by S. Ann Cole
I wince. Had I been thinking clearly, I would’ve crossed the street before passing WildDice, just in case its dickwad proprietor was standing outside its doors, smoking a cigar, as he often does.
Reluctantly, I stop and turn to face my old boss. Jimmy Winston—being a skinny little toothpick of a man, goes by “Slim.” He’s leaned against one of the columns in his entryway, puffing an illegal cigar. As usual, he’s styled like an old school grease-ball—powder-blue suit with the undershirt unbuttoned down to his chest, a gold chain nestled in his forest of chest hair. Gelled-back brown hair and a well-groomed goatee. Thick gold rings on each finger.
“Back in Vegas, I see,” he says. “Savings finally run out, yes?”
Like it’s some big secret, he refuses to tell anyone where he’s from. He speaks with a heavy accent I’ve never been able to place, and his English is jacked all the way up.
“This is where I live, asshole.”
“Not on strip. If you here, then you running on E and looking for a loophole to top-up.” He narrows his eyes as he takes another puff of his cigar. “Already found one?”
“You think you know everything, don’t you?”
He shrugs. “I only know the game ‘cause I lived it.”
“Whatever.” I turn and start to walk off. “Night, Slim. As always, running into you is a total mood killer.” And I ran into him a lot, no matter where I was.
“You can come back, you know,” he calls after me. “You one of my best counters. I call a few people, yes? And, ah, how you say, pull some strings, get you unbanned, yes?”
Yeah, but it would still be seventy-thirty. Or even less now since I would be crawling back with my tail between my legs.
“Nah, I’m good.”
He chuckles. “Ah, sexy Lexi, you want to keep up lifestyle and, how you say, ‘stunt for the gram’? Then you know where to find me, yes?”
I roll my eyes but don’t break my stride. Is it tempting to go back to working for him? One hundred percent. I’ve considered it for months. But he’ll never agree to anything other than a seventy-thirty split and we’re the ones doing all the hard work. Sure, he keeps us safe and out of the crosshairs of the casino owners, which is critical, but seventy percent of everything we make is a nasty deal.
When I get to the taxi stand, Marco has just returned from a job and is spraying his door handles with alcohol. “You’re heading home already?”
“Yeah, I’m not feeling so well,” I lie.
He glances behind me. “Where’s the blonde you came with?”
“She’s at Black Gold. She’s not ready to leave yet. I told her to call you when she is.”
“Ah, cool. Hop in. Got another pick-up in a few.”
CHAPTER TWO
Fallen From Grace
Lexi
Seven minutes later, I’m dropped off at the crappy apartment complex we’re staying at in outer downtown central. We wanted to be close to the strip, but we were also broke as hell, so we settled for this place. Outdated, cracked, and crumbling in some places, and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.
Marco waits until I’ve let myself inside the apartment before he drives off.
I lean back against the door and breathe out a heavy sigh. I’m exhausted. Mentally drained.
If given the chance, would I have taken a different route than the one I started down five years ago? I close my eyes and think about my now cancer-free mama living in a house she no longer owes the bank for.
Nope.
It was worth it.
All of it.
If given the chance, I’d make the same decisions again and again.
Crouching down, I unzip my shoes and toss them aside before shuffling further into the apartment.
I was nineteen when Mama got the news.
Breast cancer.
In a household of eight where she was the sole breadwinner, it was really bad news. One of my uncles was undocumented and did nothing to contribute to the household. My aunt, engaged to be married to a shady loan shark worked as a cashier at minimum wage. My other uncle did construction work, but he also had three kids who’d eat the damn paint off the walls if they could, so everything he contributed to Mama went right back to his greedy ass gremlins. My older sister had just become a pregnant marine wife and was preparing to move to Washington.
Mama had a decent job as a restaurant supervisor but had to stop working after she was diagnosed. When I realized that none of my relatives living in her house and mooching off of her were willing to step up and offer support when the bills started to pile up, I knew it was up to me to ensure her survival.
That’s when I turned to the casinos.
See, back when I used to hang out with the Garzas, I’d learned a lot. Picked up a lot of tricks and tactics. Flavio Garza himself had sometimes walked in on our card games and schooled us in the art of cards.
He taught his sons and he taught them well. Passed on his gifts. Unlike me, however, they never used their gifts for anything other than rewardless fun.
But with a sick mama, a growing mountain of medical bills, and the looming possibility of homelessness if the mortgage wasn’t paid, what I had—the knowledge gained from the Garzas—was like a golden ticket to the chocolate factory.
So I took to the casinos. Nervous and guilt-ridden, but determined.
The more I got away with, the more confident I became. But I was still untrained, green, so in a matter of a few months, I was banned all over L.A.
Having family in Vegas, I started making trips here on the weekends, hitting up the casinos. That’s when Slim came into the picture. He caught me counting in WildDice one night. But instead of booting me like the others, he offered me deal: If I worked for him, he would train me and protect me from getting caught. “With me,” he’d said, “you’ll make millions.”
Turned out Slim had been a counter himself. One who’d never been caught. He got rich from cheating cards, built his own casino, and now he recruits people like me to travel with him and hit up the big dens.
Young and desperate, I took him up on his offer and joined his team of four, and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. We’d make thousands of dollars in one night. Hundreds of thousands in a week.
I learned there was a whole underbelly operation of casinos and “inside work.” Some covert membership club that Slim was a part of. What it meant for us was that the blind eye was turned on us—instead of being stopped, thrown out, and banned, we were ignored. Slim wouldn’t tell us what he gave the clubs in return, and we didn’t care too much. The money was good. Though, the protection didn’t cover all casinos, so some of them were real risks. Thrillingly dangerous.
‘Stunting for the gram’ was a part of it. We had to fit a certain image. What people needed to see when we were looked into was expensive brands and icy jewelry. Lamborghinis and million-dollar mansions. None of it was real, of course. All rented. But we had to look the part. Like idle trust fund brats with bad gambling habits and money to blow.
In the first year of working with Slim, I’d single-handedly paid off Mama’s mortgage, covered her medical bills, and hired full-time help while she went through chemo, since traveling with Slim meant I couldn’t physically be there for her.
To be able to do that, take care of my mama like that, was a kind of high I never experienced.
Within two years, I was close to becoming a millionaire as Slim promised. But I would learn that a lot could turn to nothing real damn fast.
See, we were making a lot of money, but not as much as we could have. Forking over seventy percent of everything we made became harder and harder each time. In the beginning, it didn’t bother me. To go from being broke as hell to suddenly making thousands of dollars, I was too desperate to care. And I suppose that’s what Slim counted on.
But after three years, as the giddiness and desperation started to dissipate, my ears became unplugged to the whispers and grumbles of my teammates—we were being taken advantage of.
It became a problem. I tried to negotiate with Slim but he wouldn’t budge. That was the price for being on his team, nothing more, nothing less.
One night, after an exceptionally big win, we had a big fight about it. It ended with Ellie and me splitting away from him.
We didn’t need him, we told ourselves. We knew the ropes, knew the game, knew his contacts. We could do it all on our own and keep all our earnings.
We were wrong.
We had the skills, but there was one thing we forgot to consider—we weren’t a part of the “secret club.” Slim was. We’d been given the blind eye only because we were with Slim. The minute he made it known we were no longer with him, eyes were on us.
We kept getting busted and banned. Ninety percent of the time we were roughed up and forced to pay back twice what we cheated. Not the standard at all casinos, but some of them were straight up gangsters, so even though we knew we were being intimidated and shaken down, we ponied up.
Before long, cash started to dwindle. We no longer had a pool of resources to cover our fake lifestyle, it was all on Ellie and me. No cash coming in, but a shit ton going out. Housing, supporting our families, renting all kinds of expensive shit to keep up the front, being intimidated and ripped off by thug casino owners….
Twice, our rented house was broken into and all our stuff was stolen. If we’d been smart, we would’ve taken what little we had left and gone home. But we weren’t. We ran ourselves dry.
Got our butts kicked, tossed, canceled, and banned.
Now here we are. Fallen from grace.
I glance around the tiny one-bedroom apartment. Popcorn ceiling, water-stained walls, and naked light bulbs. It’s a shithole for a guest apartment that still costs far too much, but people rent it anyway because it’s close to the strip.
We’ve been here about a month now.
We spent the first two weeks resting, wallowing, and eating junk food, considering how our lives have been nothing but nonstop craziness for the past couple of years. Slim had recruited Ellie in Miami. She’d never been anywhere else before that and although she’d been with us for a while, this is her first time in Vegas. We spent last week planning; gamble small, only on the weekends, stay under the radar, and save, save, save.
It’s our first night on the strip and already Ellie has decided to go rogue. Vegas does that to people. The bright lights and the glitz and the wonderland glimmer makes them stupid.
I push away from the door and toss my purse to the ugly green couch across the room. Heaving out another sigh, I start for the bedroom, mumbling under my breath, “I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Ellie.”
CHAPTER THREE
“And trust me, I’m the nice one.”
Lexi
I wake up to the smell of bacon and rumbling male voices.
Rolling over in bed, I growl low in my throat. This chick is starting to get on my last nerve. Rule number one of living together: no men at the apartment. Ever. Homegirl knows this is a hard line for me. She knows this will piss me off.
For the last few months, she’s been testing me, irritating the hell out of me.
I toss off the duvet and swing my legs off the bed, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms. Having slept in nothing but a pair of lace boy shorts, I grab my kimono from where it’s hanging off the broken closet door and shrug it on, tying the strings.
Slinging the bedroom door open, I stomp down the short hall, ready to tell whatever loser she brought home to get the hell out. But I stumble to an abrupt halt when I find not one but three men inside the tiny apartment.
One of them is dressed impeccably in a fitted black suit, seated on the worn, ugly green couch with one leg propped up on the other as he flips through a Vegas magazine. Early thirties, maybe. Blindingly good-looking, with that whole inky black hair, razor-sharp jawline and olive skin thing going.
The other two, in the kitchen, are semi-casual in suit jackets and slacks. One is at the stove making eggs and bacon, the other sipping coffee from my Betty Boop mug.
The most alarming of all, however, is that Ellie is nowhere to be seen. Fear settles in the pit of my stomach like a jagged rock. We’re in trouble.
“Ah, she’s up,” The Suit says. His voice is disconcertingly sexy, like flaming sambuca. He slaps the magazine shut and tosses it on the rickety coffee table, then gestures to the small, two-seater eating table that separates the kitchen from the living room. “Sit. Have some breakfast.”
When I don’t move, he smiles, but it’s as lethal as a pulled hand grenade. “Sit. Now.”
On shaky legs, I walk over to the table and sit down.
Man One sets a plate of eggs and bacon in front of me. “Eat.”
I look down at the food then up at Man One. He’s so big his neck is almost nonexistent. “D-Did you put something in it?”
He picks up a piece of bacon from the plate and pops it in his mouth.
Point taken. But still… “I’m vegan,” I lie.
“In that case, that’s vegan bacon and free-range eggs,” he replies. “Eat.”
A lie for a lie.
If the food isn’t poisoned, why are they so insistent on me eating? Who eats when they’re terrified to the point of shitting their pants?
The Suit straightens up from the couch and strides over to the table, taking the seat across from me. He crosses his legs as if he hasn’t a care in the world. It’s clear he’s the boss, the one to be careful with.
Tentatively, I pick up the fork and poke at the eggs, then nervously shovel some in my mouth.
From his jacket pocket, The Suit pulls out his phone, taps something on the screen, then flips it around so I can see. It shows a video feed of an empty room with a cot. Curled up on the cot with her knees to her chest is a woman. The camera angle is from above so I’m unable to see her face, but I know it’s Ellie because the dress she’s wearing is mine, plus I recognize her purse and shoes on the floor.
“Do you know her?” he asks me.
I stare at the screen, contemplating if I should lie and get the hell out of dodge. But as much of a pain in my ass Ellie has become, I can’t do that to her.
“She said she works for you,” he goes on when I take too long to answer. “That you sent her to steal from my business.”
Whoa, what the hell? Way to throw me under the bus, Ellie.
I force out a scoff. “Look at me. Look at where I am. Do I look like anyone’s boss?” I make a show of eying him up and down. “You are what a boss looks like.”
He sniffs and sets the phone facedown. “You do not remember me, Lexi Flores. But I remember you. I have you in our system. Twice you were thrown out of Black Gold some years ago, and ultimately banned.”
“Yours and every other casino in Vegas. That doesn’t mean I’m anyone’s boss. I’m broke as fuck and borderline homeless.”
“That makes you desperate.” He rubs his jaw. “And desperate people make stupid and fatal errors. Like trying to steal from me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Shut up.” The words are said so deceptively gently that they induce more fear in me than a roaring shout with a slammed fist to the table would have.
I have no idea who these men are, but their lack of overt intimidation and weapon brandishing scares me far more than if they’d put a gun to my head. Their cool confidence and causal ease tells me they aren’t just a bunch of gutter goons. No, this man in front of me is someone important. And I’m in deep, deep shit.
“Your girl tried to cheat us forty-six thousand last night,” he tells me. “You are not new to this, so I am sure you know how this works. You are to bring me double that in forty-eight hours. You pay, you get her back. You do not pay, and I put her in a crate and ship her off on a boat.”
I hiccup. Holy freaking shit. That’s almost one hundred thousand dollars. “I-I’m not—I-I don’t have that kind of money.”
He looks around the shitty apartment and nods slowly. “I believe you
, but I trust you will get it. Because now you are twice as desperate than you were before. As my mama used to say, ‘when trouble hits you, even a newborn’s shoe will fit you’.” He straightens and produces a card from his jacket pocket. “Call me when you are ready to make the exchange.”
He nods at the other two and starts to leave, then stops and, without turning to look at me, says, “It goes without saying, no cops. Not only will they not be able to help you, but if you get them involved you will have someone else to deal with. And trust me, I’m the nice one.”
I’m left staring at the door long after they’re gone, my emotions running amok, from dread, to disbelief, to worry, to anger.
Anger lingers the longest.
Anger at Ellie.
For not listening to me. The stupid bitch never listens!
We had a plan. We had a goddamn plan. Small wins. Big losses. Keep our heads down. Stay under the radar. What part of that was so damn hard for to understand?
We were barely surviving, and now I’m supposed to come up with almost a hundred thousand dollars to save her dumb ass?
Where…? How…?
Wired with anxiety, I glance down at the card in my hand. It’s a plain white rectangle with nothing more than a name in small black print. Stefano Castello. I flip it over to check for a phone number or address but there’s none. Instead are the words, Just ask.
What kind of card is this? How am I supposed to reach him without a number?
Feeling like my head is about to explode, I set the card down, take a deep breath, then slowly release it on a count of ten.
I pick up the fork and continue eating.
It makes sense now why they wanted to feed me. They knew I’d have to come to terms with the fact that I had to come up with ninety-two thousand dollars in forty-eight hours, and that’s not a feat a broke bitch can pull off on an empty stomach.
How thoughtful.
Chapter FOUR