Prologue
One month.
It had taken one fucking month for my brother, Cassius, to encounter the most dramatic—and most consequential—experience of his existence.
In that time, the man who had launched a casino empire, the man once known as the King of Hearts, had fallen head over heels for his now-fiancée, Sarah Carpenter. His operations were still around, but he didn’t have the same brutality he once had. The Vale casino family, well known for our activity with theRubyand future casino endeavors, could have crushed the MGM, the Wynns, and anyone else on the Strip. We could have ruled as kings of the city in a way only the mob had in the 80’s.
For a very obvious reason, we hadn’t.
You didn’t need to rely on rumors to know that Cassius had found the one thing—really, the only person—who could have changed his mind. He swore he was still the same person and the same leader, and it was true enough that when we got to the negotiating table, he was as cold and unforgiving of yielding as he had been before. But something had changed when it was the four of us, something that had made him go fucking soft.
Sarah Carpenter.
Indeed, Cassius had had other women before, yet Sarah was quite possibly the only one who could have ever made him become who he is. At the rate they were going, they might even create the next generation of Vales. If I were to be nice, I would say that after all our family had been through with Virgil, getting here, and being sniped at by rival families, Cassius had won. He’d gotten what most people truly wanted, even if they said otherwise.
But I’m not nice.
I’m honest.
And here’s what I think—I think Cassius has gone soft. Become a pussy, really. I think that if Cassius is truly, genuinely, against-his-normal-self happy, then he should begin to cede control to me, Lucas, and Dante. Sure, he can keep his voting shares and have a voice on the board, blah blah blah. Business can handle itself.
But one look at Cassius nowadays would tell you everything you needed to know. Go to any art gala with a Vale on the invite list, and you’d find the one Carpenter with him as well. Come up to his penthouse on the top floor ofRuby—a luxury none of us cared for, as we liked to separate work and life—and Sarah was always there. It made sense, in a way. They were now engaged and living together. But it meant that the Hollywood couples captured by TMZ on a weekly basis had more subtlety.
That’s really not fine.
That approach might work if the business were humming along with no threats. Run it on autopilot. Protect your employees and reputation as needed. Clock in from nine to five, have dinner with your spouse, and kiss each other good night.
But when there was a rising threat in the not-too-far distance? If you wanted to crush that entire threat in your palm? If you wanted the kind of destruction of our enemies that Iwanted, everything short of actual murder and having blood on our hands?
You had to be more ruthless than that. You had to let the monster in you out just a little more; you might keep a smile, a tender touch, and a few nice words for your partner, but you would not fucking forget it was family who got you there. Cassius could have done it—but for who Sarah was in his past, he could not. He couldn’t control how he felt about her. It’s the most overlooked part of his story—it wasn’t that Cassius fell in love, but it’s who he fell in love with.
Me?
I’m Adrian Vale, and I have no one like that in my life. Sure, there are women I find immensely attractive, and there are women who stick around for longer than one night. But at the end of the day, they are pawns in my ambition for power and control. Nothing more.
I run Las Vegas now.
I am the King of Diamonds, the new most powerful billionaire in Las Vegas.
CHAPTER 1
Adrian
“Iwill not fuck around with this. Do not test what power can do, even in the face of supposedly good journalism.”
It was late on a Thursday afternoon. The New Year was just days away, the rest of the world was celebrating Christmas, and Las Vegas was quite possibly the coldest it would be all year. Outside, wind chill brought the “feels like” temperature below 40 degrees.
But that was nothing compared to the chill I wished to impart to the editor-in-chief of theLas Vegas Times.
“You understand, Mr. Vale, that what we write about the Morrils must be based in fact,” the man on the other line said. Eric Smith, I think his name was. What a fucking boring name. He was more difficult to control than most, but I’d find an angle. It might take some time, but I would. “We can get sued for things called libel and slander.”
“I’m not a fucking moron. Do you think we got to where we were because we’re a bunch of dumbasses?”
Behind me, I heard the door to my office open. I swiveled in my seat; Dante and Lucas were arriving. Not Cassius, as usual. One, the fucker rarely came to our offices despite being in the same building, in fact only a few stories lower than him. Two,the asshole was probably too busy playing the “I love you” game more with Sarah. Ugh, fucking hell.
“I do not doubt that you are very smart young men. I just think?—”
“You want to cover tonight’sAllurecharity auction, right?” I said. I only brought out leverage if I had to; frankly, most people were so afraid of the implied threat of a lawsuit or good ol’ fashioned intimidation from Dante that they stepped down quickly. I was just as ruthless as Dante, but I preferred to do things aboveboard. Plenty of people might say I was an asshole, but no one could say I was sloppy.
