Dante knew this. So did Lucius. So did Adrian. So had…
“Then you go talk to the mayor yourself,” Dante said before a pause. Too long of a pause. “Or, are you up here, throwing a pity party to remember?—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Dante stopped where he was. He knew better than to bring upthattopic. Not tonight. Not on a night when we should be celebrating.
Well, celebrating as much as broken men could celebrate.
“The other thing I came here to tell you,” Dante said after several tense seconds, “is that we got the bribes to the cops taken care of.Allureis all set to go, and we won’t have to worry about police presence weighing down the event.”
“So everything can proceed as planned,” I said. “Lovely. You do good work occasionally, Dante.”
Dante snorted. He knew I was not one to give high praise easily; “occasionally” might as well have been like a normal person giving a standing ovation. But there was a reason I was up here on the seventieth story ofRuby.And it wasn’t because I patted everyone’s back and said good job.
But there was something Dante hadn’t mentioned yet.
“What about the Black Reapers?” I asked. “Or at least Prince and Crush.”
Dante shook his head.
“They’re tough nuts to crack, Cassius,” Dante said. “You can’t threaten them. They don’t give a shit about money, not in the way most people do. They’re content to carry on their lives as is with the women they have.”
I bit my lip and squeezed my arms against my chest. It was a bad habit when I faced something I couldn’t easily bend to my will. Fortunately, that wasn’t very often, but the issue of the Black Reapers was the exception.
Yes, they had never taken over the city in the last four years as I had wondered they might. They had never vandalizedRubyas we built it, they never caused issues with our employees—minus a couple bar fights that led to them being ex-employees; I didn’t tolerate anything that fucked our image up—and even as the Vale family became more notorious around town, they never made any noise. Not directly, not intermediaries.
But I didn’t do well with having potential threats out of my reach. And while the Black Reapers were not a threat today, there was no reason to think that one of their kids or one of the younger Reapers would never think otherwise. And God forbid if they ever got in the way of my pursuit of someone…
“Keep trying,” I said. This wasn’t like the mayor or even the governor, who you could squeeze by the balls with a few well-placed articles or cash offers. This would require time, patience,and a careful touch—skills I hadn’t exactly needed to exercise in some time.
A knock came at the door.
“Enter,” I barked.
A second later, my assistant, Ellie, walked in with a pile of papers. Ellie was an older woman in her fifties, married to some real estate developer out in Summerlin. She was exactly what I needed to keep my operations professional and efficient—effective, damn good at her job, and not at all a temptation to do something stupid. She knew Cassius the billionaire businessman perfectly well and Cassius the man not at all, exactly the way I wanted it to be.
“A feature just published in theLas Vegas Sun,” she said. “Looks like someone wrote a column detailing all the ways you’re the King of Hearts. They went quite heavy on the moniker, it seems.”
“Anything we need to sue them into silence for?” I asked. It didn’t always work, but it was remarkable how many people stood down at a mere threat. I had my limits, of course; I was ruthless, not a psychopath. But there was nothing illegal about suing for what I believed to be slander.
“They say you’re the King of Hearts because you control the hearts of Vegas like a corrupt king,” Ellie said. It was tough to tell whether she was quoting the article or summarizing it. “It says something about how the mayor shouldn’t give in to your demands… something about how the world’s smallest big city can’t stop gossiping about your love life… something about making sure we don’t repeat the mistakes of the King’s Men… and so on and so forth.”
“You know me well, Ellie,” I groused. “Do we need to sue them, yes or no?”
Ellie shook her head.
“There’s nothing in here suggesting you’ve harmed anyone or done anything worthy of a crime. Just that you’re tough and worth paying attention to. I wouldn’t call it glowing, but I also wouldn’t say it’ll harm you.”
“And if it does, it will be the right kind of harm,” I said, nodding. “Very good.”
I didn’t need to tell Ellie to leave. Like I said, she knew Cassius the billionaire well enough. She knew when I had enough.
Aside from my brothers, only one other knew Cassius the man. And… that woman… if I ever fucking saw her again…
“One last thing,” Ellie said. “You asked for a guest list of the women at the grand opening tonight.”
“You did?” Dante said, a bemused smirk on his face. I wanted to smack that off his face.
