High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) (9 page)

My unit’s on the second floor, which is the only good thing about it. There’s a single window out front and another in the back, in my mom’s room. Both are covered in chicken-wire I screwed into the studs. It wouldn’t keep a determined thief out, but most thieves know that anyone who lives here doesn’t own a thing worth stealing, anyway.
 

I hop up the creaking metal steps and bang on the door.
 

At first there’s nothing except the sound of the blaring TV.

Then I hear the security bolts being disengaged. Slowly.
 

“C’mon, mom,” I whisper, thinking about Jay.
 

I need to find him.

I don’t know how.
 

But an idea’s forming in the back of my mind—

Mom cracks the door open. Peers out. A waft of stale cigarette smoke hits me full in the face. It fills me with the weird feeling of both disgust and craving. Shit. I quit smoking a couple years ago, but the cravings are still hanging out, ready to pounce when I’m stressed. I think I have an addictive personality. Trouble is, I
like
smoking. A lot.

Except its killing my mother right before my eyes.
 

Mom stares at me through the crack in the door. I can only see one of her eyes. It’s pale and watery and bloodshot, the blue long since leached out by the sickness. She used to have bright blue eyes. She’s only fifty-three, but she looks seventy.

“It’s me, mom. Summer?”

The door opens another half inch.
 

Behind me, across the street in an abandoned lot, a junkie-couple is having a screaming match. The woman’s accusing her man of not sharing his dope. Then I hear the soft whoosh-whoosh of my mom’s respirator. “You gunna let me in, or what?”

“You bring smokes?”

“I said I wasn’t doing that anymore.”

“Aren’t you something. On your high horse.”

I close my eyes and force a long breath. “Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“Because I live here.”

“You do?”

I press my hand against the door hard enough to push it open two inches. “Yeah. I do. I pay the fucking rent, remember?”

“Maybe. But I don’t remember asking.”

Then she’s gone.
 

The door swings open.
 

I step inside, careful to hide my busted finger. Maybe there’s another reason I hate coming home. Mom makes it pretty clear she doesn’t want me here. And the place is…beyond a dump. The carpet’s stained and worn right through to the subfloor. The faded flower wallpaper’s peeling off in long patches and the roof’s stained yellow from six decades of cigarette smoke.

Mom is already settled into her favorite chair, the respirator hovering beside her right shoulder like some kind of mechanical angel. She folds her house robe over her lap and pretends to ignore me.

I’m twenty-one years old.
 

I could leave.

Just fucking get my shit and adios. I think, on a certain level, that’s what my mom’s waiting for. She wants her daughter to abandon her so she’s confirmed in her opinion that she’s totally worthless. But she isn’t worthless, and I
won’t
abandon her.

“How many days of meds you have left?” I ask. “Three?”

She doesn’t answer me, so I walk into the bathroom and rummage through the piles of cheap junk spread across the counter until I find her pillbox, then count out the days.
 

Four days. Good.

No matter what I’m doing, there’s always a part of me that’s worrying about money. Where to get and how long it will last and where the next bit is coming from. I guess it’s a little like needing a drug. Your life narrows around it. Right now, even as I strip off my shirt and splash cold water on my face and wet a washcloth to wipe my pits, I’m thinking about what I have coming in versus what has to go out. We’re deep in the red, especially with mom’s prescriptions. I think about who I owe the most to, who needs to get paid soon and who can wait, who owes me favors and who I owe favors to.

The list is heavily unbalanced on the owing side.
 

I stare at myself in the mirror as I wash. I need a shower. But I don’t have the time. I dab a little cover-up on the black circles under my eyes and the bruises on my throat, then reconsider.

Maybe I shouldn’t pretty myself up for Landon Stone. Something in how he looked at me tells me he’s a bleeding heart. A softie. He does all that charity shit. Maybe the bruises will work in my favor—

“Shut the fuck up!” mom yells.
 

There’s a car honking outside in the parking lot, right beneath our apartment. My mom yells at it again, quieter this time because she’s getting winded—
 

The car keeps honking.
 

Shit.

I give myself a final glance, looking for only the most grievous of presentational fuck-ups. Smear some red lipstick on. Smack my lips. I’m not ugly. But I’m beginning to think I look past a due date I’m only now realizing exists. Some kind of youthful glow has slipped away.
 

Some kind of potential.
 

Maybe even hope.
 

I tug my tank-top on and catch my busted finger in the fabric. A shot of pain makes me grit my teeth. Then I stand on the toilet, push a ceiling tile to the side and grab a worn army surplus backpack with a change of clothes and a few other odds and ends inside. I toss the bag over my shoulder and reach further into the dropped ceiling until my fingers brush the cool metal of my handgun, Layla.
 

After the Clapton song.
 

You got me on my knees. Beggin’ darlin’ please.
 

Layla’s weight is comforting in my hand. I feel a little less…afraid, I guess. Her barrel’s shiny chrome and her handle’s bright bubble-gum pink. Like Alfie’s Porsche, Layla’s the only thing I own worth stealing.
 

She was also a gift.

Vito Abatelli.

He might be good for a few bucks—

“Summer! Tell that asshole to shut up!”

I slide the ceiling tile closed, hop off the toilet, tuck Layla into the backpack and walk into what passes for the kitchen.
 

The car’s still honking.

Damn. The guy
is
annoying.
 

I open the fridge. Nothing but three eggs, a few pickles floating in green-yellow fluid and some moldy ketchup. I didn’t even think ketchup
went
moldy—
 

“You eat today, mom?”

“What? Sure. Yeah.”

“Eat an egg.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re good for you.”

Mom laughs, a harsh wheezy sound. It’s hard to convince someone they should care about their health when they’ve been given months to live.
 

I slam the fridge closed, walk into the living room, tug on my boots and and give my mom a peck on the cheek.
 

Her skin feels dry. Too warm.
 

I try not to leave if we’re arguing. I don’t want that to be our last memory. Mom swats at me, then says, “You goin’?”

“Yeah.”

“Work?”

Shit. What day is it? Wednesday. I have a shift at the grocery store tonight. “Yeah. Later.”

“Bring me some smokes, would ya sweetie?”

“Sure, mom.”

I’m at the door when she says my name, and something in how she says it makes me want to stop and run to her and hug her, cry, tell her…just fucking
talk
to her, you know? Like mother and daughter. I might even tell her I forgive her. That I know she tried her best. That I understand this shit isn’t easy.

But all I do is grab the door handle and say, “Yeah?”

“You go to that big new casino?”

“Yeah.”

“How was it? Saw it on the news. Looks real pretty.”

“Yeah, mom,” I say, slowly closing the door. “It’s gorgeous. We should go sometime.”

***

I’m almost running down the steps when the cabbie parked below my apartment flings his door open and hops out.

“You live in 206?” he asks. He’s a bearded white guy wearing khaki shorts and a black wifebeater and a rumpled beige Panama hat that’s too big for him.
 

“Fuck’s it to you?”

The cabbie knocks the Panama hat back on his forehead and looks me in the eye. “I have a message for Summer Mason. You don’t match her description, though.”

“Cuz I’m not her.”

I’m about to brush past the guy, who’s obviously working for Savannah’s, when he lifts a phone and says, “Message is on here. He told me to tell you the password’s the amount of money you almost won at roulette last night.”

I freeze. Think about running. But they I say, “Who sent you?”

The cabbie shrugs. “Just read the message, Summer. Or don’t. I already got paid either way.”

I think about stuffing Layla in his mouth and asking him again.
 

Not cool.
 

So I snatch the phone, punch in five-six-one-zero. The phone opens to a photo. The hair on my arms stands on end.

It’s me getting in Alfie’s Porsche about an our and a half ago.

I scroll to the next image.
 

Me and Alfie heading into his dad’s chop shop.

Then another. Maya entering the shop.

One of the outside of the Las Vegas Police Department. A nod toward my parole—

Then one that makes a small moan of fear escape my lips.

A photo of my mom.
 

Taken from inside our apartment. The camera seems to be mounted up high, in the corner of the living room ceiling—

A weird rush of shame hits me as I think about some stranger knowing about the shithole apartment I call home. Shit. I haven’t been this self-conscious since I was a broke-ass kid and I first realized not everyone runs out of food stamps.

“The douchebag
bastard
,” I whisper.
 

In the three hours since shit went haywire, someone at Savannah’s got into my apartment and planted hidden cameras. I have no idea how they got in without my mom knowing. Must have drawn her out somehow—

The last image is a text message.

GET IN THE CAB, SUMMER. NOW.

The cabbie’s already sitting behind the wheel.
 

Waiting.
 

I look back at my apartment.

Think about warning mom. Maybe saying goodbye somehow.
 

But I can’t think of anything worth saying.

I drop the phone to the pavement, crush it under my boot heel and kick it down a sewer drain, then open the cab door and slip into the back seat. The Panama-hat wearing cabbie doesn’t say a word, just tips his hat back and starts driving.

“GOLDEN SUNS OR golden lions?” the event planner responsible for Savannah’s opening night gala asks me as she lifts up fabric samples for the VIP tablecloths. We’re in the grand dining hall. It’s in the casino’s vast open atrium, set a small distance away from the waterfall that thunders out of the hotel tower. The left side of the dining hall is bordered by the jungle sanctuary. The dense green undergrowth is alive with the sounds of parrots and macaws and toucans. There are other creatures in that jungle. Silent ones who hunt—

“Sir?”

“Neither. Both are tacky as hell.”

The event planner looks mortally wounded. Christ. The shit some people get worked up about—

“Landon,” Rachael says, giving me a disapproving glare.

“Fine do both. Alternate tables.”

The mousy-looking event planner smiles. “Excellent choice, sir. Now. On to the candelabras—”

My phone buzzes. It’s Cole, texting me the Summer’s cab is in motion and my car’s waiting in front of the casino.
 

“Shit,” I say, trying my best to look disappointed. “Forgot about a conference call I have to make with Blue Line management. Can we do this later?”

The event planner nods, but Rachael says, “Our schedule’s overbooked as it is.”

She knows there’s no conference call.

I flash her a broad sorry-sis smile. “Fine. You do it, then. I trust your judgement completely.”

Before Rachael can protest I’m walking away, nodding to a few people as I hurry down toward the exit. My smile feels plastered on. Fake. There’s a feeling building in my gut I don’t like at all. Like I’ve blundered into pit of quicksand and I keep punching my limbs in, burying myself deeper. Like there’s an executioner’s blade hovering just over my neck, and instead of doing something about it I’m looking at fucking fabric samples—
 

Worse, there’s a part of me that’s dwelling on what Blake said.
 

How I don’t have the stomach for this town.

How he
gets
it.
 

Was there a threat in there? Or am I being paranoid—

I haven’t seen Blake since our encounter in the alley, which in itself is cause for concern. Usually the bastard’s camped out at one of his three favorite bars. But I searched the bars after the text message threat.
 

No Blake. No one’s seen him.
 

And he’s not answering my calls or texts.

You’re already dead and buried.
 

Who would benefit most with me gone? Maybe Don Luca Abatelli would get some satisfaction from killing me. But it’s Blake who would really win. The casino would revert to his name. He’d have a shot at taking over the Western Division of the Wildblood Council. He’d rule the remaining Stone pride.

In other words, it’s everything he’s always wanted.

I’ve considered that maybe Blake sent the grifter girl to spoil my soft opening. But I saw the fear in her eyes when Blake had her by the throat, and I scented my brother’s animal aching for a feed.