Page 122

“Mr. St. James,” Scott says, clearly relieved. “This is⁠—”

“I don’t give a fuck what their names are,” I interrupt, staring them both down. The older one with a full head of gray hair and wrinkles the size of the Grand Canyon glares right back.

He’s brave.

“We have the authority to⁠—”

“To what.” I step closer, and Brave Man stands, squaring off with me.

“To do whatever the fuck we want to this casino.”

I grin at him, and for the first time, I see a tiny bit of doubt cross through his eyes, and it makes me smile.

“No, you don’t. Why are you here?”

The other man clears his throat, catching my attention. “We’ve received reports of violations of the gaming commission rules here in the casino of your resort, and we’re here to walk through to see for ourselves whether those reports are valid.”

“They’re not.”

“Yes, well, we need to look around so we can make a report. Perhaps it’s been a misunderstanding,” he continues, wisely not being an asshole, “but if the report is made, we have to follow up on it.”

“I’ll see the report before you set foot on my floor.”

The two men share a look, and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

Something is shady as fuck here.

My office phone rings, and I circle the desk to answer. “Speak.”

“Situation,” Julian says. “All of our phones have been compromised. I don’t know why or how, but I’m working to lock down all of the tech now. Shut down your computer.”

“On it.”

I hang up and make sure everything on my desk is shut down, and all I have to do is give Scott a look, and he goes running to make sure the rest of the building is secure.

Finally, I turn back to the two assholes and narrow my eyes.

“Now, why don’t you tell me who you really are and what you’re doing here?”

“We already did,” Old Man says.

“And yet, I conveniently can’t call my contacts at the commission to verify your credentials, and when I said I want to see the fucking report, you didn’t produce a goddamn thing. I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, so I’m going to ask you one more time, while you’re sitting in comfortable chairs, fully clothed, with all of your appendages intact, who the fuck are you?”

Before they can say a word, all hell breaks fucking loose. The alarms start to shrill through the building, and these two assholes pull weapons on me, but I have them neutralized within seconds.

I liked this carpet.

I can’t call the guards at the house or at Charlie’s school to make sure my family is safe, and I can’t call my brothers to find out what’s going on with them.

We’re under attack, plain and simple.

I run out of my office and to the lobby of the resort and see that people aren’t panicked, but they’re worried, looking around curiously to find out what’s going on. I don’t know who tripped the alarms. They usually only go off like this if we’ve had a security breach.

And that’s never happened before.

“Sir,” Scott says, not even winded as he runs up to me. “There’s a fire. I don’t want to panic everyone, but there’s a fire in the shopping wing.”

“Get people out of here. Start evacuating.” I can hear sirens, and for once I’m glad to know that help is on the way. “Get the manual walkie-talkies up and running since we don’t have phones. Where the fuck is Spider?”