The app opens to four camera tiles, then a map. He flicks, full-screening the map. A small blue dot glows over a familiar block of glass and gold.
The Titan-Wynn.
Atticus leans forward until his glasses slide down his nose. “Are you fucking serious?” He pulls out his tablet and hits a few buttons. “She walked in through the front doors at seven,”Atticus says, calm now that he has facts to hold. “Booked a suite under her name. The front desk didn’t blink.”
“They wouldn’t,” I say. “She saves them. Gives them more of her time and attention. More than we do.” It isn’t false modesty. It’s a ledger entry. They trust who shows up in their language. Loyalty we can’t buy, and wouldn’t try to take away from her.
Atticus zooms the map a hair. The dot sits at the lobby’s breastbone. “She’s been on property all day,” he adds. “She sent four memos to front office staff from a house account and one to housekeeping that made Rosa cry in a good way.” He flicks the screen on the tablet. A camera tile expands—lobby, south angle. For a second it’s just guests and staff and water and light. Then she steps into frame like the building has been holding its breath, just waiting for permission.
Phoenix.
She’s in flats and a simple dress that moves when she does, hair up in a knot that dares the day to try her. Zeus heel-walks next to her, tail confident, leg still bandaged but held like he doesn’t remember it. Security shadows her without crowding. Staff straighten the second they clock her. Phones lower. Heads lift. The room adjusts to her like a tide.
“I think it means she loves us,” Conrad says, and for a second all of us are twenty and fifteen and eight years old at once, realizing a thing we didn’t know you could say out loud.
Atticus scrubs his face again, grinning now because he can. “Or she loves the casino and we’re lucky enough to come attached to it.”
“Both can be true,” Storm says, mouth flickering. “Let’s not argue with the version that lets us keep breathing.”
I grin like a man who just remembered what winning feels like and toss the keys to Conrad. “You sober enough to drive?”
He catches the keys without looking. “I am now.”
We move—out the roll-up door, into the heat, tires biting pavement. Atticus fires off three calls on the line that doesn’t record—manager’s desk, Kendra, poker room—no texts, nothing that leaks. Storm reserves the service elevator and blocks two cameras not tohideus, but to re-angle the story toward brave instead of chaotic.
On the approach, I can’t help it; I look out the window and think about the waitress with the almost-Phoenix face. I feel stupid and lucky at the same time.
“I couldn’t sit there,” I say, quieter now. “Seeing her ghost every twenty feet.”
Atticus doesn’t smile, but his voice softens. “Then don’t. Stand next to the real thing.”
Storm taps my shoulder from the back. “Say it.”
“What.”
“The thing.”
I let my hands settle at ten and two and gun us through a green light like the city winked. “She’s ours.”
No one corrects me.
We hit the Wynn’s drive in record time. Valet parts like water; Herrera ghosts the front because that’s his job. Kendra will have the mic if Phoenix asks and no mic if she doesn’t. The staff has their eyes up. The lobby’s marble looks like a stage someone whispered a blessing over.
It’s time to go get our girl.
30
Phoenix
The wishbone isa liar and an absolute piece of shit that I’m going to destroy with my bare hands.
It looks easy—the shallow cavity, the bright plastic, the cartoon ribcage smiling like it’s rooting for me. The tweezers hover in my hand. I’ve already cleared the funny bone, the bread basket, and the tiny wrench that fucking lives to humiliate people. All that’s left is the wishbone and the heart.
Across from me, Bear—six-four, two-sixty, neck like a fire hydrant—keeps his palm flat on the table and his other hand behind his back like he’s submitting to surgery. Jace sits to his left, barely breathing. Ortiz is on my side, elbows on his knees, eyes flicking between my fingers and the outline of the piece.
We’ve been at this for an hour. Best two out of three, then three out of five, then “fine, queen, run the table.” I beat them all except Bear. He’s their last stand, the mountain they’re hiding behind now that I’ve cleared the rest. The hotel suite’s coffee table looks ridiculous under the game board, a cutout ribcage glowing under a lamp that should cost more than my first car. The buzzer is the same as when I was nine. The stakes are not.
“You sure you don’t want to tap out, ma’am?” Bear asks. He calls me ma’am even when I tell him not to. It lands less like condescension and more like a personal code he refuses to break.
