The Emperor of Vegas

by Ryan Stygar

  “I need to clear my head. Can you have the staff ensure that my gym is ready? I’ll be down for a workout after I finish breakfast.”

  “Of course,” Kiersten said with a smile. “I could use some stress relief as well, I’ll join you in the gym.”

  Jordan hungrily dug into his oatmeal as she left the office. It was going to be a long day without much rest; an hour in his gym was going to be the perfect way to clear his mind before diving into the work of repairing the damage done to his empire.

  

  Ty Marcus looked down at the Gold Fleet from four hundred feet in the air.

  “We’re approaching the bow of the Invictus now, Sir,” the helicopter pilot of said through the headset. “We’ll be landing shorty.”

  “Thank you,” Ty answered through his mouthpiece. “Do you know if any others have made it aboard?”

  “Dimitri Jordan arrived shortly after his girlfriend. I believe you’re the second Lieutenant to make it this far… we haven’t had contact with anyone else.”

  “Watson Lafayette?”

  “We haven’t heard from him since last night,” the pilot answered regretfully. “Buckle up, Sir, I’m beginning our descent now.”

  Ty cinched the seatbelt across his lap and leaned back in his plush leather seat. Above his head, the rotors revved up and then settled into a low whine as the gold superstructure of the Invictus loomed ahead of him.

  “Welcome aboard, Mr. Marcus!” the deckhand said as Ty stepped on to the teak deck of the bow. “We have light refreshments prepared for you in the main dining hall. Mr. Jordan is exercising in the gym below decks. He requested that you and Mr. Jules be ready to meet with him in an hour.”

  “Sterling Jules is here?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m afraid that you are the only two Lieutenants aboard. We are still trying to contact the others.”

  Ty did his best to hold his chin up when he heard the news.

  “Thank you,” Ty said. He handed the deckhand the leather briefcase containing his silver gun and a single change of clothes. “Does Mr. Jordan have a cabin set aside for me?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’ll take this to your room right away.”

  The deckhand ran below decks while the helicopter’s rotors slowed to a stop. Cool, dry air whooshed against Ty’s face as the double glass doors slid open to allow him into the main living area of the mega-yacht.

  Ty found a bottle of vintage whiskey behind the bar and took a seat in one of the large, dark leather couches. Breathing in the smell of leather, cedar, and just a hint of briny sea-air, Ty allowed himself to relax. Last night’s events had gotten out of hand so fast he could hardly comprehend the magnitude of the devastation he’d witnessed. He took a deep drink from his whiskey.

  Every man that had gone into the Venetian with him was dead. To make matters worse, the Petrov’s were still at large; he’d just barely escaped the Venetian with his life while the Russian commandos slaughtered the men in his hit squad.

  A voice called to him from behind. “Glad to see you’ve made it.” Sterling Jules stepped into the lounge.

  “Sterling!” Ty smiled, getting to his feet. “I’m glad to see you’re ok.”

  Ty offered a hand and Sterling shook it with a smile. “Feeling is mutual. You and I are lucky to have gotten out of Vegas alive…”

  There was a moment of silence as the two briefly reflected on their lost comrades. Sterling Jules spoke up again.

  “How was the flight coming in?”

  “Escaping Vegas without getting killed or arrested was the hard part, after that I didn’t have any problems.”

  “Good… good,” Sterling said. He then lowered his voice. “You know, the coming days are going to be hard. We’re all but exiled from Vegas until Mr. Jordan figures out a way get back ashore safely.”

  “I know what I signed up for when Mr. Jordan promoted me,” the young Lieutenant replied. “I’m more committed than ever.”

  Sterling opened his mouth to say something in return, but was cut off by a blood curdling shriek from below decks.

  “What the hell?!” Sterling gasped. A woman’s voice was screaming bloody murder from somewhere down the stairwell.

  “Help! Help! Somebody help him!” she wailed.

  Ty and Sterling took off in a sprint across the lounge. Leaping down the wooden stairs to the deck below, they followed the sound of the woman’s screams aft toward the gymnasium at the stern of the ship.

  “We’re coming!” Ty shouted. The woman’s screaming became even more frantic.

  Bursting through the wooden doors to Dimitri Jordan’s weight room, Ty gasped when he saw the hulking man sprawled face first on the ground beneath his squat rack. Kiersten was crying hysterically over Jordan’s convulsing body.

  “What happened?” Sterling shouted as he ran to Jordan’s side.

  “I don’t know! I don’t….” Kiersten fell into another fit of tears. Jordan vomited across the floor. “He was fine and then… I gave him his drugs and… I don’t know what happened he just seized up like this! Help him!”

  Frothy yellow sputum was bubbling through Jordan’s lips… the hypodermic needle for his steroids dangled from his shoulder like a pin in a massive black cushion.

  Ty quickly found the intercom on the wall of the ship’s weight room and hailed a doctor. “Emergency in the weight room! Emergency in the weight room! I need the medical staff in here ASAP!”

  “He’s not breathing!” Sterling shouted.

  “There’s an AED and an oxygen tank in the back, Sterling go and get them!” Ty ordered, doing his best to stay calm in the crisis. “Kiersten, where are the drugs you were using?”

  Kiersten pointed at an unzipped black bag on the floor which was sitting near the intercom. She then wrapped her arms around Jordan’s wide, shuddering shoulders as he lay unconscious on the ground. “Baby I’m sorry… I’m so sorry baby.”

  Ty knelt down to inspect the black bag full of steroids while Sterling returned with the Automated External Defibrillator and set to work placing the adhesive pads on Jordan’s chest.

  “Preparing to deliver shock… stand back,” the electronic voice rang from the AED’s speaker. “…charging…”

  Ty dug through the collection of vials and needles. Dimitri Jordan had been using steroids for years without any trouble – something was wrong.

  “Shock delivered. Administer chest compressions,” the automated voice ordered. Sterling set to work performing CPR on Jordan’s chest while Kiersten placed a clear plastic oxygen mask on his face and cranked up the airflow to the maximum setting.

  “Please, Dimitri… please don’t die,” she whimpered.

  Ty had nearly given up looking for anything out of the ordinary when a tiny glass vial about the size of a very short pencil rolled out of the bag.

  “Preparing to deliver shock… stand back.”

  Ty plucked up the empty vial and held it up to the light. His brow furrowed for a moment, then hot, bloody rage boiled in his chest when he realized what he was looking at.

  Jordan’s mercy.

  “He was poisoned!” Ty shouted. He held up the vial for Sterling and Kiersten to see.

  The doors flew open as the ship’s doctor and her assistant hurried inside the gym with their gear bags.

  “Poison!” Ty shouted again as the doctor brushed Sterling and Kiersten aside to examine the patient. “Neurotoxin – it was designed to kill quickly by shutting down the respiratory and cardiovascular system.” Ty said loudly so the doctor could hear.

  “How do you know this?” Sterling asked.

  “Because I know who poisoned him… Adam Friend!” Ty hissed. “I swear to God I’m going to tear that bastard apart piece by piece when I catch him!”

  The doctor did a quick assessment and determined that Jordan’s only hope for survival was to get to a fully equipped hospital- immediately. “We need to airlift him back to shore!”

  “Out of the question – he’s a sitting duck in a hospital!”
Sterling barked back.

  “He’ll die if he stays here!”

  “Then so will you!” Sterling whipped out his silver 1911 and point the muzzle at the doctor’s face. “Save him! I don’t care what it takes or how much it costs. Tell us what you need and save him.”

  The doctor shuddered at the sight of the enraged gangster, and then looked down at Jordan.

  “Okay… okay.” she muttered, placing a pair of gloved hands on Jordan’s neck to open his airway. “Help me pick him up and get him to the sick bay, hurry!”

  72

  Red Star Tower, 7:30am

  M orning was eerily quiet in Las Vegas. From the top of the twenty story tower, Lukas looked out at the red-orange glow of dawn against the skyline of the Strip. A warm gust of air breezed past his face, carrying with it the twang of smoke from the smoldering Sumatra Hotel.

  Jutting out from the massive pile of debris at its base, the scorched Sumatra stood like a charred piece of wood from the center of a fire pit.

  Eight full stories lay in a billion ruined pieces on the ground. What remained was a crippled tower that spewed clouds of black smoke into the morning sky like a smoke stack.

  Lukas felt some degree of satisfaction as he gazed at the damage. Setting down his coffee on the short parapet that separated him from the twenty story drop to the parking lot below, Lukas reached into his pocket and uncapped a polished steel flask of vodka.

  “For my brothers in arms,” he whispered in his native Russian. Reaching over the edge of the building, he poured out a serving of Vodka, allowing the liquor to be swept up into the wind for the ghosts of his fallen Spetsnaz friends to drink.

  “And for you, Papa,” he added, raising the flask to the sky in a toast.

  Viktoriya’s voice chimed from behind him. “He sees you, and I’m sure he’s proud.” Her sudden appearance startled Lukas.

  “You’ve caught me sharing a drink with ghosts,” he said, screwing on the cap to his flask. “I’m embarrassed.”

  Viktoriya placed a gentle hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Don’t be. You are as sentimental as Papa was, even though you don’t show it quite as often. It is because you have a big heart,” she made a weak smile at him.

  “How are you feeling?” Lukas asked. He gently traced the stitches on the side of her face with a finger.

  “Doctor Kraineva says I’ll be fine, but I’ll have a scar on the side of my face forever now. That little shit has cost me my good looks.”

  Lukas smiled at his sister. “You are beautiful as ever, Viktoriya. A little crack won’t be nearly enough to change that.”

  “I still want to strangle him,” she scowled. “His existence insults me.”

  “Adam Friend is not a difficult man to find, you’ll get your revenge soon enough.”

  “Easy to find… not so easy to kill. The man is like a cockroach.”

  “Soon.” Lukas assured her.

  He put an arm around her shoulder and she rested her head against his chest. After gazing in silence at the smoking ruins of the Sumatra for a while, she looked up at her older brother.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  Lukas let out a sigh. “Jordan’s tower is in ruins, many of his followers are dead, and it appears that the police are determined to take tremendous risks to bring him down. Meanwhile, you and I are still here, wounded perhaps, but not broken.”

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “I do.” Lukas said, looking out at the rising smoke. “Dimitri Jordan has fallen. James Wyatt has fallen. If there was ever an opportunity to seize control of Vegas, this is it. But I cannot do it without you.”

  “You want to be Emperor.” Viktoriya remarked. “And what will that make me?”

  “Why, the Empress of course. The Age of Jordan is over – now it is our time to rule. After twenty years of answering to a single leader, most of the gangs in the city will naturally step in line with whoever has the strength and inclination to lead them. That is us now.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Not easy.” Lukas answered. “Just simple. Jordan’s throne is ours for the taking; we need only to have the courage seize it.”

  Lukas turned his back on the tower and gazed out at the glowing red sunrise. “This dawn is our dawn. This city is our city. Lukas and Viktoriya Petrov; the Emperor and Empress of Las Vegas.”

  Viktoriya smiled. “I like the way that sounds.”

  A Note From the Author

  I hope you enjoyed reading The Emperor of Vegas. I had a lot of fun writing this story, and it’s a dream come true to share it with you.

  If you liked this book and would like to see more, you can help!

  Each review helps other readers discover my work, which in turn helps me produce more titles. If you enjoyed The Emperor of Vegas, I would be very grateful if you left a review on its Amazon page. It only takes a minute, and it helps a lot.

  Thank you for your support!

  Ryan Stygar