“You run the SOS Las Vegas website, don’t you?” A hint of the Haitian lilt that lingered from Martine’s childhood shone through in her voice, as it often did when she was upset.
“I do.”
“Why?”
Carmen was silent for a moment. “When I graduated, I had a half-dozen job offers from the private sector. We’re talking six-figure salaries, full benefits, almost total autonomy to run my own projects.” She dropped her bag to the asphalt with a thump. “I chose law enforcement because I wanted to do some good. I wanted to make a difference—but how much of a difference do we really make? I’ve seen murder charges dropped on a technicality, child abusers plea down to joke sentences, people who are provably guilty declared innocent by idiot juries. What’s the point?”
“We can’t win every time,” Levi said, though he empathized with Carmen’s frustration. He felt it himself every day. “That’s one of the realities of law enforcement. But that’s not why we do this. We do it because—because it needs to be done. Even if we only came out on top ten percent of the time, it would still be worth doing.”
“So we’re just supposed to accept that there are monsters running free who we’re powerless to stop? You know, Matthew Goodwin may have skipped bail, but his friends didn’t. They raped an unconscious girl at a frat party and pled down to five years each. If they behave themselves in prison, they’ll serve half that time. Two and a half years for devastating a woman’s entire life.”
Levi shot Martine a helpless glance. She gave him a grim look in return, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“And you can’t tell me that men who would do something like that once won’t do it again.” Carmen’s eyes were fever-bright. “Anyone who could treat a human being that way is barely human themselves. Some crimes are beyond redemption. Some people can’t be changed or saved.”
“Carmen—”
“There’s one thing we know for sure,” she barreled on, her voice gaining force and volume with every word. “Matthew Goodwin will never hurt anyone again. And neither will Terry Allen. God, what he was doing wasn’t even illegal!”
“What happened to you, Carmen?” Martine said softly.
Carmen spun toward her, breathing hard. Her jaw worked for a second before she said, “Not me. My brother. He was mowed down in a pedestrian crosswalk by a drunk driver. The guy struck a plea bargain and barely did a year before he walked. Meanwhile, my brother will deal with the fallout of a traumatic brain injury for the rest of his life.”
“Not unlike the Benjamin Roth case,” said Levi. Roth had been the Seven of Spades’s fourth victim, a drunk driver who’d killed a young man and received a ridiculously light sentence thanks in large part to corrupt DDA Loretta Kane. “Is that when the Seven of Spades reached out to you? After they murdered Roth?”
Carmen tensed and said nothing. Levi nodded.
“It’s not that I don’t understand the appeal of vigilante justice,” he said. “Trust me, I get it. But there have to be boundaries. There have to be lines the good guys won’t cross no matter what. Otherwise, what’s stopping us from becoming monsters ourselves?”
Her only response was a scowl. She didn’t agree with him and probably never would. Her experiences had scarred her too deeply, and somehow the Seven of Spades had known and taken advantage of that.
His heart ached as he pulled out his handcuffs. “Carmen Rivera, you’re under arrest for obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting multiple homicides.”
“Excuse me, sir? Are you okay?”
Startled, Dominic straightened up on the bench he’d claimed for himself in Harmony Park. The sun was just beginning to rise, but he could make out a young woman in running gear standing fifteen feet away, jogging lightly in place. She was eyeing him with concern but also holding a tube of pepper spray in one hand—not a bad idea for someone out running in Vegas before dawn.
“I’m fine, thanks.” He’d been sitting hunched over his knees, so she might have thought he was sick or injured. Summoning the most charming smile he could manage, he added, “Rough night.”
She returned the smile and nodded, but rather than continue past him on the sidewalk, she headed back the way she’d come.
Smart woman.
Dominic dropped his eyes back to the object in his hands: a piece of plastic the size and shape of a credit card in a shiny gunmetal gray, heavier than it looked. He turned it over and over, worrying it with his fingers.
His resolution to keep his gambling under control had fallen apart as quickly as he’d made it, and he’d been spiraling ever since Levi had walked out.
He was self-aware enough to understand why: He was ashamed of the way he’d acted. Shame made him feel worthless. Gambling gave him a fleeting sense of power—an illusion of competency and control—that shunted those painful feelings aside for a while. But when that was all over and reality came crashing back, he ended up even more ashamed than before. It was a vicious cycle from which he couldn’t break free.
At least somewhere in the blur of the past two days he’d been able to lock down his invite to Volkov’s VIP poker tournament. He tilted the card at just the right angle to reveal three lines of shimmering silver script: a date, a time, and an address.
All he had to do was make it through one more week. He’d wear a button camera to the tournament and get hard proof of the Vegas luminaries bankrolling the illegal casinos. That, plus the evidence he’d already collected and whatever Jessica could bring him, should be more than enough for the LVMPD to move on Volkov and his partners.
But even if it wasn’t, Dominic was done come this Friday. No matter what, after the tournament he’d turn everything he had over to Levi and tell him the whole truth. He just had to hang in there for one more week.
He glanced at his watch and groaned. He’d left Rebel alone for hours; no doubt she was going nuts. He had to go home and spend some time with her—maybe they’d go on an early-morning run of their own.
Then he needed to see Levi, because he couldn’t wait a week to apologize.
“All right, I’m coming, fuck!” Levi called as he stumbled out of his bedroom toward the front door. He looked through the peephole, sucked in a breath, and gave serious consideration to ignoring his visitor and going back to bed.
In the end, maturity won out. He disengaged the alarm and swung the door open.
Dominic was standing in the hallway wearing track pants and an old, worn T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He was holding a bouquet of white flowers in one hand and Rebel was sitting beside him, her tongue lolling out as she panted happily.
Dominic looked Levi up and down, blinked, and said, “Were you asleep?”
“It’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday.”
“You never sleep past seven unless . . .”
Dominic trailed off. They both knew what he was thinking: Levi only slept late when he’d been well and truly fucked the night before. Yet there was no accusation in Dominic’s tone. He just sounded surprised.
Levi crossed his arms. “I know you’ve had your head too far up your own ass to notice, but this hasn’t been a great week for me.” It hadn’t been a great month, really. Hell, aside from his relationship with Dominic—which wasn’t exactly a balm to his soul at the moment—this had been a pretty shitty year.
“I’m an asshole.” Dominic met Levi’s gaze without flinching. “What I said to you on Thursday was horrible, and there’s no excuse. I didn’t mean any of it. I had somewhere to be and I was trying to get you to leave without asking any questions.”
Taken aback by the directness of the apology and its implications, Levi could only say, “Why didn’t you want me to ask questions?”
“I can’t tell you that right now. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything in a few days, but I need more time.”
Levi narrowed his eyes. He understood the need to keep sensitive information compartmentalized even from one’s partner; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Dominic should have k
nown he understood. If Dominic had to be somewhere else with no questions asked, all he had to do was tell Levi that and Levi would accept it without objection. It was troubling that he’d felt compelled to manipulate Levi to such an extent.
“I’m so sorry, Levi,” Dominic said again. “I truly am. It’s been killing me that I hurt you.”
“So you think you can treat me like shit, then show up at my door with flowers and a cute dog and I’ll just forgive you?”
Dominic pulled out his other hand, which had been behind his back the whole time, to reveal a bottle of Levi’s favorite sparkling wine. He wiggled it back and forth.
Levi squashed the traitorous smile that tugged at his lips. “Once again, I’ll remind you that it’s 8 a.m.”
“So we’ll put some orange juice in it,” Dominic said with the same roguish grin that Levi had fallen for six months ago.
At that, Levi’s own smile broke free against his will. Rolling his eyes, he stepped aside to let Dominic and Rebel into the apartment.
While Dominic opened the wine and poured them mimosas, Levi turned to Rebel and said, “Guess what I have for you.”
She cocked her head.
“You want some chicken?”
Rebel went berserk at the word chicken, jumping up and down before twirling in ecstatic circles, though she was too well-trained to bark. Levi got some leftovers out of the fridge—he’d picked up a precooked rotisserie chicken on his way home last night—and shredded off a couple pieces of breast meat.
She sat absolutely still save for a subtle full-body quiver, her eyes trained on his hand with canine intensity. When he offered the chicken, however, she lipped it from his fingers as delicately as a baby deer.
“Good girl,” he said, leaning over to scruff her ears and kiss the top of her head.
He straightened up to find Dominic watching him with a small smile, holding out a champagne flute. Irritated, he snatched the glass out of Dominic’s hand.
“I’m still mad at you,” he said, and drained the entire mimosa in one long swallow.
Dominic raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll tell you later,” Levi muttered, realizing Dominic didn’t know about Carmen’s arrest.
“Okay,” said Dominic, his usual agreeable self. “And I understand that you’re still angry. You have every right to be. But Levi . . . we need to talk about what happened on Thursday.”
Levi bristled, already inching out of the kitchen. Dominic put out a hand to stop him, though he didn’t make physical contact.
“I could not give less of a fuck that you don’t top,” Dominic said. “Seriously. It’s not something I care about at all. I don’t know who made you so touchy and self-conscious about being an exclusive bottom, but they were a dick. People like what they like; you don’t have to explain or justify that to anyone.”
Levi rolled his shoulders, his skin crawling with discomfort. He had no idea what Dominic was talking about. He wasn’t touchy and self-conscious about not topping. He just . . . he knew some guys weren’t a fan of it. Like his first boyfriend in college, who’d mocked him for being lazy in bed, pressured him to top a few times, and then scorned him when—shockingly—he wasn’t good at something he didn’t enjoy.
“I’m never going to fuck you,” he said. Maybe hearing the truth stated so baldly would make Dominic reconsider his position.
“I don’t care.”
“What if I do? What if it bothers me that there’s something you want that I can’t give you?”
“Oh, come on.” Dominic spread his hands. “No matter how compatible we are, we’ll never be able to give each other every single thing we want and need. That’s way too much pressure to put on one relationship. I don’t expect that from you, and I hope you don’t expect it from me.”
“I don’t.”
“Good. And while we’re talking about pressure . . .” Dominic took Levi’s empty flute and set it aside on the counter with his own. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about, and it might make you even angrier, but it needs to be said.”
Levi waited with growing apprehension as Dominic stopped and started several times before his next words came out.
“Sometimes I feel like you put me on an impossibly high pedestal,” he said. “Like you think I’m this super-nice good guy who’s always thoughtful and selfless and never does anything wrong—which is flattering in a way, but it’s also unrealistic. I’m human just like everyone else, Levi. I fuck up, I make mistakes, I do petty, selfish things for no good reason.” He paused and winced. “I’m realizing now that this might sound like I’m asking for a free pass to be an asshole, but that’s not what I mean. It’s just stressful to worry that I’ll shatter your rose-tinted image of me forever if I put one foot out of line.”
“I . . .” Levi shook his head, so shocked it took him a moment to find his voice. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Dominic shrugged. For once, he looked every bit as uncomfortable as Levi felt.
Needing some breathing room, Levi paced to the opposite side of the kitchen. “I guess you have a point. I do idealize you in a way, so when you do something that hurts me, I react more strongly to it than I usually would because I’m also . . . disappointed. But that’s not fair. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more conscious of it in the future.”
“Thank you.”
They stared at each other in awkward silence. They’d broached two sensitive relationship issues in less than five minutes at a time when their bond was already strained, and Levi’s old familiar urge to run and hide was as powerful as ever.
Instead, he said, “You look exhausted.”
“I haven’t been sleeping much.”
“So let’s just lie down together and take a nap.” Levi walked back across the kitchen and rested his hands on Dominic’s hips—the first time they’d touched this morning. “We can talk more about this when we wake up.”
Even now, he could think of nothing in the world more comforting than falling asleep in Dominic’s arms. He could tell by the way Dominic’s eyes softened that Dominic felt the same.
“I love you,” Dominic said, and pressed a kiss to his lips.
Levi tipped forward against Dominic’s chest. “I love you too.”
They spent all of Saturday in Levi’s apartment, ensconced in their own private bubble and locked away from the stressors of the outside world—but that world rudely intruded soon enough. Dominic had his mysterious case to return to, and Levi’s plate was more than full. They barely saw or spoke to each other over the taxing week that followed.
For his part, Levi spent fourteen hours a day running from one homicide to the next as a rash of gang-related shootings and stabbings broke out across the Valley. Organized Crime and Gang Crimes were scrabbling to claim jurisdiction, cover their own asses, and point fingers at each other all at once; if anyone was actually trying to address the root cause of the escalating violence, Levi knew nothing about it. He and Martine had been ordered not to involve themselves any further than the individual homicides they were assigned through the usual rotation system.
At this point, it might not matter. The saboteur had achieved their goal, touching off a wildfire of violent crime that had spread to every gang and criminal organization in the city as their power structures continued to destabilize. Local news stations ran stories on the fiasco every day, a couple of which had been picked up by national media outlets, resulting in the public fear Levi had anticipated and yet further declines in tourism.
The mayor was freaking out, which meant the sheriff was too. On Wednesday, Levi passed by Wen’s office and heard the deputy chief of Investigative Services raking him over the coals, shouting, among other things, “We can’t have a goddamn gang war on top of a goddamn serial killer!”
Said serial killer had been oddly silent, however, not even contacting Levi about their ally’s capture. A judge had granted Leila’s request to deny Carmen bail, but Carmen had lawyered up and refused to say a s
ingle word to anyone even though she was stuck at the CCDC for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the LVMPD had a team of tech specialists working overtime to review all the cases she had touched over the past six months to ferret out every instance of misdirection and sabotage.
Put simply, Levi’s job was a total clusterfuck with no relief in sight. So when he was accosted on his way to his car on Thursday evening, he had little to no patience for the interruption.
“Levi!” Sawyer called out, detaching himself from the side of the building and jogging after Levi into the parking lot.
It was rare enough for Sawyer to use his first name that Levi didn’t immediately tell him to go to hell. “What, are you lying in wait for me now?”
“I—” Sawyer broke off and frowned. “Is that blood?”
“What?” Levi glanced down at the reddish-brown smears on what had once been a very fine bespoke Brioni and sighed. “Ugh, it’s not mine.” Seeing the question forming on Sawyer’s lips, he added, “I didn’t draw it either. It’s from a gunshot victim.”
He’d spent most of the day dealing with the fallout from a drug deal gone wrong that had ended with six gangbangers dead and another four in critical condition. He was in less than no mood for Sawyer’s antics tonight.
On closer examination, though, Sawyer didn’t look like he’d come to flirt. He had a permanent sun-kissed tan that Levi suspected was fake, but right now his face was pale and tense. He wasn’t smirking or even smiling, and his body language had none of its usual lazy arrogance.
“I have something for you,” he said, holding out a small envelope.
Levi took it and inhaled sharply when he saw the image of a seven of spades card stamped on one side in black ink. He turned the envelope over to find it unsealed.
“This was on my dashboard when I got in my car tonight,” Sawyer said. “Inside my car, Levi. In a locked and guarded parking garage that only employees of my firm have access to.”
“Did you open it?”
“Of course.”
Levi tipped the contents of the envelope into his palm. It resembled a credit card with some heft to it—like Stanton’s Black Card—except the shiny gray surface was entirely blank. Puzzled, Levi peeked into the envelope, but there was nothing else inside it and no writing anywhere.
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