House of Cards (Tech Billionaires)

by Ainsley St Claire

  The camera follows him back to the lobby and out the front door.

  “We checked with the cab company, and he caught a ride to Serena’s Pawn Shop.”

  “Did you see him come back?”

  “Couldn’t find that. The room is accessed again at eleven forty-two p.m., and the video shows it’s the girlfriend.”

  Kevin switches to that feed, and the woman I met in the lobby last night sticks her head out of the room and searches down the hall.

  “In a minute she leaves her room, and she caught your attention at twelve ten p.m. in the casino in front of table thirty-two,” Travis says.

  “There’s a distinct possibility he pawned her jewelry and went gambling elsewhere,” I say. “Get this to the officer overseeing missing persons on this.”

  “Already done.”

  Kevin clicks a few keys on his computer keyboard and brings up the camera feed outside Queen Diva’s dressing room.

  “Now for the most puzzling one,” Travis says.

  Queen’s shows are choreographed to the second, so we know she should hit her dressing room at nine thirty-eight, which she does. She walks with two dressers following her, one unzipping the costume and helping to remove jewelry and adornments, and the other collecting the pieces she’s taking off. Her security guard, who is standing outside the room, opens the door for her. It’s controlled chaos, and Frankie is nowhere to be seen.

  Queen emerges with her entourage in a different costume in less than fifteen seconds, and then she’s back to the stage.

  “We obviously lose her each time she goes into the room, but no one else enters. I checked with the guard outside her door, and he confirmed that,” Travis says. “Could she be trying to set us up? Trying to get out of her contract?”

  I keep staring at the door, willing Frankie or anyone else to sneak in, but it’s just the guard and an empty hallway. “I suppose anything is possible, but I don’t think so.”

  I ruminate over his suggestion. She wanted this. This is a good deal for her. She takes in half the money we collect on her shows, and she’s home each morning to help her kids off to school and pick them up after and have dinner with them before she puts in four hours here at the hotel. She wants her kids to put down roots, not have private tutors and live out of a suitcase while she’s on the road. With this gig, she goes home every night and makes more money than she would if she was traveling. Something’s not right.

  “Do you have this ready to go for the police interview?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Kevin says.

  “What else happened today while I was sleeping?” I ask.

  “Typical stuff—shoplifter at Louis Vuitton on The Boardwalk, two card counters playing five-card stud, and a man tried to go skinny-dipping in the pool. A typical day at the Shangri-la.”

  I sigh. I need more sleep than I’m getting. I need quality time to sort out this mess with Maggie, and I need to get laid. “At least it’s always exciting. I’m going to check in with Gillian, and I’ll be back before the police arrive.”

  Caden walks out with me, and I text Gillian.

  Me: Where are you?

  Gillian: VIP room 3. Come on by and let our big spenders feel your love.

  I smile. They don’t care about me. It’s the thrill of outfoxing the fellow players. I alert Caden where we’re headed, and he leads the way.

  As we pass the craps table, I notice it’s three people deep all around. Someone’s hot, and the crowd cheers. A tall, very sexy blonde sidles up next to me.

  “Looks like someone’s beating the house,” she says in a sultry voice that wakes up my cock.

  I chuckle. “It happens all the time.” If I asked her, she’d probably join me for a drink. But I only want my Magpie. I consider texting her, but I don’t know what to say. Hopefully after I meet with Christopher, I will.

  Instead, I walk into the VIP room to find six tables packed with Chinese women. Smoke hangs heavily from the ceiling, and they’re deep in a game of pai gow. I love watching them play. They move Chinese domino tiles around and laugh, speaking what I guess is Cantonese. The game makes zero sense to me. I can’t tell which hands are high and which are low—what wins one time and doesn’t the next is strange to me. There’s a lot of pushing, so not a lot of money changes hands, but they’ve all dropped a quarter of a million to play.

  I stand against the wall as Gillian explains who’s here. They’re a group who comes twice a year from mainland China. New money—I can relate to that. Gillian has told me before that these women easily spend six figures each between food, shows, shopping, and of course, the pai gow. This is a big win for us.

  When they notice me, the game stops and thirty women pull out their mobile phones and take lots of pictures. They speak excellent English, and I smile as they bombard me with information.

  “You’re much more handsome in person.”

  “My daughter is single.”

  “You have a beautiful hotel.”

  “How do I get a discount?”

  After their enthusiasm subsides, I thank them for coming and head down to Queen Diva’s dressing room for our meeting with LVPD.

  Travis, the police detective, and I stand around waiting. Usually people wait for me, but as usual, we wait for Queen Diva. She arrives in a flurry. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, and without her wigs and makeup, she’s almost unrecognizable. But it’s still as if the room was black and white and with her arrival came all the color. She shoos her entourage out, including Frankie, and the policeman gets down to business.

  “Queen Diva, I’m Detective Alan Kincaid,” he says, offering his hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says.

  Together we watch the video. As she told us, the ring is on her hand when she goes into the dressing room and not there when she goes out. Detective Kincaid asks a lot of questions—of us and her—but no one is able to explain how the ring disappeared.

  “Queen, as you know, we don’t have a recording of anything in your dressing room,” Travis reminds her. “It might help if we could set up a temporary camera that only you would know about. It could be positioned in such a way as to capture the whole room. The feed would go directly to a drive that is not on our main server, so it wouldn’t be visible to anyone unless you permitted someone from my team or me to view it. What do you think?”

  She nods. “I think we have to. My costumes are brought in by your team each day, so I only see them when I’m performing. If something’s going on in the room, we need to see it.”

  Detective Kincaid nods. “I’m sure this is something you want to share with your family and staff, but I strongly encourage you to keep it to yourself. In my experience, these kinds of thefts are usually perpetrated by someone cozied up to someone close to you, and they don’t even realize it.”

  I can see her wanting to fight the advice, but she nods. “I need to find out who’s behind this and who’s not behind my success.”

  We all agree on a timeline, thank her for her cooperation, and Detective Kincaid walks out with Travis and me.

  “Is there possibly another way in or out of her dressing room that we aren’t covering?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I built this place. I don’t think so.”

  “Do you have any suspects you didn’t want to mention in front of her?”

  I smile. This guy is smart. “We think it might be her husband, Frankie, or someone he knows.”

  “Interesting. I was thinking the same thing.” He smiles.

  When we reach the front door of the hotel, he extends his hand. “I look forward to our next visit next week.”

  He heads out, Travis returns to security, and I go back to my apartment.

  Through an app on my phone, I order pizza for dinner from a hole-in-the-wall place off the Strip. It’s my favorite spot, and I eat and enjoy a basketball game in my underwear, sitting on my leather couch.

  I’m tired, and I hope I can return to a normal sleeping schedule tonight, since
tomorrow will be a long day.

  ******

  The following afternoon, I make myself comfortable on the plane. Squeezing ten hours of work into less than five isn’t easy, but I’m a man on a mission, and I need to get to Christopher. I’m even leaving a little earlier than planned for San Francisco. One of our whales, Kevin Driscoll, was ready to return to the Bay Area, so it made sense to carpool.

  “Mr. Best, so wonderful to share this ride to San Francisco,” he says as I stow my bag.

  “Mr. Driscoll.” I extend my hand. “How was your stay at the Shangri-la?”

  “Excellent. This time I’m leaving with more money than I came with.”

  “Great news. That’s what I like to hear.” Usually, whales tip my staff well and spend all sorts of money—probably more than they ever win.

  “What kind of business are you in, Mr. Driscoll?”

  The flight attendant places our preferred drinks in front of us.

  “I’m in semiconductors.” He proceeds to talk at me, not to me, for the duration of the sixty-five-minute flight. After he explains his current business, he moves on to his past businesses. Then I learn why he loves poker and that he and his wife are no longer intimate.

  The flight lands none too soon in San Francisco. Kian exits the plane before me and takes the keys to the waiting Range Rover. I’ve never been so glad to be off the plane, though it was a gift that Kevin Driscoll talked the whole way, since it kept my mind off why I’m here.

  Kian navigates through traffic on the 101, and before I know it, we’re sitting in front of a San Francisco row house in what Christopher describes as the Mission. All I know is they’re above a neighborhood park and have a stunning view of downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. The last time I stayed in their guest room on the third floor, I could see the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge on a clear day.

  We’ve barely come to a stop before Christopher is outside to greet me and direct Kian to where he wants him to park. “I hope you’re hungry. Bella made authentic tamales, chicken, and her grandmother’s pork green chili. Brother, we’re in for a treat tonight. We’re going to eat well.”

  Bella comes out behind him, and I give her a hug and a kiss. “I didn’t bring anything. I’m sorry. I thought I was making this guy take me out for an expensive dinner. Instead it sounds like you cooked all day, and he’s getting off rather easy.”

  He puts his arm around her, and she smiles up at him. “I’m thrilled to cook for you. I figure you aren’t served many home-cooked meals, and after dinner, I’ll go up to my office so you two can have your secret conversation.”

  I chuckle. Bella is nothing like the girls Christopher dated when we were growing up. She’s absolutely perfect for him—an incredibly smart biochemist, beautiful long dark hair and big brown eyes, and she doesn’t care a thing about the money in his bank account.

  Dinner with Christopher and Bella is a lot of fun. I share plenty of his escapades from when we were in school together.

  “Here we were, from two of the wealthiest families at the Carlson Academy, and rather than attend any old private university like many of our classmates, we went to a state school. Talk about blowing the lid off of their stats.”

  He laughs. “Well, if Hazel hadn’t pushed me, and if my grandfather hadn’t set up funding for my college, I’d never have been able to afford even the U. The tuition was ridiculous. My mother was so pissed at me for emancipating myself. She wouldn’t pay for a thing.”

  This is the opening I’ve been looking for. “Why didn’t Stevie and Maggie emancipate themselves?”

  “Self-preservation,” he says immediately. “My mother was not going to let that happen a second time or a third, and I’m sure she made that clear to them. Plus, we’d always known a son—well, turns out just an heir—in good standing must run the company, and I obviously wanted nothing to do with it, so she had to keep them in her clutches.”

  “So is Stevie going to take charge now?”

  “God, no! You remember that mess with Stevie when he graduated from high school. He was wild, and that didn’t go over well at all. Doesn’t look good, you know.” He rolls his eyes. “And he doesn’t have any business training either. He’s doing great, though. Genevieve grounds him, and they stay far away from my mother down in Key West. No brutal Minnesota winters for them.”

  “I can’t blame him for that.” My heart sinks. “So it’s left for Maggie?”

  “Well, yeah, unfortunately.” He sighs. “I mean, she’ll be great—she certainly knows what she’s doing. We set it up so someone else is running the company, and she just has to be board chairman. She’ll still be mostly focused on the Foundation. I’m sure the marriage to Alex is part of the merger with Elite, but Maggie doesn’t talk to me about that kind of thing.”

  “You could call her and find out,” Bella reminds him.

  “I should, because if my mother is forcing her to marry Alex, that is truly fucked up.”

  Bella stands. “Jonathan, thank you for coming. I need to get some work done. She gives me a warm embrace and a kiss. “Come again soon.””

  “That’s your cue, eh?” I laugh as I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze. “Dinner was truly outstanding. I hope to see you very soon.”

  “I’m guessing we’ll see you at Maggie’s wedding,” she says, looking at Christopher as if transmitting a message with her eyes.

  My heart clenches, and I’m sure it stops pumping for a few moments. We have got to find a way out of this. If Christopher is against it too, maybe we can band together…

  “Maggie’s here next week,” Bella adds as she goes, looking at me now. “Foundation work for Bullseye. They’re working with a local nonprofit on a program they want to take nationwide. She comes out every six weeks or so to meet with the director. This time she’s squeezing in some time with her big brother.”

  “I didn’t know she was due to come out and stay.”

  I need to focus on how to fill Christopher in on Maggie’s situation, but I’m not sure it’s my place. Plus, I’m not ready to admit my relationship with her just yet. Though I don’t know quite what I’m waiting for now.

  “She’s not just a pretty face,” Bella says over her shoulder. “The guest room is ready if you need it, and the guest house has clean sheets for your team.”

  “Thanks, Bella, but we have a flight at eleven.” I turn to Christopher. “I was out of town earlier this week, and everything went to hell in a handbasket. I can’t be out of town anymore.”

  She waves goodbye and disappears.

  “Come with me.” Christopher leads me down the hall to his man cave, where we sit in two leather chairs opposite a gas fireplace. “What’s going on?” he asks as he pours twenty-five-year-old amber liquid into a glass.

  I take a deep breath and prepare myself for yelling and possibly a black eye. “I need some help.”

  “Sure, anything. What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been my best friend since we were five. Your family is my family.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  I take a deep pull of my drink and look him in the eye. “I’m in love with Maggie.”

  He sits back in his chair. I can see his jaw set, and he looks away. I brace myself. He slowly turns to me. “Okay, and?”

  I’m so stunned that I don’t know where to start.

  “Jonnie, you’ve been in love with Maggie since we were in high school. You were more serious about keeping boys away from her than I ever was. Plus, I saw you disappear with her after my wedding. I knew you’d tell me when you were ready.”

  I feel my mouth fall open and quickly shut it. He’s known all along? “Are you okay with this? I mean, I remember you threatening to cut off my balls if I got involved with her.”

  “You’re adults, not ridiculous teenagers anymore,” he says with a shrug. “She’s the one you built the Shangri-la for, right?”

  I nod and stare down at my now-empty glass. “She came to see me a few weeks ago,
and I was ready to ask her to move to Las Vegas. I bought an engagement ring the day after your wedding. I love her, man.” I sigh. “But the moment I saw her, she shut everything down and told me she was marrying Alex.”

  He nods soberly. “So I’m guessing my mother is behind this marriage?”

  “It sounds like she waited until you and Stevie left to inform Maggie that she couldn’t get around the marriage clause—and then she presented her with a ready-made solution.”

  “I have the most fucked-up family. How does Maggie feel about you?”

  “I feel like she cares about me too. For months after your wedding, we’d been flirting and texting back and forth. We talked just about every day until she dropped the bomb about marrying Alex and ran off. Now it’s hit or miss.”

  “What’s happened since then?”

  “She’s shutting me out, though I’m trying not to let her. We’ve connected a few times, and she finally came clean about everything, but she’s convinced she’s the only one who can preserve the company, and she has some sort of stupid loyalty to Alex, so she’s resigned herself to going through with it.”

  Christopher nods and looks at the ceiling for a moment. “My mother has her hooks in everything Maggie does—she always has. But she can’t throw her life away, especially when she has another option on the table—you.”

  I almost feel relieved, but the situation still feels overwhelmingly awful. I sit back hard in my chair. “Help me talk some sense into her. We have to find another way to meet the terms of the will—or get them changed.”

  He gets the bottle of scotch and pours me another glass. “The wedding isn’t until next month, so let me see what I can find out when she’s here next week. That way we don’t tip my mother off.”

  Chapter 15

  Maggie

  It’s been one hell of a week, but it’s finally Saturday. I’m making today a pajama day, but that doesn’t mean I’m not productive. So far, I’ve spent the morning going through my to-do lists for the Foundation, and I reviewed the latest batch of Reinhardt Hudson P&L statements so I’m not walking in blind when I take the job of chairman.