And then my phone rang.
This was putting me in a sour mood. I didn’t much care for morning calls, something my brothers and all my staff knew. Anything before ten a.m. had better have been an absolute emergency, or they’d be experiencing an emergency dealing with me. When I got to my phone, I growled.
“Dante,” I said as I answered, “someone had better be fucking dead for calling this early.”
“You’ll wish they were dead.”
Who the fuck are “they?”Already in a pissed off mood, this was not helping matters in the slightest.
“Sounds like the Morrils have done some digging on us, and there’s a story coming out this morning accusingAllure’s charity fundraisers of being fronts for fraud, among other things.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, and they’re targeting you in the article. Adrian, I know we’ve been trying to keep this legitimate, and I get why. Cassius desperately wants to not be the Black Reapers, and he refuses to get his hands dirty. But he doesn’t know about this yet. He doesn’t need to know this call happened. What do you want me to do?”
I barely heard Dante’s words. I was busy searching for the article, and it didn’t take me long to find it. Thankfully, it had not been published in theLas Vegas Times;had it been, let’s just say last night’s bliss and shared experience with Delilah would have taken on a very dark, very unsettling turn.
But all the same, the article was damning. An anonymous source that claimed to work for our family company said I was embezzling on the regular, that I’d slit my brothers’ throats for a larger company share, that I’d betray trust for a profit… none of it was fucking true. We were ruthless, but we liked to say the only entities we didn’t fuck with were the FBI and the IRS. The idea that we’d commit embezzlement or fraud for a few extra million dollars was beyond fucking absurd.
The absurdity of the article mattered little, however, in what I wanted to do to the fucking Morrils. This wasn’t a business attack; this was a personal blow. I couldnotfucking allow this attack on our name to go unnoticed, and frankly, I was leaning toward what Dante was suggesting. Cassius was playing nice and within the bounds of gray ethics, and yes, that had gotten us to where we were.
But getting to the top and staying at the top required two different things. Getting to the top required uncompromising focus, discipline, execution, and determination. Staying at the top meant warding off your rivals, including those who were willing to play fast and loose with the rules, both explicit and implied. We’d tried to play nice with the Morrils; we’d let the story on Sarah slide, we’d let some of the poaching of our employees rub off our back, and we’d even taken legal but powerful measures to keep the Morrils off the Strip.
That was fucking done. The Vale reputation,my fucking reputation,and the future of the Vale empire were all at stake.
“Adrian? The fuck you want me to do?”
“Stay tight,” I said. “I need time to think about what the fuck we’re going to do.”
I didn’t give Dante a chance to answer. Frankly, when I went back and reread the article, I came to realize this was less an implication of our families as a whole and a more personal, targeted attack on me. I was getting to be fucking furious, so much so that I nearly threw my phone against the wall in frustration.
I had to do something.
But what?
I stewed as different options went through my mind. It was difficult to detach my anger from what made sense; I could have hired a hitman to take out one of the Morrils, but that was an escalation that went way the fuck beyond what the situation called for. Even I was well aware that if we assassinated one of the Morrils, our lives were on an immediate short clock.
I wished like fuck that the Black Reapers were still in the business of violence, but Cassius had failed badly. Dante had failed badly. At some point, you had to recognize who was willing to help and who wasn’t, and the Black Reapers could not be bribed or coaxed into helping. Period. End of fucking story.
I had to…
I had to hit them where it would hurt most.
Their wallets.
But how?
It was a question not easily answered, and I spent literally the entire day in my penthouse trying to figure out how to strike back at them. I thought about hiring someone to rob one of them, maybe even mug them at night to send a message, butthey had security. They were not living in a shack down the road. Maybe I could get someone to rob one of their houses; that seemed more reasonable. It would send a message while avoiding too absurd an escalation.
And then it hit me.
They wanted to callAllurea sham? They wanted to claim that our art gallery was a front for fraud?
I would ensure that whatever art they had wouldn’t so much be a sham as a fucking torn piece of paper on the floor. I’d find the right underground crime syndicate to go to their casinos and ruin what they had.
This train of thought blew up in my mind, seeming more and more appropriate. We’d cover our tracks appropriately, of course. We may have played by the book, but there were certain things in the court of public opinion that needed to never be presented, even if they were not illegal.
A part of me, though, hated the idea of destroying good art. Especially if it could hang… no, not in a public space here. That all but begged us to put a sign on our casino saying “Guilty” in neon red.
