by Tracy Wolff
I should probably walk away. When it comes to him, my temper is precarious at the best of times. And right now is pretty much as far away from the best of times as I can get. But someone needs to take care of this and obviously, it’s not going to be Mickey. At least not without the entire casino knowing about it.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell her. “Just get me a couple of security guys to back me up, in case I need to physically remove the bastard.”
“They’re already on their way, sir.”
“Good.”
We’re almost at the high roller area now and I hear him—even over all the bells and slot machines and cash payouts that make the casino a cacophony of craziness at this late hour—before I’ve reached the ropes sectioning this area off from the general public. He’s that loud and obnoxious. And Mickey is right—the way he’s running off at the mouth and slurring his words, he’s obviously drunk.
Plus, his free hand is completely up the skirt of the girl sitting next to him—a girl who I’m ninety-nine percent certain is a prostitute he hired for the evening, and an underage one at that. My annoyance level ratchets up about three thousand percent to infuriated, and only gets worse when he does something—I can’t see what—that makes the poor girl wince, and even whimper.
I come up behind him, stop a couple feet from the back of his chair. I think about trying diplomacy, but the truth is, I just don’t have the patience for it. Not right now, not after how I’ve spent the last hour.
“Rubinov, I believe I made my position clear about your presence in my hotel.” I make sure my voice is ice cold despite the white hot rage rushing through me.
He turns in his seat, glances over his shoulder at me like he’s been waiting all along for me to show up.
“Ah, yes. Caine. Good to see you again.” The words sound particularly snide in his heavy Russian accent. Or maybe my interpretation is colored by my abject loathing of the son of a bitch. “I’ll take a vodka martini.”
No. He really is as loathsome as I think he is. “The bar’s closed.”
“What’s the matter, pretty boy? You don’t like Russians?”
“I don’t like you.”
“That’s too bad, since I enjoy your casino very much. Good atmosphere, good drinks…when the bar is open. Good company.” He pulls his hand out from under his companion’s skirt, puts it on her breast instead. And squeezes until she cries out in obvious distress.
“Okay, that’s it.” I grab him by his collar, yank him to his feet. “You’re out of here. Now.”
I can hear the gasps around us, know that I’m making a spectacle when that’s the last thing I planned on doing tonight. But as his security detail starts to make a fuss behind me—and are stopped by my security people—I have to admit that I don’t give a damn about whether or not we attract attention. I don’t care how many Tumblr or Instagram or Twitter accounts the picture shows up on, I’m not putting up with his shit. And neither is my staff. Not for one more minute. Not for one more second.
“You’ve got two choices,” I tell him, speaking quietly so that any recording devices that are trained on us right now can’t pick it up. “You, and your security detail, can walk out of my casino right now, under your own power. Or I will march you to the door myself and I won’t be gentle about it. Everyone in this casino will see me taking out the trash.”
“Speaking of trash,” he says and he doesn’t sound nearly as intimidated as I’d hoped he would be at this point. “You enjoy taking it out, don’t you? How’s that little waitress of yours doing? I was hoping she’d be on tonight so we could…renew our acquaintance. She had such an ass on her. I enjoyed touching it the other night, enjoyed even more thinking about fuc—”
He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because my hand is around his throat, squeezing, dangling him a few inches off the ground before I even know I’m going to move. “Say something about Aria again. I fucking dare you. Say something about her again. It’ll be the last thing you ever say.”
I’m walking now, half-carrying, half-dragging him to the closest wall. It’s got the added benefit of being out of sight of over ninety percent of the casino. I’ve got just enough functioning brain cells left to know that this is a conversation I really don’t want to have in public.
And then even that thought is gone and I’m lifting him up, holding his back against the wall as I get in his face. My hand is still wrapped around his throat—it’s what I’m using to hold him off the ground—and his breathing is becoming labored.
I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn if he can’t breathe, don’t give a damn, in that moment, if I end up crushing his goddamn throat. The man’s a monster—a rapist, a child trafficker, a drug dealer and God only knows what else. He’s a pathetic excuse for a human being, a disgusting little worm who has spent the evening fishing—just to see what he could catch.
Turns out he ended up catching a hell of a lot more than he bargained for and I have no problem being the one to drive that lesson home.
Behind me, I can hear his bodyguards yelling in Russian, can tell from the scuffling that they’re trying to get through but are being held back by my own security team—though who knows for how long that’s going to last. And while there’s a small part of my brain that’s still rational, that’s telling me I should put him down and walk away before things get any worse, it’s definitely not the part in control right now. Especially not when I think about him touching Aria, his filthy hands on her ass—or any other part of her.
“Hey, hey!” Suddenly there’s a hand on my shoulder and a familiar voice asking, “Everything okay here, man?”
It’s Ethan, popping up again like a bad penny. Or a best friend. “This is between me and him. Stay out of it.”
“I get that,” he tells me, but his hand is tight on my shoulder and he’s not letting go. “But why don’t you take a few seconds to decide if this is really how you want this to go. If it is, I’ll step back and you can have your security guys bring him somewhere you can beat the crap out of the bastard—hell, I might even help you. You’re a fair guy, so I’m sure he deserves it.
“But I’m just not sure choking him in the middle of the most popular casino on the Strip is really the way to go. If you want to stay out of jail, I mean.” His voice is totally cool, totally collected. But there’s an underlying tension to it, something that tells me he’s going to get in the middle of this no matter what I say. It pisses me off, makes me want to take a swing at him.
At the same time, though, his little speech gave me the time I needed to calm down, to think clearly. To figure out that Ethan is right, no matter how much I wish he wasn’t. Killing a man in the middle of my father’s casino probably isn’t the wisest choice I’ve ever made—no matter how much he deserves it.
I ease back on my grip a little. I don’t let him go, not completely, but I make sure he can breathe. It only takes a few minutes before the sickly gray color he’d been turning slowly dissipates, his face returning to its florid complexion fairly rapidly.
“Look, Rubinov, since you seem a little slow on the uptake, and didn’t understand what I told you the last time we talked, I’m going to explain again now. Slowly. And you’re going to nod if you understand what I’m saying. Okay?”
He doesn’t respond, just looks at me like he wants to kill me. In response, I tighten my hand around his throat, wait until he’s gasping. And then I say, “Nod if you understand what I’m saying to you—now.”
It takes a minute, long, precious moments ticking by while I wait for him to nod his head up and down. He finally does, so I loosen my grip on his throat again. This time he curses me loud and long and in Russian. I don’t understand a word he’s saying and it wouldn’t matter even if I did. I don’t give a fuck who he is or what he has to say. He doesn’t intimidate me. Not now. Not ever.
“You and your goons are going to walk out of my hotel under your own power. You’re not going to stop to collect your winnings if the
re are any. You’re not going to make a detour by the bar to pick up another prostitute or order another vodka. You are going to leave this casino. Now. Or I am going to have you carried out by my security. And if that happens, I promise you, your life won’t be worth the air it takes for you to breathe.
“Don’t look at them,” I order when his eyes dart over my shoulder. “Look at me. And maybe you’re so stupid, you don’t know who I am or what I can do. If so, that’s your own idiocy at work because you should always know your enemy before you decide to beat your chest and pick a fight. But you screwed up this time. You think it’s my father’s connections here in Vegas that you need to look out for, but that’s not the case. I don’t do things the same way my father did.”
I tighten my hand on his throat one last time, just to make sure I have his attention. “You’ve made your money by staying in the shadows, under the radar of Interpol and the CIA, Homeland Security and ATF and anyone else who might have a problem with your extracurricular activities.” He looks shocked, so I smile, but it’s a bloodless smile, one meant to intimidate him instead of set him at ease. “But, you see, I’ve spent the last ten years working in a field where I came into contact with people from those organizations every day. I know a lot of people who can make your life very uncomfortable. And I won’t hesitate to give them everything my head of security has dug up on you if I ever so much as hear your name in my casino again. You’ll be running from every alphabet soup agency in America, Europe and Asia before I’m done with you.
“So, before you come back here tomorrow, humiliated and pumped up and looking to get some of your own back, ask yourself if it’s really worth it. If your pride is more important than what having me as an enemy will do to your bottom line.”
I let him go abruptly, watch with absolutely no interest as he slides down the wall and struggles to catch himself before he hits the ground. He manages it, and when he finally stands up straight, there’s a hatred burning in his eyes that might give me pause on another day at another time. But right now, all it does is piss me off. As does his posturing.
“You say I don’t—”
“Get the fuck out,” I interrupt him. “I’ve wasted all the time I’m going to on you.”
And then, leaving both him and my security guys standing around with their mouths wide open, I turn and walk away. He isn’t worth anything more.
“Make sure he’s out of here in the next five minutes,” I tell Mickey as I pass her.
She’s watching me, too, but she’s got a smile on her face a mile wide. “I will, sir. Absolutely.”
I nod my thanks, and then head upstairs for a drink. Maybe two drinks. Hell, maybe five drinks. It’s definitely been that kind of night.
Ethan’s right behind me and we don’t say a word to each other until the elevator doors open into my private suite. I should go to my office—there’s a shitload of work that I need to plow through—though I’ve been working eighteen and twenty hour days since I got here, trying to bring myself up to speed.
But the truth is, I don’t want to be Richard Caine’s son tonight. I don’t want to be CEO of one of the largest, most lucrative casino and hotel conglomerations in the world. I just want to be me. Fucked-up, falling-in-love, totally-not-sure-what-to-do-about-any-of-it me. And I want to sit here and have a drink with my best friend and forget, for a minute, that assholes like Petrov Rubinov exist. Forget for a moment what happened to the last man I called my best friend.
Doing anything else just seems too fucking hard.
“So,” Ethan says as I pour us both a couple fingers of scotch. “How’s the new job been treating you?”
I flip him off. “So, what you’re saying is that I should be drinking both of these, then?” I hold up the glasses.
“Shit. If I were you, I’d just be swigging straight out of the bottle. More efficient that way.”
We both laugh, but by the time I hand him his drink, I’m shaking my head. “Christ. How the hell did I end up here?”
“Considering you’ve spent the last decade in and out of some of the worst hotspots in the world and yet you still say that like this casino is Dante’s seventh circle of hell, I’m thinking maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
“Believe me, I tell myself that every damn day. There’s nothing about this city I like, nothing about this hotel I want to be a part of. But I can’t just walk away.”
“Really? Nothing about this city you like?” Ethan raises a brow. “I was pretty sure you liked that gorgeous brunette who busted into your office this afternoon. What’s her name, anyway?”
“Aria.” He’s right. Aria’s the best part of Las Vegas by far, and if I hadn’t come back here I never would have met her. The realization puts everything in perspective. At least until I think about what happened at her apartment tonight—and about how, after an hour with Janet, she probably never wants to see me again.
“You should introduce her to Chloe,” he continues. “I’m pretty sure they’d get along.”
“You got that from a thirty-second meeting with her?”
“You have to admit, it was a pretty unusual meeting.” He grins. “I bet she keeps you on your toes.”
“You have no idea. We met because she works as a cocktail waitress here and she got annoyed enough with Rubinov—the asshole I was just talking to downstairs—that she racked him with her drink tray.”
Ethan bursts out laughing. “Oh, yeah. She and Chloe will totally get along.”
“Chloe goes around racking obnoxious billionaires?”
“Pretty much every chance she gets. God knows, she’s taken me down a peg or five since we met.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t need it,” I tell him with a snort. “You’ve been hailed as the greatest thing for the tech industry since the personal computer. Your ego probably needed to be a little deflated.”
He just smiles at me, looking for all the world like the cat that ate the canary. “I’m not saying anything.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t need to. That shit-eating grin says it all.”
I’m giving him a hard time, but the truth is, I’m happy for Ethan. He’s got his own demons, and just because he doesn’t talk about them any more than I talk about mine, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met and if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s him.
Plus, looking at what he and Chloe are going through with Brandon gives me faith. Aria is another one of the best people I know and if Chloe can live through what she did and love Ethan anyway, maybe, just maybe, Aria can learn to accept my past. My mistakes. It’s a long shot, but this is Vegas. If there’s anywhere on earth to believe in bad odds paying off, it’s right here in this city.
We drink in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in thought. But when I get up to refill our drinks, Ethan breaks out of his reverie enough to ask, “You want to tell me what that was about down there?”
“You mean with Rubinov?”
“Did you nearly choke the shit out of someone else I should know about? If not, then yeah, I want to hear about Rubinov,” he tells me with a smirk.
He’s trying to wind me up, but I decide not to let him. Instead, I just say, “He’s a bastard. A total prick who made his money doing every despicable thing a human being can do. Because of it, he thinks he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants. I beg to differ.”
“I bet you do.” He’s looking at me now, his eyes shrewd and more than a little knowing. It makes me wonder just how much about my past Ethan has figured out through the years. Probably as much as I have about his. Still, the idea that he knows about Dylan, about the shit that happened to him, how he ended up—and my culpability in the whole thing—makes me a little sick. No one needs to know that stuff. Hell, I wish I didn’t know it.
“Still,” he continues after accepting his new drink. “You’re always so in control that it was weird to see you snap like that. I’ve known you for most of a decade a
nd I didn’t know you had that in you.”
Yeah, neither did I. I’ve worked so hard to bury the violent legacy my father left me with, worked so hard to always remain in control, that I forget sometimes how bad my temper can be when I let it loose. Or, at least, I try to forget. “He was talking shit about Aria,” I tell Ethan after a minute, hoping it’s enough of an explanation.
Considering why he’s here and what he wants to do to avenge Chloe, I figure it should be.
Still, he’s looking at me like he wants to say more. But before he can, the elevator dings and we both turn to watch as Aria bursts into the room.
She’s still dressed in her cocktail waitress uniform and she looks good. Really good. Especially when there was a part of me that was convinced she wouldn’t want anything to do with me after hearing what Janet said. Not that I’d let her get away with that—I planned on giving her the night to assimilate what she heard and then finding her in the morning. Making her talk to me.
Instead, she’s here. She’s pale and frantic and more than a little frazzled, but she’s here. For now, that’s more than enough.
“Aria.”
“Sebastian. I need you to—”
“And I’m out of here.” Ethan pops out of the chair like a jack-in-the-box—probably PTSD from the last time Aria came bursting into a room and announced that she needed me to fuck her.
But unlike last time the two were in a room together, Aria actually notices him. Her eyes go wide and she steps back. “I can come back later—”
“No!” Ethan and I say at once.
“It’s fine. We were just talking.” I reach for her hand, pull her into my body. “Aria, this is Ethan Frost. Ethan, this is my girlfriend, Aria.”
Her eyes widen at my use of the word girlfriend, which I completely understand. Partly because we haven’t talked about what we are to each other yet and partly because girlfriend seems like such an insipid, ridiculous word for what Aria is to me.
For the fire that rages between us whenever we get within ten feet of each other.
