For a moment, something flickers across her face—concern? Regret? But it’s gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
“Be careful while you’re here,” she says. Leon scowls at her, hearing—as always—a threat, but I put a hand on his arm.
“Why?”
“Because the Gattos didn’t take your hot-and-cold act well. If they get a chance to show their displeasure, they will. And after what happened in Paris…” She shrugs. “We all heard about that. It was a close call, wasn’t it?”
I scoff. “If the Gattos want my head, they’ll need to improve an awful lot.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t take skill,” Dominika says. “Sometimes all it takes is a little luck. And wearein Vegas, after all.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” I reply, my voice light despite her gravity. “And I won’t hide myself away just because some third-rate mobster got his feelings hurt. Besides, if you Colombosdo what you say you will, I won’t have to worry much longer. Correct?”
Dominika almost smiles at that. Almost. “Correct.”
I leave without another word, striding back through the casino’s marble lobby with the same purposeful pace that brought me here. But everything feels different now. The lights seem brighter, the sounds sharper, the air thinner. Like I’m moving through a world that doesn’t quite fit anymore, wearing a skin that no longer belongs to me.
I shouldn’t have come back to Vegas. Dominika was right about that. But not because of the Gattos.
Still, it’s too late to back out now.
Chapter 4
Robin
The hospital hallway, where I drew Adrian aside to speak to him, feels dark despite the overhead fluorescents.
I pace its narrow length for the hundredth time, my boots scuffing against cheap linoleum that’s seen too many desperate families wearing paths in its surface. But I can’t stop moving. If I stop, I’ll have to think about Eva’s offer hanging over my head like a sword, and I’m not ready for that. Not yet. And I’m not ready to hear Adrian’s reaction to my story, either.
His older sister selling herself at auction, bargaining with her body. When I shoot a nervous glance at him, he looks thoughtful.
Not horrified or shocked or disgusted, like heshouldbe.
I told him bluntly, straight out, so that he could understand the real cost of that ten million dollars dangled in the air.
My arms are crossed so tightly across my chest that my ribs ache, but I can’t seem to unwind them. Everything feels too tight—my clothes, my skin, my throat. Like I’m being slowly strangled by choices I don’t want to make.
Eva Novak. That goddamnviper. The way she looked at me in Maisie’s room—like I was a particularly interesting specimen she wanted to add back to her collection. The casual way she threw around numbers that could change our lives forever.
The arrogance of it. Thesheerfucking arrogance.
She thinks she can waltz back into my life after destroying me, after sending me away like I was nothing more than a used tissue, and buy me all over again. She thinks money solves everything, that enough zeros can erase her casual cruelty, get me eating out of her hand once more.
But it’s not about the money, is it? And she knows that.
It’s about Maisie lying in that bed, pale as paper.
“You’re wearing yourself out,” Adrian says quietly from his spot against the wall. His voice is gentle, but I can hear the exhaustion underneath it. Everything is taking a toll on him, too, and that just makes me feel worse.
I spin to face him, and I must look like a wild thing because he takes a small step back. “She’s toxic, Adrian. She thinks she can throw money at me and buy my soul all over again.”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. Hate the vulnerability it betrays, the way it reveals exactly how much Eva Novak got under my skin. How much she hurt me.
“I know. I get it. We’ll find another way.”
“Thereisno other way.”
Adrian’s expression shifts, becomes something softer and sadder. He knows. Of course he knows. Adrian has always been able to read me like an open book, has always seen through myattempts to pretend I’m stronger than I am. He exhales heavily, tugging at the hair curling at the nape of his neck. “I don’t want to save one sister at the expense of another,” he says. “We’ll find another way.”
