Or more specifically, if he hadn’t noticed someone.
Multiple someones.
It had started with a man in a bucket hat, the kind kids wore to keep the sun off their face or grown men wore fishing. The man had been wearing a jacket over a pink polo and had come away from the chip window with a case of chips that said he was a high roller. Max hadn’t thought twice about it until the guy exited the casino a couple hours later empty-handed, indicating he’d suffered a big loss.
At first, Max had noticed it only in passing, feeling a mental note of solidarity with the man. Max had suffered his share of big losses, especially since Abby had left.
But the next day, the man had been back at the window getting another case of chips — and wearing the exact same thing: pink polo, bucket hat.
Max had watched as the guy disappeared into a VIP room, emerging a couple hours later empty-handed.
Then he had Max’s attention.
Max had made a point of returning at the same time in the following days. After awhile, he’d stop being surprised by the guy’s appearance, by his quick loss and equally quick exit from the casino.
It hadn’t taken Max long to figure out that Mr. Pink Polo wasn’t alone. There were two other men who fit the same profile and came in at different times of day, something Max had only discovered when he’d decided to test the theory by stopping by the casino at other times.
One of the men came in between ten and eleven a.m. every day, always wearing jeans and cowboy boots, an old-fashioned Western shirt with metal snaps. The other one usually showed up between eleven and midnight, his chosen costume gray trousers and a black shirt unbuttoned far enough for the gold chain at his neck to glint under the casino lights.
Max had no way of knowing exactly how much each man was bringing in to the casino, but in every instance, it was significant enough to require a case. Max had been handed one of the cases plenty of times, its contents ranging from five hundred thousand to a million dollars.
It didn’t matter how much the men were gambling. What mattered was that they always left empty-handed — which meant DeLuca was laundering money through Jason and the Tangier.
It didn’t surprise Max. It only stood to reason that Jason was in deep with the DeLuca family. The DarkNet games carried a lot of risk, even more than money laundering, which was difficult to prove and required years of surveillance by the FBI.
The fact that Jason had hosted the games meant that he had a lot at stake, more than the fee he was collecting from players at the game. Had Fredo DeLuca forced him to clean their money? To host the games?
Max thought of the shine in Jason’s eyes, the smug set of his mouth when he’d agreed to let Max in on the games with the stolen cars provided by Nico.
No one was twisting Jason’s arm. He was working with Fredo DeLuca for more money.
More power.
It wasn’t enough that he’d betrayed Jason’s father by staging a hostile takeover of Cartwright Holdings, a move that had been the beginning of the end for Max’s father. It wasn’t enough that he’d built an empire by the time he was twenty-eight, that he was the youngest casino owner in town, that he’d been featured on the cover of every magazine from Wired to Time to Fortune.
It hadn’t even been enough to become a criminal by working with the DeLuca family.
Jason had wanted Abby, too.
Max couldn’t prove that Jason had known about the escalation of Max and Abby’s relationship — as far as Max knew, Abby hadn’t told Jason about them — but it made sense.
The week before Abby’s exodus from Vegas, Max almost positive he’d seen Jason at the Tangier. He’d been with Abby, waiting at the bar while she went to the casino’s executive offices to sign a check — part of her job as Director of Finance for the casino. Max had bent to kiss her when she’d returned to the bar, and when he’d straightened, he’d been sure he’d spotted Jason in the crowd.
Less than a week later, Abby had been gone.
She’d left behind the video footage of Max at the DarkNet game, footage that could only have come from Jason. Max had been swept up in the FBI’s raid of the game while Jason and George Filippovic, Jason’s money courier, were mysteriously absent.
Max blinked as the croupier cleared the table of chips. He had no idea how many turns of the wheel had passed while he’d been lost in thought. Had it been just the one? Or had he been mindlessly placing bets while he’d been thinking about the decimation of his life?
About Abby?
He refocused on the cashier’s cage against one wall of the casino in time to see Mr. Pink Polo get in line. Max stood, tipped the croupier, and cleared his chips.
“Good luck,” he told the woman, settling back in her chair after placing her next round of bets.
“You too, kid.”
She said it even though he was leaving the table, like she knew firsthand that whatever luck he’d needed in the casino was nothing compared to the luck he needed outside of it.
“Thanks.”
He got in line at the cage behind a forty-something woman in jeans and heels. Mr. Pink Polo was in front of her, waiting for his turn.
Damn. Max should have left the roulette table sooner. He’d been hoping to get directly behind the guy. It didn’t guarantee a look at his chips — the casinos purposefully set up velvet ropes well back from the window in the name of privacy — but it might have given him a chance.
Now he couldn’t see much of anything, and he watched as the man stepped up to the cage and stuck a hand inside his jacket. He set down something that must have been cash, the rest of the transaction a series of movements barely hinted at from Max’s vantage point.
A moment later, the man turned away from the window. He was holding another chip case as he headed past the line for the cage. Max caught a glimpse of a wide face with coarse features, a nose that had been broken too many times, thinning gray hair.
He waited until the man was out of sight to step out of line and head for the door. His mind worked as he wound his way through the rows of gaming tables, the electronic music and beeping of the machines a backdrop to his journey.
He didn’t know what his newfound information about the Tangier meant for his operation with the Syndicate, but for the first time in a month, he felt something like motivation.
There was one and only one upside to the fact that Abby had left town: now Max could destroy Jason without a second thought.
Two
Abby sat on the sand watching as two little girls laughed and squealed in the water. They must have been sisters, one of them slightly taller than the other, both under the watchful eyes of a woman in a wide-brimmed sun hat who wasn’t even trying to read the book at her side.
Abby didn’t blame her. The girls were mesmerizing, their joy so contagious that Abby found herself smiling even though she was alone.
She’d managed a smile here and there since her arrival in Mexico, but it was always for the sake of someone else: the concierge who arranged for a guide to take her through the nearby Mayan ruins, the front desk clerk who took her money for another week’s accommodations, the toothy young woman who sold Abby her coffee when she managed to go into town.
But when she was alone, there was no pretending. Then the loneliness would close in around her, Max’s absence opening like an ancient and endless cave in her heart.
She’d spent the first week crying herself to sleep, running over everything that had happened between them. When that didn’t give her any hint about what Max had been involved in, she’d gone further back, replaying every Friday date at Herbs & Rye, every text, for clues.
It hadn’t helped. In her mind’s eyes, she’d seen Max as he’d always been to her — kind, funny, beloved. He’d gambled too much, of course, and slept around, but there had been no trace of the man who would trade the lives of women or illegal weapons or drugs that might eventually find their way into the hands of children.
She hadn’t wanted to believe it
when Jason had given her the video footage, but it had been right there in front of her: Max at a table, surrounded by other men, all of them trading illegal goods — and people — like it was nothing.
She didn’t know how Jason had found out, how he’d gotten ahold of the tape, but he was well-known: owner of the Tangier Hotel and Casino, builder of an empire that had landed him a place in entrepreneurial history. Someone at the game must have remembered his childhood friendship with Max and clued him in.
At first, she’d been unreasonably angry at Jason. He’d been the bearer of bad news, and when she’d replayed the moment he’d given her the tape, she’d imagined a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.
It had been a demolition of every one of her dreams — the ones she’d secretly harbored over the years and the ones she’d only recently allowed herself.
She and Max had crossed the line between friends and lovers, something she’d always been terrified to do for fear of damaging their friendship. She’d been afraid he would regret it, that she would become just another woman who’d shared his bed, that it would be awkward and weird.
Instead, they’d scaled the walls of their friendship to find something rare and beautiful on the other side, a secret garden made for two. He’d been patient and loving, opening her up to all the pleasure her body — and his — could offer.
All she could think when she first got to Mexico was that Jason had ruined it.
The thought hadn’t lasted long. Jason had nothing to gain by telling her about Max — she hadn’t told anyone but her best friend, Meredith, about her blossoming relationship with Max.
Jason had just been looking out for her. That’s what old friends did.
A warm gust of wind blew in off the water, and Abby realized the two little girls were gone. She looked over her shoulder to see the woman in the big hat carrying her lounge chair and book, her bathing suit cover-up whipping in the increasingly violent wind.
Abby looked up, her eyes tracing a line of clouds moving closer from the horizon. She stood quickly, brushing the sand off the long skirt she wore over her bathing suit. She’d learned the hard way about Tulum’s storms, the way they could sweep in out of nowhere, the sapphire sky morphing into an angry swirl of steely cloud cover that blotted out the sun.
She hurried down the beach, her eyes on the cluster of bungalows surrounding her hotel. It was cheaper than some of the more popular resorts in Cancun or Cozumel, but she’d still spent the first ten days constantly calculating the price of her bungalow, adding together every meal, every drink, imagining her savings account dwindling to nothing.
It wasn’t like her to be free and easy with money. The poverty of her childhood had left more than one scar, and she’d spent the years since college painstakingly paying off her student loans and slowly amassing a savings account that helped her sleep at night.
Now she was burning through her reserve, all the practical concerns of her old life miles away. She’d had the presence of mind to send Jason an email when she’d first arrived in Mexico, telling him she didn’t know when she’d be back and that she understood if her job wasn’t waiting for her when she returned.
He’d sent her a warm email in return, promising her job would be waiting, however long it took.
It brought her little comfort. She’d been in Mexico a month and it still took effort to get out of bed every morning, to brush her teeth and move through each day. It was all she could do to make her way into town for a meal, to wander the beach until the familiar tiredness forced her to the sand.
No, that wasn’t right. Tiredness was too mild a word for the bone-deep exhaustion that lurked in her bones, her psyche. She slept twelve hours a day, woke up long enough to drink a cup of coffee and pick at some of the town’s fresh fruit. She might get in a couple hours dozing in the sun before she retreated to her bungalow to take a nap. Most of the time she woke up close to dinner, rousing herself long enough to make an attempt at dinner before falling into bed again.
It didn’t feel like a vacation, although the scenery was lovely, the rhythmic motion of the ocean soothing. It was a convalescence, every day a difficult step on the road to a kind of recovery she couldn’t even articulate.
At its heart was her sorrow about Max — about her miscalculation, the loss of the dreams she’d started allowing herself to have about them, about their future, now a void she was too exhausted to fill with more hopes and plans.
But underneath it all, there were other demons. She felt them pushing at the bottom of her consciousness like sharks bumping up against the bottom of the tiny boat she was rowing out to sea.
Her childhood, her father’s abuse, her shame.
She’d told herself she’d conquered it all. She’d gone to college, gotten a great job, secured her financial position, even bought a house. She dated from time to time, even managed to sleep with some of the men in spite of the images and memories that sometimes assaulted her.
None of it meant she’d conquered anything. She’d been wholly occupied with her new life, unaware that she was slapping layer upon layer of new wallpaper over paper that was old and crumbling.
It worked for awhile. If she stood back far enough and squinted her eyes, the paper looked smooth. It was only when she got closer that she saw the bumps and wrinkles, the peeling corners, the old paper asserting itself under the new.
It was never going to work, not long-term. She would have to start over, pull off the new paper, remove each new layer until she got to the rotting ones underneath. Then she would have to get rid of that, scrape and scrub, start with a clean, blank wall.
That’s what Mexico was about. About getting enough distance from Max that she could think clearly. About peeling back all the ruined layers of her childhood and facing them. About scraping and scrubbing, looking for the smooth wall on which she could build the rest of her life.
She still had work to do, still woke up imagining her father’s voice in her room, the touch of his hand on her bare leg. But she was learning to face it, to say aloud that he had no power over her anymore. She was learning to feel compassion instead of shame for the little girl in thrift store dresses who flinched when someone touched her. That little girl had been defenseless and alone. Nothing that happened to her was her fault.
“Nothing that happened to me was my fault,” she whispered aloud as she approached her bungalow.
The words were snatched by the violent wind and carried out over the ocean. She looked out over the water, hoping the words might find their way to some other little girl who needed them, to some other woman.
She tried not to think too hard about whether she believed them. For now, it was enough to speak them aloud. She would have faith that eventually, they would be true.
The beach in front of the bungalows was deserted, the tourists taking cover from the storm inside their own rooms or in the tiny restaurant located inside the main building.
Her bungalow sat on a gently curving stretch of beach, the side and back facing her as she approached. It wasn't until she rounded the curve that the front of the hut came into view, and with it, a woman standing near the door.
Abby slowed when she spotted the woman, wondering if she was lost, if she’d confused Abby’s bungalow with her own. It wouldn’t be hard to do: they all looked alike.
The woman was turned toward the ocean, her blonde hair blowing back from her face. She had an elegant nose, a full mouth, and the kind of classical bone structure that was defied by the wildness of her hair, the bohemian cut of the patterned dress she was wearing.
It wasn’t until the women turned to face her that Abby caught sight of the woman’s startling bright green eyes.
She didn’t seem surprised to see Abby. And she definitely didn’t seem lost.
She smiled as Abby approached, waiting until Abby reached the first step of the wooden porch.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “Are you Abby Sterling?”
Abby hesitated, her heart thudding in he
r chest, a thousand scenarios playing out in her mind: Max injured or killed in some kind of accident, her job given away after all, her father finally dead.
“Who wants to know?” she asked, still standing near the bottom step.
The woman laughed a little and shook her head. “I'm so sorry! I don’t know why I didn’t introduce myself first. I think I was captivated by your view.” She descended the three steps to the sand, her eyes an even brighter shade of green up close. She held out her hand. “I’m Angel Vitale. I’m here to talk to you about Max."
Three
Max watched as the two men made their way toward him. He wasn’t entirely happy to see that Farrell Black was with Nico. He’d only met Farrell once, before Max had agreed to work with the Syndicate.
It had not gone well.
Nico held out his hand when he reached the booth Max had chosen at the back of a quiet bar inside the Mandalay Bay casino. “Max.”
Max stood to shake his hand.
Nico was as impeccably dressed as he’d been the day he’d shown up at Max’s house almost two months earlier. It would be easy to underestimate Nico, with his perfectly tailored suits and genteel manners, but Max knew that would be a mistake. Nico had the watchful quality of a jungle cat, his body still and coiled, ready to pounce.
Nico lowered himself into the booth, and Max was unsurprised when Farrell slid into the booth next to him without extending his hand.
It suited Max just fine. Black was an asshole of the first order, something even his tony British accent couldn’t hide. The scar that ran down the left side of his face was a testament to the fact that Max wasn’t alone in his assessment. Someone, somewhere, had taken exception to Farrell’s attitude.
Max imagined Farrell got a lot of that. He also imagined Farrell was more than capable of giving it back. His eyes were empty and nearly black, his energy dark and vacuous. He towered over even Nico, who was imposing in his own right.
Max waved the server over and waited while Nico and Farrell ordered drinks.
Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two Page 2