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I was on the private balcony sometime past 1:00 am. It was the type of spot Mikhail, my oldest cousin and the Pakhan, had built to watch the casino without being watched in return, glass tinted dark enough that no one would ever think to look up. Below me, the floor still moved, though thinner now, the last shift running out its final hour under the same gold and violet light that never changed, regardless of what hour it was.

Camila crossed beneath me with a tray balanced on one palm, laughing at something a pit boss said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear without breaking her stride. She had no idea I was watching her. She had no idea what Yuri had found or what it meant for us.

I stayed at the rail for a long while, tracking her through the length of the floor and back. I watched her the same way I might trace an irregular number through a page of clean ones until I understood exactly why it didn’t belong. She stopped once to steady a tray for a woman clearly three drinks past her limit, and once more to laugh at nothing at all, some private joke of her own making. I couldn’t help noting even those small moments.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wanted to know what happened next badly enough that it unsettled me more than what Yuri had pulled off her hard drive.

What I felt was dangerously close to anticipation.

Chapter Five

Camila

The first time I noticed, I told myself it was nothing. A man in a gray jacket stood outside my building for longer than any delivery or repair would reasonably take, but he was gone by the time I looked again. The second time, three days later, I saw a different man. But it was the same practiced disinterest in me while his eyes tracked everything I did. By the time I reached the corner, he’d traded places with someone else—a woman reading on her phone.

At work it was worse, since I couldn’t blame paranoia. Security lingered two beats too long at my station before moving on to the next table. A camera I’d never noticed before now seemed to catch my reflection in every mirrored surface on the floor. Twice I’d caught the same man watching me over another customer’s shoulder with an interest that had nothing to do with drink orders. Bianca noticed it one night on our smoke break and asked if I’d pissed off someone important. I told her it was nothing.

I knew exactly whose orders those men were following. I’d seen his eyes do the same thing back in his office—patient, thorough, and unwilling to let a discrepancy go unexamined. I’d handed him the discrepancy, and now he was taking his time deciding what to do about it.

That meant one thing: I was running out of time.

The fear should have made me stop. Instead, it did the opposite, because fear meant I’d finally changed something. Just one folder, one clear photograph of the account numbers, and Mateo’s name would mean something again.

I didn’t have that photograph. What I had instead was doubled security on his office, cameras where there’d been none before, and restricted floors that now required a badge swipe logged in real time. Every door I’d walked through casually a month ago now announced my presence the second I touched it.

There was only one door left unguarded, and it was Nikolai himself.

I hated the idea before I’d solidified it in my mind. Nikolai Golovin was everything I despised. A man who moved money like other men moved furniture, rearranging lives without ever once looking at the people living them. Men like him had taken my brother and called it business. I wasn’t going to fall for one just because he had good hands and a voice that did something to my pulse. I’d interviewed men like him before, men who mistook charm for permission, and I’d learned a long time ago to let them think they were the ones in control.

But I remembered his hands on my waist, unhurried and certain, and I remembered how much my body had betrayed me in that room while my mouth remained steady. If that reaction was real, it went in both directions.

I could use that.

I started small. I volunteered for the private card room on a night I knew he’d be running the numbers himself, wore the dress with the higher slit instead of the standard uniform, let my laugh land a half-second longer than the joke deserved whenever he was around. I leaned in closer than necessary to set his drink down, let my hand brush his sleeve on the way past, and angled myself so he’d catch the same perfume I’d worn the night he’d searched me.

Most men cracked in a week. I’d watched grown men forget entire sentences mid-conversation because a waitress had smiled at them the right way. It wasn’t vanity. It was a tool, one I’d sharpened on men far less dangerous than this one, and I trusted it the way I trusted my two hands.

Nikolai watched me instead, like he was reading a hand of cards. He thanked me for the water. He held the door once when my tray was too full to manage it myself, a courtesy so ordinary it should have meant nothing and somehow left my skin warm for an hour afterward. He never once looked at me the way men looked at women they wanted. He looked at me the way he’d looked in his office, entirely too aware that something didn’t add up.

It infuriated me. I’d built an entire career reading men in seconds, and this one gave me nothing. Every glance he gave me felt deliberate, like a door left open just wide enough to make me wonder if he wanted me through it or if he was simply curious how far I’d walk before I gave myself away completely.

By the fourth night I’d stopped performing and started genuinely resenting him for it, which should have told me something.

I clocked out at 1:00 am, feet aching, with the fake smile finally sliding off my face. I wanted my bed and six hours of not thinking about gray-blue eyes that gave nothing away. I made it as far as the service hallway before he stepped out of the shadows by the stairwell door like he’d been waiting there, hands loose at his sides in a way that felt more dangerous than a fist would have.

“You’ve been very interested in me this week,” he said.

“I’m interested in tips. You tip well.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, though my pulse was already changing, and I hated that he’d probably seen that.

“You’ve volunteered for rooms you usually avoid. You laugh at things that aren’t funny and touch my arm when you don’t need to.” He said it without any underlying emotion, and each item landed like a small blow. “I don’t think this is about tips.”

“Hm? Maybe I like you.” I lifted my chin the way I had in his office.

“You don’t.” He took one step closer, close enough now that I had to tilt my head to hold his eyes. “You’re good. Better than most people who’ve tried something like this on me. But I’ve helped build an empire by noticing exactly what you’re doing, and pretending I don’t see it would insult us both.”

Something in me cracked wide open right there in that hallway. He’d taken every card I’d thought I was still holding and laid them face-up between us. I had nothing left to counter with except the one thing I hadn’t planned to use.

I grabbed the lapel of his jacket and kissed him.