Just let me know if you need me.
I wonder if he would think I was coming on too strong if I told him I’d like to sleep in his bed? There’s just something about his warm scent that soothes me, and I bet his bed smells like heaven.
But he’s working, and I want to leave him be, so I close the door of my room and get ready for sleep.
Fifteen
JULIAN
“There’s nothing at all?”Carson asks. We’re back at his office at the casino. All four of us, plus our number twos.
“Nothing,” I reply, shaking my head. “I was up all night, looking through chat after chat on the dark web, in all the usual places where his name is mentioned, and then I dug deeper.”
I blow out a breath and push my hand through my hair. I’m fucking exhausted. I managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep this afternoon, before I came to the city for this meeting, and what I have to do after.
I’ve hardly seen my wife at all today. But Ididhear her playing the piano this afternoon before I left, and everything in me wanted to go sit with her. She’s fucking talented.
“There are the usual hits out on his life,” I add and see the hate gleam in Carson’s blue eyes. “Sixteen as of this morning, to be exact. I see that you’ve contracted for all of them.”
“If anyone’s going to kill him, it’s going to be me,” he replies, his voice laced with hate and revenge. “What else?”
“The last known information on Damien was when everything went down with Lulu and her father.”
Rome stands and paces the room. He came close to losing his wife that day, at the hands of her corrupted piece-of-shit father, and it still fucks with him.
“Since then, he’s gone underground again. No known location. No sightings, and we’ve been monitoring traffic cams as well, looking for his face. He’s not in Vegas, that we know for sure, but it’s a big fucking world, Carson. I’m telling you, there’s no intel. Sergei is lying out of his fat ass, trying to get a rise out of us.”
“Figured as much,” Mateo mutters. “Sergei couldn’t find information with a map and a GPS. He’s an idiot.”
“An idiot with an army,” Rome reminds us. “We don’t respect or like him, but we shouldn’t underestimate him.”
“I don’t like that he lives in our city,” I mutter.
“As long as he keeps his business dealings in Russia and LA, I don’t give a fuck where he lives,” Carson replies. “Now, we need to go down to the cell.”
Mateo and Carson share a look while Rome and I come to attention.
“Who’s down there?” I ask.
“The motherfucking mayor of our fine city.”
Rome growls. It seems the conversation is going to center around the assholes who’ve fucked with his wife today.
The last time any of us saw Aaron Pierce was right after he put his hands on Lulu at the bar and then was kicked out of the club permanently. We roughed him up that night.
If he’d been anyone else, he’d be at the graveyard right now.
Instead, he was given a warning, a beating, and a lesson about putting his hands where they’re not supposed to be.
“What did he do now?” I ask.
“He owes my casino about a million,” Carson says. “And he cornered one of my waitresses in a hallway and tried to fucking rape her.”
“Let’s go,” Rome says, marching to the door. “He’s done. No more mercy for this piece of shit.”
I roll my shoulders and follow the others. I do have other business to see to tonight, but I wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Each of us owns many businesses in the city, but each of us also chose a building here on the strip to buy and use as our home base. Rome’s and Carson’s buildings are attached by a skybridge, and they share many of the same clientele between Carson’s high-end casino and Rome’s luxury adult club. Mateo’s building is on the other end of the strip, and mine is in the middle.
