, not a girl. We’d spend time at each other’s houses, more theirs than mine since Mama never allowed them farther than the veranda.
We would play card games out on my veranda for hours. They knew more than they should’ve for their age, and I wanted all that knowledge. Soon, we became a crew of four—three Garzas and one Flores. Three half-black, half-Italian boys, and one strange Venezuelan girl.
Sometime after, when I was around fourteen and the twins fifteen, Torin Garza, the fourth brother—also from a different mother—came into the picture. He relocated from Colorado when his stepdad died shortly after his mom did. He didn’t have a great father-son relationship with Flavio, but the loss of the man who raised him as his own so soon after his mom, pushed him to work on his relationship with his father. So, he moved in with them.
He was older, brooding, hot, and always so darn serious. And I had an immediate crush on him.
It took him about a year to finally notice my efforts to get his attention, and another for him to give it to me. We dated for almost a year before his father died. There was a shift in our relationship after that. Until a classmate told me she saw him making out with another girl at a beach rave. When I confronted him, he admitted it but didn’t apologize or ask for my forgiveness.
I was eighteen, he was twenty-one.
Heart split in two, I broke up with him and have avoided the entire family since.
Over the years, they’ve built quite a reputation. Torin joined the army right after our breakup. He did two tours in Afghanistan, and when he returned, he started Red Cage Commando Security & Investigations Services with his brothers. The most prestigious private investigations company in the west. They’re well respected, well known, and in some cases, feared.
And apparently, really hot and jacked.
“Checking me out, Lexi?” Trent asks with a raised brow.
Only mildly abashed, I drag my leer from his pecs and take another sip of my drink. “With a body like that”—I wave a hand up and down his person—”you’ve got to be used to women checking you out.”
“Sure… but not you. The only thing you ever looked at me with is aggression.”
“Only when you were being a bossy bully.” I pause. “Which was all the time.”
“I looked the exact same when you saw me in New York roughly two years ago.”
I frown. “Did you?”
“And you didn’t ogle me, you ditched me.”
“Did I?”
It’s true, though. He was always showing up and I was always ditching.
He chuckles, and the bartender returns with his ale and tells him it’s on the house. Of course it is. He twists off the cap and takes a swig while watching me, curiosity in his dark gaze. “Surprised to see you on the strip,” he says, “considering you’re banned from every casino in this hemisphere.”
I go to ask how he knows all that but think better of it. I might not have been around the Garzas in a while, but their reputation precedes them. I don’t think there’s much they don’t know.
“Pfft.” I wave a dismissive hand and sip my gin. “Those days are over. I’m on the straight and narrow now. As legit as they come.”
He takes another swig of his beer, wholly unconvinced. “Are you done traveling? You plan on going home anytime soon, or is Vegas your home now?”
With feigned nonchalance, I shrug. “Not sure yet.” Then I lift a brow at him. “You’ve been keeping up on my whereabouts, huh?”
“Me and your other 50k plus Instagram followers. Got your whole life on there.” He eyes me up and down. My Balenciaga shoes…the Gucci belt cinching my romper…my LV purse. “Living it up.”
I dip my head, lest he see the truth in my eyes. “What about you? What are you doing in Vegas?”
“Working.”
“Of course you are.” I clear my throat. “Alone? Where’s your womanizing twin?”
He turns his back to the bar and props his elbows back on the counter, the beer bottle hung carelessly between two fingers. “True’s at the Denver branch for a few weeks.” He flicks his wrist to check his watch. “And I’m waiting on someone.”
“Girlfriend?”
His gaze drops to my necklace, lingering for a long moment, then it lifts to my lips, before meeting mine again. He narrows his eyes slightly, then averts them to look ahead at something, and the corners of his mouth tip down noncommittally as he says, “We’ll see.”
I follow his gaze to see a stunning brunette sashaying between the tables and chairs toward us. When she reaches him, he straightens from the bar and snakes an arm around he
r waist, pressing a kiss to her cheek. She blushes from his attention and frowns at me at the same time.
Down girl. I’m not hitting on your man. I’ve known him since before he had chest hair and muscles.
“Nice running into you, Hellcat,” Trent says. “Hope to see you back home soon. Will tell the others you said hi.”
“But I don’t,” I protest. “I don’t say hi.”
He throws me a mischievous smirk before leaving with his bombshell brunette.
Goddamn Garzas.
And then the old nickname registers. Hellcat. Had he used it in the beginning, I wouldn’t have had to guess which twin it was. Because only Trent Garza called me Hellcat. He was manipulative and bossy with me growing up and I was one to talk back; quick-tempered, peppery. So he dubbed me the nickname.
I touch my fingers to the gold necklace that never leaves my neck and smile.
After a few seconds, I shake it off and check my phone to see if there’s anything from Ellie.
Nothing.
Me: How’s it going?
Ellie: Up 15k.
Me: You were supposed to get out at 10k!
Ellie: Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control.
Me: Take a 5k loss and GET OUT. We can hit somewhere else tomorrow.
Ellie: Hell no. 20k then I’m out.
Ellie: It’s all chill in here I swear. No risk.
Me: Vegas is different, babe. Listen to me.
Ellie: Text you soon. You’re distracting me.
“For shit’s sake,” I mumble to myself. “She never listens. She never frickin’ listens.”
I take two big gulps of my gin and tonic—because drinks on the strip are expensive as hell, so damn if I’m letting it go to waste—before starting out of the bar. If Ellie won’t listen to me, then there’s no point wandering around here waiting for her.
Me: Going back to the apartment. Call Marco when you’re ready.
I head in the opposite direction of Black Gold Casino and start the eight-minute walk to the cab station where my cousin, Marco, works.
I’m walking past WildDice Casino when a familiar voice comes at me out of nowhere. “Well, well, well. Lexi Flores.”