My stomach flips at the formal title.
Marquez doesn’t bother looking back.“You’ll meet us in the main suite at eight for drinks, then we’ll eat,” he says.“Adena, Valentina will take you shopping for a dress to wear.Be ready in an hour.”
Jagger’s hand brushes my lower back, the faintest nudge toward our door.He’s playing the role—loyal, unbothered, exactly what Marquez expects—but his touch lingers half a second longer than it should.
The manager swipes our key card, opens the door, and a wave of cold air and perfume greets us.
Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the Strip, where daylight hits glass towers and turns everything blinding white.A private bar gleams against one wall, stocked with imported liquor that costs more per bottle than my rent used to.Two bedrooms, a lounge, a dining table that’s probably bugged six different ways.
The manager murmurs a final “enjoy your stay” and disappears.
Jagger sets the bags down and strolls over to the bar.He opens a refrigerator and pulls out a can of Coke.“I need to put this cash somewhere safe.Should have brought an armed escort.”
It’s an opening I wasn’t expecting and one he’s skillfully engineered, but we desperately need.“Good thing I came with you.You need protection.”
He laughs and downs the Coke like what we’re discussing is the most normal thing in the world.
Nothing about this is normal.Not the hotel.Not the suite.Not the fact that I'm standing here in Vegas when everyone thinks I'm—what?Gone?A traitor?
My chest tightens.
If I let myself think about them all right now, about what they must be thinking, I'll crumple.
So I don't.I just breathe.Trust that God has a plan even when I can't see it.
“You good?"Jagger asks me.
I swallow.I'm anything but good.But I can't tell him that.Not here.Not yet.
"I'm good," I say.
He studies me over the rim of the Coke can.Sets it down slowly.
The silence between us stretches, heavy with everything we can't say.
Finally, he nods.Once.
We both know I'm lying.
Twenty
Jagger
Two blocks off Fremont Street, Vegas sheds its glitter like a snake sheds skin.
The building we're looking for sits wedged between a pawn shop with bars thick enough to stop a truck and a bail bonds office that's been shuttered so long the paint is peeling in strips.No neon.No sign announcing what it is, just an address stenciled in fading gold on smoked glass doors—the kind of gold that was probably impressive twenty years ago and now just looks tired.
This is where money comes to hide.
I pull the door open, and cold air spills out, sharp enough to make my lungs tighten.Inside, everything is concrete and shadows: polished floors that reflect nothing, recessed lighting that makes the whole space feel like we've descended into a bunker even though we're still at street level.
A woman sits behind bulletproof glass so thick I can see the layered edges where the panels meet.She doesn't look up, doesn't need to.The camera mounted above her head is already tracking us, feeding our faces into whatever system decides if we're worth the time.
"Rourke," I say to the glass."We have an appointment."
She slides a clipboard through the narrow slot without a word.The pen attached to it by a ball chain has been chewed at one end.
I sign.Adena signs beside me, her handwriting smaller than mine, more controlled.
