Page 11 of The Bratva King

4

Nikolai

I’m back on the floor by ten the next morning.

I don’t have to be. I could run the operation from my office, but I’ve always believed you learn more about a business by walking its floor than by reading its reports. I trust what I see.

I move through the casino the way I always do. Unhurried. Watching.

It’s quieter in the afternoons. A different crowd. Retirees mostly, working the slots in the hopes they’ll win a jackpot. A handful of overnight stragglers who don’t know when to quit.

I stop near the center of the floor.

She’s there.

The blonde dealer from last night. She’s at a different table than yesterday, running a morning game with three players. I watch her.

She’s smaller than I remember. Pretty, but that isn’t what holds my attention. She has dark brown roots despite the blonde hair. Her hair is dyed—I’d noticed that last night. Her natural color would be darker. Black, maybe. Almond-shaped honey-colored eyes and full lips.

I think about the way her lips parted when she looked at me yesterday, startled but unwilling to look away.

She says something to one of her players, and the old man laughs. She isn’t flirting; she’s working. That’s how they make tips. And the old men are eating it up. Can’t say I blame them.

Pasha materializes beside me like a large, blond ghost.

“She’s pretty,” he says.

I pull my gaze away from her.

“I know.”

“You could have let security handle the situation last night,” he says.

“Security should have handled it faster.”

“I don’t think she was in any danger.”

“Are you suggesting I allow my employees to be harassed and abused?”

He laughs. “Never.”

“Some things I handle myself,” I say.

“And you are a very hands-on kind of man.”

We take the elevator down to the basement level. Pasha scans the electronic lock. The doors open into the counting room corridor, which is climate-controlled, camera-dense, and accessible to fewer people than almost anywhere else in the building. Pasha scans us through the next door.

Vadim, the manager on duty, looks up from the counting table when I walk in. He quickly hands me the receipts—both sets: the IRS version and ours.

The numbers are good.

They’re always good, which is what the Italians hate most.

I think about the attack on my armored truck six months ago that sent two men to the hospital, one of them for three weeks. They’d been watching our routes. They either had inside information or patience. Either way, they’d done their homework.

I've done mine since.

“Anything irregular in the last forty-eight?” I ask Vadim.