He tried not to dwell on last night too deeply since they had a busy morning ahead, and daydreaming about sex was bound to get awkward. His dress pants were on the fitted side, after all. Sean settled his hand on Alexei’s shoulder to get his attention when a pair of men appeared seemingly out of nowhere just beyond where Annabelle stood guard. He immediately went tense, which caused Alexei to look up at him instead of at hiscards.
“All right?” Alexeiasked.
“I think our meeting is starting early,” Sean said, nodding at the men the other three were eyeing with a professional frankness that came from always being onguard.
“Mr. Dvorkin? Mr. Miller?” one of the men said in a gruff voice. “Mr. Wolcott would like toseeyou.”
Sean had a feeling they weren’t only meeting Adrian, judging by their escorts. The men looked very much like the type of people Declan would hire for hiscompany.
“Not finished with hand,” Alexei lazilyreplied.
“Mr. Wolcott isn’t a man you keepwaiting.”
Sean gently squeezed Alexei’s shoulder, silently urging him to get moving. Alexei set his cards down with an annoyed sigh and closed the credit line on the bet screen. He stood up and turned to take in the men waiting for them with a hooded gaze, recognizing them as a threat even if he treated them as the mere inconveniences his cover demanded. Sean was glad for that, and pasted an expectant look on his face as they left the blackjack tablebehindthem.
“I thought our lunch meeting wasn’t until one o’clock?” Seanasked.
Neither man responded to his question as they were led back to the lobby area. His sense of unease only grew more pronounced as they approached a biolocked door off the elevator bank. He’d noticed it earlier in the walk-through and figured it was an employees-only access point. Turned out he wasright.
One of the men pressed his hand against the scanner, prompting the door to slide open, revealing a short hallway and sparsely filled office with a receptionist desk. Alexei and Sean walked through the door, but when the other three tried to follow them, one of Wolcott’s men cutthemoff.
“Mr. Wolcott is only interested in seeing your charges,” the man saidfirmly.
Sean looked over the man’s shoulder, catching Madison’s eye. “It’s okay. You should check on my dry cleaning whileyouwait.”
“Understood, sir,” Madisonreplied.
The innocuous request from boss to employee had a double meaning. Madison didn’t acknowledge the code phrase at all, but Sean knew his warning that something was wrong and be ready to scatter and regroup would be taken seriously byeveryone.
The door slid shut between them, forcing Sean and Alexei to follow the men to a pair of elevators. Alexei stuck close to him on the smooth ride up to where Sean assumed the C-suite offices were located. The casino’s administration level was separate from the security level and general employee sublevel. But the way they were being escorted reminded Sean too much of his brief time in New Miami with the enemy athisback.
The elevator glided to a smooth halt. They stepped into a space that wasn’t as nicely decorated as the public areas of Olympus. Sean took in the many offices they passed, along with the security cameras that blanketed the area even up here. Sean could understand saturating the public areas of the casino with security cameras, but watching your own employees to this degree showed a level of distrust that was ripe for a toxic workenvironment.
Most of the workers up here ignored them on their way to an office that overlooked the Vegas Strip, or would if Sean could see out of the windows. The plas-glass windows behind the empty, large wooden desk were darkened to an uncomfortable opaqueness. Sean took in the large office, noting the old-style portraits and pictures that hung on the wall depicting the Wolcott family through several generations judging by the different clothingpeoplewore.
One picture, in particular, caught his attention, that of a sprawling ranch in a rugged green valley. It was the same ranch found in the mission briefing, though the picture looked far more dated. More buildings had been erected recently than what was displayed on Adrian’s office wall if the briefing was anything togoby.
Sean’s attention drifted back to the only occupants of the room who mattered. Declan sat at the head of a table taking up space in the large office, guarded by a second pair of armed bodyguards standing at attention. Adrian sat to his right, a pinched expression on his face that Sean noticed immediately. All but two other seats had been removed from the table, one on either side of the table to ensure he and Alexei would be separated. That wouldn’t stop Sean from phasing, but it would require a few seconds more than they probably couldn’t spare for him to get toAlexei.
“Mr. Dvorkin, Mr. Miller,” Declan said in a deceptively mild voice. “Why don’t you takeaseat?”
He gestured at the two chairs without taking his eyes off them. Alexei didn’t hesitate in walking around the table to the more distant seat. It put his back against the wall, even if he wasn’t within reach of Sean and hispower.
“Is problem?” Alexei asked as he sat down, making a show of appearingunconcerned.
“Why? Do you think there is?” Adrianasked.
“Alexei only means the meeting is starting a little early,” Seanreplied.
Adrian leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers against the hard computer screen embedded in the table. “We just finished up a meeting that was very…illuminating.”
Sean thought about Stableford and how Adrian had said last night he had a meeting before theirs today. It was getting harder and harder for Sean to ignore the idea the two were connected. Maybe it meant nothing, but he’d lived too long on edge, survived through moments where the only thing that saved him were the details and how they fit together, no matter how farfetched the answermightbe.
“Oh?” he asked lightly, placing his hands on the conference table and giving the brothers his full attention. “Howso?”
Sean was aware of the four bodyguards shifting subtly in their spots, which drew more attention than they thought. Ex-Special Forces knew how to stay still. If they were moving, it was for a reason. The skin on the back of his neck itched. More and more, Sean was regretting not taking a gun out of the hotel suite with them thismorning.
“My brother is a man more interested in money and immediate gratification. It makes him a stubborn hothead, which works well for running a casino, not so much for other things,” Declan said, keeping his attention on Sean. “It’s not his fault, really. Adrian was raised that way. Our parents always said running Olympus required a big personality, and Adrian learned to fit the bill perfectly. Me, not so much. I preferred being in the background over coddling people I didn’t care about just to get them to spend money in thisplace.”
