by Cassia Leo
I laugh. “So, basically, he’ll treat me like a prostitute?”
“Shit. I’m really bad at this. What I’m trying to say is, maybe you’ll fuck a billionaire and purposely on mistake get pregnant.”
I spit my beer out and she cackles with laughter. “You bitch,” I say, wiping the beer off the front of my shirt. “Anyway, I can’t date the customers. I’ll get fired.”
She shrugs and pulls her brown curls into a ponytail as she leans back in her chair. “Can you still give them blowjobs?”
“Okay, that’s enough of this conversation.”
She laughs and picks up her bottle of beer again. “How long has it been since you and Craig broke up? Seven months? You need to get laid. And who better to do it than a billionaire with a tiny dick.”
“How do you know all billionaires have tiny dicks?”
“Because they had to become billionaires to compensate for it. It’s Dick Size 101, honey. Big tires, big ego, big bank account, they all usually equal a small dick.”
I raise my bottle. “I’ll remember that.”
She smiles as she toasts me. “You’ve officially graduated from Dick School. Now, go out there and be somebody.”
I laugh as I sit back and admire the pink and gold sky above the skyline of high-rise casinos. “I plan to.”
3
Cash
The amount of time it will take me to walk from the front door to my father’s home office is not long enough to come up with a good excuse for what happened three nights ago. It’s Saturday. My father should be out golfing or having dinner with some of his sleazy—I mean, respectable business partners. He shouldn’t be lecturing his lowlife son yet again on going clean and presenting a good image for the company. But that’s exactly what he’s going to do. I know this because this is no less than the tenth time we’ve had this discussion in the last two years.
As I walk down the first floor corridor, I pass the door to the music room, the room I used to spend most of my time in until Vanessa overdosed. I consider peeking inside, to see if the baby grand piano is still facing away from the window. I used to love sitting there with the sunlight pouring in, warming my back as I wrote a song. My mom always threatened to move the piano away from the window. She claimed the sunlight was dulling the glossy finish. I wonder if she’s moved it. Probably not. I think she’s waiting for the day she’ll walk in there and find me playing again.
Like that piano in that room, music is something you either turn toward or away from in dark times. I’ve turned away from it, choosing instead to immerse myself in the world of high stakes gambling. It’s a world where the thrill is as high as the risk and the girls come easy. Well, they come easy when I’ve got my cock inside them.
A squat woman in a maid’s outfit comes out of the parlor on my left, her face lighting up with delight when she sees me. “Cash! How come you don’t come here no more?” Her Spanish accent is one of my favorite things about Meli, my parents’ housekeeper.
“Hey, what’s up, Meli?” I say, bending down to hug her squishy body. I take a step back and smile at her. “Ah, you know I’ve been busy with work. But I’ve missed you the most.”
She waves off my comment and the rag in her hand gives off a strong whiff of lemon-scented wood oil. “Oh, you don’t have to be so nice to me.”
“Okay, it’s your tacos I miss the most.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Maleducado.”
I laugh at her insult, which basically means I’m ill-bred or ill-mannered. “Hey, it’s only been, like, six months since the last time I was here. That’s not long enough to forget all the Spanish you taught me.”
She smiles. “Forgive me. I made some of your favorite breakfast burritos this morning. They’re in the réfri.”
“I’ll grab one on the way out. Is my dad in his office?”
“Yes, he’s waiting for you,” she says, turning to walk away. “Good luck, pendejo.” Good luck, asshole.
Nice to see Meli hasn’t changed since the last time I was here. I chuckle to myself, shaking my head as I continue down the corridor, where I find the tall double doors to my dad’s office wide open.
My dad is sitting at his desk with his laptop open in front of him. His silver hair is combed neatly to the side and he’s wearing his usual Saturday attire: a polo and khakis. His face is serious, one of his salt-and-pepper eyebrows cocked, as he reads something on the screen, probably watching the stock ticker on CNBC. Westbrook Oil has been trending downward ever since my latest indiscretion; not plummeting, but slowly and steadily declining. I consider waiting for him to look up, but then I might be standing here all day.
I clear my throat and he looks up. “Morning, Dad.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a good morning. Have you read any of the articles?”
“You know I don’t read tabloids,” I mutter, my gaze focused on the back of his computer screen.
“Yeah, well, you made the Review-Journal today. The business section.”
My eyes snap up to meet his. I’ve been in the celebrity section multiple times, but I’ve never been in the business section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. This can’t be good.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I reply, my voice cracking. “They don’t print gossip in the business section.”
He shakes his head again. “This isn’t gossip, Cash. This is business. Someone leaked to the press that the board is considering pushing you out.”
“What?” I shout, taking a few steps closer to the desk. “They can’t push me out. This is our company.”
“You know damn well we’re a publicly held company. The board has the final say on this and they are tired of the bad press.”
“They’re tired or you’re tired?”
His mouth is pinched in a hard line across his sunburnt face. He spends all fucking day golfing and drinking with his buddies and somehow that’s more acceptable than me having sex and gambling my own money.
I know the situation with the girl who overdosed looks bad, but I didn’t give her any drugs or alcohol. She latched onto me as I was on my way out of the party. I can’t be held responsible for her inability to know when to cut herself off.
“This isn’t about this one isolated incident. This is about everything. Your gambling, your drinking, your reluctance on the Union Oil downsizing. Your judgment is being called into question.”
I laugh at this. “My judgment? That’s rich coming from a board that seats a former cocaine dealer and an acquitted human trafficker. And Union Oil… Are you telling me I’m not supposed to feel conflicted about laying off 122 people?”
He heaves a deep sigh as he sits back in his desk chair and folds his hands over his flat belly. “We can’t afford to hesitate. The industry is changing quickly. There—”
“Save me the speech on the energy industry dad. I’ve heard it enough at the board meetings.”
“You haven’t been to a board meeting in months,” he replies, his face slack with disappointment. “Your economics degree will only get you so far in the real world. You have to show up and do the work and stop forcing other people to clean up your messes.”
I think of the promise I made to myself the other night after the police officers questioned me and my bodyguards. My promise to protect others from me.
“I know I’ve made mistakes, Dad, but forcing me out is not the solution.”
“Son, you’re a liability to this company.”
“That’s bullshit. I’ve made more money for this company than any of those saggy nut sacs.”
He slams the lid of the laptop shut and shoots out of his chair. “You’re twenty-seven years old, Cash! You’re not in college any more. You’re a grown man! It’s time you start acting like one or you’re cut out—of everything. The company, the estate, the will. Gone. You can take your stock and gamble away every dime for all I care.”
I stare into his gray eyes, my nostrils flared and chest heaving just like
his, and I know this is it. I’m finally being given the ultimatum I never thought would come. The threat of being cut out of the family business has been lobbed at me before, but this time it’s different. If my dad is getting pressure from the board, he can’t forgive me the way he always does.
I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly, gritting my teeth as I realize it’s time for supplication. “What do I need to do…to make this right?”
He shakes his head, his mouth taut with disappointment. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done.”
“There has to be,” I reply with sudden desperation. “I can go to rehab. Gambler’s anonymous.”
“Again?”
The desperation quickly turns to frustration. “What do you want?” I demand. “Just name it, I’ll do it.”
He narrows his eyes at me, pausing to think about this before he takes a seat in his desk chair again. “Where is this coming from? Why am I supposed to believe this time you’ll finally change?”
I let out a deep sigh and look around the room. My father’s office is flooded with natural light from the wall of French doors to my right and the eight-foot-tall windows behind him. The wall to my left is lined with modern white bookcases that stretch all the way to the fifteen-foot ceiling. But I don’t give a shit about any of this. I don’t care about losing my job because of the money. I’m already a billionaire. In fact, I was born a billionaire.
If I take my trust fund and my stock, I could buy myself a private island and build my own village, with a casino, and still live comfortably for the rest of my life. But, like I said, I don’t give a shit about the money. It’s the project I’ve been working on with Kevin Massey I’m worried about.
I met Kevin at a blackjack table in the high limit room at the Aria hotel. He was wearing a T-shirt with a logo of some beach resort and his hat was on backwards. Looked like a typical Vegas tourist, but I could tell right away that he didn’t belong there. His hand trembled as he placed a single $1,000 chip on the table. All I could think was this guy was either betting his life savings, trying to pay off a debt, or he was only there to scope me out.
Now, I’m an attractive guy. In a well-cut suit, I’ve been told I look like a young James Dean — the actor, not the porn star. I’m used to getting hit on by gay men. But this guy didn’t look gay. He looked nervous. So, my next suspicion was the next most common reason I’m approached by men. I thought he was a relative of a jilted lover or someone I’d laid off during the Union Oil budget cuts. That suspicion turned out to be wrong, as well.
Kevin Massey stuttered a bit as he struck up a conversation with me about the crisis of a lack of clean energy in Africa, particularly the country of Chad. But I listened intently and we took the conversation away from the blackjack table.
We had a few drinks in the bar while discussing his project to bring clean, renewable energy to millions of sub-Saharan Africans. He was passionate and smart, two of the three qualities I look for when deciding whether or not to invest in something. The third quality being honesty. I appreciated when Kevin admitted that he came to me because of rumors he’d heard that I was a dissenting voice on the Westbrook Oil board of directors.
For the past seven months, Kevin and I have been working on developing a solid proposal to present to the board. We need at least a $3.1 billion-dollar investment in Collectric, Kevin’s company, to get the project going. But if I’m kicked off the board, all our work will have been for nothing, and all the investors that Kevin turned down over the past seven months may not be too keen to work with him again.
I look my dad in the eye and I know I can’t tell him about the project until we’re ready. He’s never been especially great at seeing the potential in clean energy, especially in foreign countries. But I have to find a way to buy Kevin and me some time.
“You can’t fire me,” I declare, standing up straight.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because I’m getting married.”
He laughs. “Son, I don’t have time for jokes.”
“This isn’t a joke. I’m getting married and I planned on bringing her to meet you next month. She’s on vacation in Europe for the next few weeks.”
He shakes his head. “This is not the kind of thing you can lie about just to buy yourself some time.”
“I’m not lying. As soon as she gets back from Europe, we’ll plan a meet and greet.”
He leans back in his chair. “Well, if she’s coming back in a few weeks, you can bring her to the company retreat at Lake Las Vegas. If the board sees you’re ready to settle down, that could make a real impression on them.”
I swallow hard as I try to keep the panic from registering on my face. “Sounds great. We’ll be there.”
I turn on my heel and set off to find myself a wife.
4
Kara
After four days of on-the-job training with a dealer who is known to everyone at the Billionaire Club solely as Dragon, it’s Saturday and it’s time for me to fly solo. Dragon winks one of his slanted eyes at me as I walk across the casino floor toward my table. I nod at him, making sure to keep our interactions serious in front of the customers. But I have to admit that this is difficult when I’m walking through a roomful of billionaires.
There are only four slot machines in this casino: two require a $100 bet per spin, one requires $1,000, and the other has a minimum bet of $10,000. The entire club is shaped like an eight—or maybe more like an infinity symbol—with two separate rooms.
The Blue Pill is the room where you’ll find the four slot machines, a smoking lounge area, two pool tables and dartboards, a lavish bar, a restaurant, a stage for performers where a Marilyn Monroe lookalike is titillating a crowd of wide-eyed men, and about a dozen tables with a minimum bet of $25. In The Blue Pill, the max bet you’ll find at a blackjack table is a $500 purple chip.
The Red Pill is the room where the really high-stakes gambling takes place. And that’s exactly where I’m headed.
All eyes are on me as I make my way through The Blue Pill. Even a couple of men with women by their side sneak a glance in my direction. I’m only the second female dealer to work in The Red Pill, and Mick has told me that Jessie and I will not work the same shifts. Apparently, Jessie is very competitive and refuses to work with other women. I don’t mind. One less woman in The Red Pill probably means more tips for me.
I follow the curved outer wall until I reach the corridor adjoining the two rooms. The walls of the thirty-foot-wide arched corridor is made to look like a rabbit hole. The rough hewn walls are lined with mirrors and swirling lights, so it actually feels as if I’m falling through the corridor. A laughing couple surpasses me on their way to The Red Pill. The man is wearing a fedora that reminds me of the hat my dad used to wear when he first started getting sick. The hair loss hit his ego pretty hard, until he recently became too sick to care.
My dad was once as handsome as Frank Sinatra, and he was a notorious ladies man. I remember my mom and dad getting into blowout fights at three in the morning, my mom demanding to know where he’d been and who he was with. He’d always calm her down and win her over somehow. My parents’ dysfunctional marriage is probably why none of my romantic relationships have lasted more than six months.
I enter The Red Pill and I can almost feel the breath being siphoned from my lungs. As if people this rich only exist in a vacuum. The sound of Marilyn Monroe’s singing in The Blue Pill fades away, replaced by a trance-like electronic beat. The steady rhythm of the music is broken up intermittently by sparkling chimes. Each table is lit with a soft reddish spotlight. The spaces between the tables are more dimly lit like a nightclub. In the center of the room, water falls out of the ceiling in a sheet of shimmering liquid that disappears into the floor without a drop of splash. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was champagne falling straight from heaven.
My heart races as I realize I’ve entered a whole other plane of existence. A world of opulence and excess, powe
r and pleasure. A society of hard-nosed businessmen, chic celebrities, and shrewd politicos. And it’s my world for the next six hours.
Colorful lights shimmer inside the waterfall, dazzling me as I walk toward the second-to-last blackjack table at the far end of the room. A movement in the corner of my eye gets my attention. I turn toward it and find a guy in a perfectly-cut gray suit watching me. His eyebrow is cocked curiously as his gaze follows me across the room. He looks so familiar. He must be a celebrity.
Suddenly, an image of the cover of a tabloid magazine flashes in my mind. I can’t remember the headline, but I know it had something to do with a girl overdosing in his presence. It’s Cash Westbrook, son of oil tycoon Jacob Westbrook, whose notoriety began when his very famous girlfriend died of a drug overdose on a California beach.
My first instinct is that I have to stay away from him. Then I think about my dad. Union Oil is a subsidiary of Westbrook Oil. Maybe if I’m friendly with Cash, I can expedite my dad’s health insurance claim. That would wipe out at least thirty percent of his medical bills. Is tens of thousands of dollars worth my self-respect?
I shake my head at these crazy thoughts. Even if I could somehow get Cash interested in me—probably by fucking him—I have no doubt I’d fuck it up by getting too emotional the moment I brought up my dad’s insurance claim.
I cast warm smiles at a few more lookie-loos before I arrive at my table. Victor, the pit boss, is waiting with Wyatt, a floorman, and Bert, the outgoing dealer. Bert is ready to hand over the game, which currently consists of two men in polos and navy-blue blazers. This isn’t a yacht club, I almost say aloud as Bert places the shoe—the device that holds the decks of cards—in the center of the table, then claps his hands together and holds them up to clear them with Victor and Wyatt.
I nod at all five men as I take my place behind the table and clap off to clear my hands. Wyatt nods and I pull the shoe back to the edge of the table, where it’s closer to me. The first thing I do is burn a card by taking the top card off the deck and placing it in the discard tray. This isn’t really meant to disrupt the count. Burning the top card is an easy way to get rid of a card that may or may not have been seen by one of the players when Bert cut the deck.