by Hazel Parker
There was just one problem.
My parents kept trying to get me to marry for business or political purposes, and it was driving me goddamn insane.
Every party that we had, my father would have me shake the hand of some man near my age or even a little bit older, all in the idea that once I met them, I would marry in, and suddenly, a house worth a few billion dollars would be worth even more. At worst, I’d marry the son of a politician or an actual politician, allowing my family to do whatever they wanted in the state of Nevada.
It was just so stultifying and boring, though. I’d been given everything I’d ever wanted in my life, and I was tired of it. I wanted to experience the freedom and the rush of doing something that felt almost inappropriate. I wanted to chase the bad boy; I wanted to do the thing that would make my father or mother gasp. I got to do that a little bit in college, but unfortunately, Harvard wasn’t exactly known as a party school.
Now, though, living in Las Vegas was like dangling the world’s greatest pizza slice in front of a fat kid and telling them they had to eat broccoli. It was wicked and ridiculous. And yet, for all that my parents provided me, I just couldn’t find the time or the desire to break free.
If I did—and I was going to eventually—I was going to have to find a time and a spot where I could act with the utmost subtlety, far away from the lights of the Las Vegas Strip.
Right now, I was having to put on a pretty face and amicable conversation for what I believed was the nephew of the mayor of Las Vegas. Oscar? Honestly, I didn’t bother to commit it to memory. There was another problem with this—most boys who had the kind of upbringing my father wanted weren’t exactly the most civilized of men.
“And so yes, I do plan on becoming president one day,” maybe-Oscar said. “What would you say, Natasha? A woman as beautiful as yourself must surely think that the chance to be the First Lady would be a delight. And I know that accent of yours would draw plenty of coverage.”
“Really?” I said. “Sounds to me like a bunch of attention that would be horrible. You see how coverage is of the First Lady right now? It’s like she can do no right. I think I’m good being away from that lifestyle.”
I expected Oscar to get the hint, especially with that last line, but instead, he seemed even more interested after what I had said.
“Oh, but that just means a woman such as yourself could have the chance to redefine what that lifestyle means,” he said with a smirk.
A woman such as yourself. I’ll choose to believe that’s a compliment, although I’ve heard it the other way quite a bit.
“Uh huh,” I said. “Tell me, Oscar, what do you do besides think about politics?”
“What?” he said.
At least I think I got his name right.
“Besides politics? What else is there to do besides politics?”
Oh, Lord. He’s one of those types. Can’t think outside his box.
“Have you looked out a window recently?” I said, keeping a smile so he wouldn’t feel offended—there was some decorum I had to observe if I wanted to avoid getting in trouble. “There’s a whole world out there.”
“A whole world waiting for a good and just ruler like myself.”
I had to turn away so I could cough and roll my eyes.
“That’s adorable,” I said. “Listen, Oscar, you—”
But over his shoulder, I saw my mother coming to me quickly. She had a nervous expression on her face, a look that she usually didn’t get it. Mom was too concerned with how she looked in public to ever allow the outside world to believe she could get nervous; it was source of contention between us.
Which made this all the more troubling.
“Natasha, baby, we need you to come with us,” she said. “Something has happened to Uncle Vladimir.”
I knew this was a terrible, terrible thing to think, especially since I was pretty sure that the “something” wasn’t that Uncle Vlad had gotten his arm broken. But after the initial fear sunk in, I mostly just felt relieved to be leaving Oscar.
What did it say about my life when tragedy was preferable to having yet another doldrum, ho-hum conversation?
Chapter 1: Richard
I blazed out of The Red Door at two in the morning, leaving Walker in charge of clearing up the place, with Mama right behind me.
We headed for the Wynn, leaving our bikes right by the rear of the casino. Barber, Dom, and Pork had already made it over—we were set to meet at the spot where trucks would make their usual deliveries. It was far away from the public eye but allowed us to keep an eye on our bikes as we handled club business.
“Sorry to drag you out on a Sunday night, boss,” Dom said from afar as we cut our bikes. “I figured you were probably shagging a pretty lady. You know, like the kind I had last night.”
“Funny man, Dom,” I said. “Maybe if you spent just an ounce more time doing your job instead of fucking everyone, you could have prevented this.”
“Yeah, an ounce of that is a cure of prevention!” Pork interjected.
We all rolled our eyes.
“Where’s the body?” I said.
Barber led me behind one of the delivery trucks. When I turned the corner, there was little doubt what I was looking at.
The body of one Vladimir Sokolov: one of our most consistent attendees of The Red Door. The letters “DS” were carved into his chest, making it readily apparent we were dealing with a murder from our rivals, the Degenerate Sinners.
If the Savage Saints were meant to represent the luxury and goodness of life, then I swore the Sinners existed to relish in all of the debauchery and cheapness of life. They drank shitty beer, did a lot of terrible drugs, hired women that looked like they belonged at a rehab center or on the streets, and generally lived the fast life of crime. For a while, I just ignored them; to acknowledge them as existing was to give breath and time to something that I didn’t think deserve it.
Unfortunately, activity like this had begun to pick up recently, as if it was their way of trying to have a good thrill or make all MCs look bad. And given that one of the Wynn bosses, Shawn Turing, another one of regulars, did not look happy as he approached us, the Sinners were having some success in their strategy.
“You guys finally showed up,” he said. “We found him like this about half an hour ago. I told Barber as soon as I saw the symbol.”
“Christ,” I said.
“You can say that again,” Shawn said.
Suddenly, a thought came to mind. Walker had said that there was one person who hadn’t made it for the guest list tonight. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that Vladimir was supposed to have come but didn’t. If the Sinners were deliberately targeting men and women who were trying to go to The Red Door regularly, word would spread, and the room wouldn’t have many more regulars.
“Have you told the police?” I asked.
“I’m going to have to eventually; there’s a goddamn murder on casino property,” Shawn said. “I wanted you guys to have first look at this, given that this is club activity. But if I wait any longer, I’m going to be a suspect myself, and I don’t need that. Just… do whatever you have to to prevent something like this from happening again, OK?”
I nodded as Shawn walked off, his face slowly breaking. He’d done a pretty damn good job at staying even keeled, but few men could stare at the murdered corpse of a coworker or a family member for long before they started to break. As soon as he left, I gathered the other officers close.
“We’ve ignored the Sinners for some time,” I said. “I don’t think that’s an option anymore. You all know he was a regular, right?”
“I’d recognize a Russian anywhere,” Mama said. “This boy’s definitely one of our regulars.”
“If word gets out that a regular got murdered, and then more go down… that’s going to cause our business to plummet faster than one of our girls getting a sex change. We can’t be letting this get out. Dom, Pork. I want you two to keep a close ear out to the club
members. See if the attitude about the place changes. Dom…”
“You want me to work my magic?” he said, getting a grin that seemed more appropriate for the club than it did for a crime scene.
“Yes,” I said, sighing and trying not to smile back at him. “Pork, you’ve got two jobs. Help Dom with that. And help Barber in case any shit needs to get taken care of the old-fashioned way.”
“Of course,” he said.
We might have been a higher-end club in a high-end city, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t pull out a page from the other MCs book and resort to classic violence if need be.
“And what, Mama ain’t got a job?”
I looked at her.
“Really,” I said. “Mama always has a job. Mama—”
“Vladimir!”
My eyes turned as I saw an extraordinarily well-dressed family approaching. A woman had shouted the murdered man’s name in a thick Russian accent, and as she moved closer, I noticed an older man shielding the eyes of a beautiful young woman in a white dress. I first thought the girl was a teenager, perhaps in her mid-teens, but when I got a second look, I realized she was much closer to her mid-twenties, or perhaps even late twenties.
“Oh, Vladimir!” the woman, whom I presumed to be the mother of the group, shouted as she ran up and held the body.
Jesus, Shawn didn’t think to tell us that the family was going to be here? The fuck?
I cleared my throat and approached the man.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “My name is Richard Peters. I’m a friend of Vladimir’s.”
“Igor Sokolov,” he said in a thick accent. “Vladimir was my brother. Richard, this is my daughter, Natasha.”
I turned to her and offered a gentle handshake. I could not smile too much for fear of looking insensitive given the circumstances, but she was stunningly beautiful. She had a gorgeous, genuine smile that seemed to light up more than the neon lights around me; dimples that accentuated said smile; gorgeous, tanned skin that seemed almost impossibly perfect; and a certain aura to her that said “dignified, but not stuffy.”
I was immediately smitten, but there was no way that I was going to get the chance to speak to her here. I kept it to a simple introduction and made a mental note to approach her later. If nothing else, it would make for quite a story to have bedded the daughter of a rich Russian businessman.
“I understand, Richard, that you are the owner and operator of The Red Door establishment in China, is that correct?”
Normally, when I got that question, I just shrugged casually, said I had no idea what the person was talking about, and maybe threw a wink in if they seemed like the kind of person who would request a spot on the guest list. Again, though, with a decaying body behind me, that seemed callous.
“That’s correct,” I said.
Igor appeared to stare at me, evaluating me without any subtlety. I didn’t ever remember him, his wife, or Natasha appearing at The Red Door—and heavens knew if I had seen Natasha there, I certainly would have noticed.
“I would like to speak with you later, Richard,” he said. “In the meantime, I need to get my wife and daughter away from this terrible tragedy. Give me one moment, would you?”
I nodded and let Igor walk past me. That left just Natasha and me side by side, and while I hadn’t flirted with a girl in front of her parents since probably middle school, it still felt just as nerve-wracking an idea as it had some quarter of a century ago. I saw Natasha look up at me, but I just cleared my throat and looked ahead, feeling slightly ridiculous.
“Richard,” Igor said, his wife on his shoulder. “The police will be here soon. I know that Vladimir frequented your establishment regularly. Would you mind speaking to them?”
Such a request seemed odd, especially for a businessman to make it. I began to wonder if Igor was sizing me up as if somehow believing that I was a suspect. It was also readily apparent that Igor wasn’t used to being told no.
But I knew that if I stayed in his good graces, I’d have the chance to spend some more time with his daughter. I was not kidding when I said I hadn’t seen a woman as attractive as her in some time, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity go to waste.
“Of course, Igor,” I said. And then I made an offer that surprised even me. “Feel free to come by the Red Door sometime.”
Igor nodded. It didn’t seem like it was in his personality to smile much.
With that, he led them out—but not before Natasha looked over her shoulder, smiling at me. I smiled back at her and would have killed for an opportunity to have gotten her phone number or at least plans to hang out sometime. But it was like being in middle school all over again.
Except, you know, with fully grown adults and not the awkwardness of the teenage years.
“God, damn,” Dom said slowly, whistling as the three of them walked away.
“Don’t even think about it, Dom,” I said. “I’m invoking presidential privilege on this one. I’m getting a first shot at her.”
“You, old man?” Dom said with a chuckle.
“Watch it, Dom,” I said, but I had a smile on my face as I said it. “You can have her sister or her mother.”
“And get murdered by the Russian mob? I’m quite alright, thanks. I’ll stick to the pussy from Spearmint and the Cabaret.”’
“So long as it’s not one of our own or her, you’re good.”
“Wait, you?” Mama said, which drew a surprised expression from me. “She’s too good for you, Richard.”
“The hell you talking about?” I said. “I’m the goddamn president.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mama said, rolling her eyes. “I mean she’s got a good soul. I can see it in her smile. She hasn’t been toughened up by life yet. She’s too sweet. You’re too rough around the edges for her.”
“Let’s give me a little credit,” Barber said. “That girl was looking at me as she left.”
“And as soon as you open your mouth around her, she’ll stop looking,” Mama said. “Look, Richard, I love you. But the type of person you are is not the type of person who is going to get that girl. You’re too focused on the next and too focused on the appearance of it to have something real.”
Those words hit me a little harder than I thought they would, mostly because they were words that I’d actually been thinking about for some time. I was less than a year away from turning forty, and I’d never so much as had a meaningful relationship, let alone been married or had kids. I may have never thought I was going to get married, but the closer I got to the halfway point of my life, the more I began to wonder if maybe I had deliberately closed myself off from something special.
Of course, it was way too early—way, way, way too early—to say if Natasha could fulfill that role. The point, though, was that the type of woman that Mama said I could never have was the type of woman I was beginning to come around to. Maybe I needed someone sweet and kind in my life. Maybe I needed to stop being focused on the next and stop worrying about what it looked like if I slept with this hot girl or that famous celebrity.
They were thoughts that were so raw and vulnerable that I hadn’t even told Mama them. And if I hadn’t told her, I sure as hell wasn’t telling anyone.
“But no, Dom, you can’t have her either.”
“What? Tanya, come—”
“How many times do I have to tell you, boy, you don’t get to call me by my real name?”
“You say that now, but when—”
Mama slapped Dom, who just grinned and raised his eyebrows.
“I love you, Mama.”
“Love you too, Dom,” Mama said, treating his name like a curse.
Before the banter had a chance to continue, though, we heard squad cars pull up. This didn’t worry me, especially since the Chief of Police, a man of Mexican descent named Mario Gutierrez, was one of the few guests at The Red Door who got in for free. But it did mean that we’d have to stay here a little longer.
Mario j
oined about three other cop cars as he hopped out, walking over to me.
“Russian, huh?” Mario said as he shook my hand. “I take it you’ve met our new friends, the Sokolovs.”
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “As a matter of fact, Igor told me to wait for you. Was kind of odd, but—”
“Yeah, they tend to believe people will do whatever is asked of them,” Mario said. “And for the most part, they ain’t wrong.”
Shawn also came down a few moments later, a look of surprise on his face that the police had shown up as quickly as they had. I suspected that Shawn had only just made the call, but it looked like the Russians had beaten them to the spot.
“Listen,” I said, leaning in. “I know that the news of a casino exec getting offed is going to get out. But keep the news about him getting hit by the Sinners on the down low, will you? They’re looking for attention right now, and they’re looking to paint The Red Door in a bad light.”
Mario nodded as he watched the other cops set up a perimeter to collect evidence.
“I’ll do what I can. But there’s only so much I actually can do. Really, I’m impressed you’ve kept that place out of the press for so long.”
“Oh, I’m not referring to that,” I said. “I don’t give a shit what the press says. I’m more concerned about other members of the place finding out and not wanting to keep paying to come. You catch my drift?”
Mario nodded, putting a hand over his mouth as a junior officer came over. Mario asked to be excused and moved to the side for a few seconds.
Mario and the rest of the Las Vegas Police were usually quite good at helping us out. While The Red Door was not well known outside our little circle of high-profile clients, the Savage Saints were a relatively well-known entity, at least in certain circles in the city, and we did everything we could to remain on the city’s good side.
But Mario was right. One murder could be hidden, though rumors were bound to leak through “anonymous sources.” Of bigger concern was the Sinners getting more aggressive in their actions and causing more trouble for our client base, and there was little Mario could do regarding that. The Sinners were notorious for being somewhat difficult to track down, as they moved headquarters frequently and generally covered up their crimes well.