The Perfectionist_Sin City Sentries [Book Two]
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Mick
Chapter Two - Mick
Chapter Three - Eric
Chapter Four - Mick
Chapter Five - Mick
Chapter Six - Eric
Chapter Seven - Mick
Chapter Eight - Eric
Chapter Nine - Mick
Chapter Ten - Eric
Chapter Eleven - Mick
Chapter Twelve - Mick
Chapter Thirteen - Eric
Chapter Fourteen - Mick
Chapter Fifteen - Eric
Chapter Sixteen - Mick
Chapter Seventeen - Mick
Epilogue - Mick
The Hothead
Sin City Sentries – Book Three
Also By Myra Scott
THE PERFECTIONIST
By Myra Scott
The Perfectionist
Sin City Sentries – Book Two
Copyright 2018 by Myra Scott
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, redistributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any database, without prior permission from the author.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. All characters are 18+ and all situations are consensual.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One - Mick
Chapter Two - Mick
Chapter Three - Eric
Chapter Four - Mick
Chapter Five - Mick
Chapter Six - Eric
Chapter Seven - Mick
Chapter Eight - Eric
Chapter Nine - Mick
Chapter Ten - Eric
Chapter Eleven - Mick
Chapter Twelve - Mick
Chapter Thirteen - Eric
Chapter Fourteen - Mick
Chapter Fifteen - Eric
Chapter Sixteen - Mick
Chapter Seventeen - Mick
Epilogue - Mick
The Hothead
Sin City Sentries – Book Three
Also By Myra Scott
The Perfectionist
CHAPTER ONE - MICK
People told me I had a gaze like an iron vice.
Normally, I didn’t know if it was true, and I didn’t care. I shouldn’t need that to do my job. But as I watched my HR officer squirm under the glare I was giving him across the large, mahogany table, I was satisfied with my reputation.
You could have heard a pin drop in the office where the four of us sat. My hands were folded in front of me, and I hadn’t fidgeted an inch since sitting down except to speak. To my left was my assistant, Luke. He mimicked almost every move I made. He was a fast learner. To my right was Devin, one of the casino’s blackjack dealers. Brown hair, blue eyes, and a frame that reminded me of myself more than I’d like. Unlike me and Luke, he was shifting uncomfortably every few seconds. He didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t either.
The reason we had to be here, though, was the HR officer sitting across from us.
“I asked you a question, Marcus,” I said in an even, firm tone. From the day we hired him, it was always Marcus, never Mark. “Did Devin ask you to stop sending him those kinds of messages?”
He was silent. I could feel Devin glancing at me.
“Marcus.”
“Yes,” he finally said. His normally assertive voice was subdued, annoyed. Marcus was the kind of man who had gotten everything he ever wanted from the day he was born. Holding him accountable this afternoon was something he wasn’t used to, so it was natural that he was reacting to it like a child.
“Did you continue to send unsolicited messages by email, text, and other social media platforms after Devin explicitly requested that you stop? I want to remind you that I have Devin’s request across all these platforms in writing,” I added, turning the open folder in front of me toward him.
Marcus wasn’t meeting my gaze. “I was flirting.” The defense was barely a mumble.
“Flirting, Marcus,” I said, flipping over a few pages to take out a couple of papers held together with a paperclip, “is passing a compliment at the bar and making light conversation with someone who is on the same page as you.” I slid the papers toward Marcus. The top was a black cover sheet. The bottom was… “What you were doing was sending a coworker unsolicited pictures of your penis.”
Marcus lifted the cover sheet and winced at the images of his own shaft I’d collected as evidence. I had to admit, I was happy that Devin was willing to come forward to me with those images. It can’t have been easy on him, psychologically.
“I’m going to go over the timeline once more,” I said, “and—”
“Mr. Mazur?” Luke interrupted me, and I felt my nerves plucked like a tight guitar string. My eyes shot over to him.
“Yes?”
“Urgent email from security just came in—four guests caught counting cards at the blackjack tables. Bart would like to see you after this.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said tersely. I couldn’t reprimand him too harshly. He was just doing his job, and I needed to know about any and all urgent issues that came up.
“As I was saying,” I went on, facing Marcus again. “On the 5th, Devin says you made a pass at him while he was getting off work, and he rejected you.”
“I was not making a pass,” Marcus said, rolling his shoulders back and staring at the wall away from me.
“Then what were you doing?”
“I was just… talking,” he insisted.
“That’s interesting, because Devin’s statement here has you saying, quote, ‘I like how you run your table. I’d like to see how you deal when you’re bent over it.’ We have security footage of you leaning into Devin while supposedly making this statement and brushing his hand away when he tried to push you back.”
Marcus crossed his arms, still facing away from me.
“Mr. Mazur?”
I glanced over to Luke.
“Another email. A guest from one of the VIP suites is reporting a peeping Tom in the nightclub bathrooms. It looks like she’s naming one of our attorneys as the offender.”
A headache throbbed behind my eyes.
“Thank you, Luke,” I said. “Now, Marcus—”
“I’m sorry,” Luke went on, wincing, “but Mr. Anderson wants to know ASAP when you’ll be able to meet with him about it.”
“Before my 5:30,” I said quickly, not breaking eye contact with Marcus. Luke nodded, and I took a breath, not wanting to beat around the bush any longer. “Marcus, over two weeks, we have documented records of your continued contact with Devin leading up to the incident outside Devin’s car, where we have you on CCTV physically touching his crotch with your left hand and attempting to corner him against the driver’s side door of his sedan.”
Devin was looking down at his thumbs now, his face ashen. It was never easy reliving this kind of thing, especially not in a hearing like this. That was why I kept it as small as possible, despite Zane expressing a desire to be in here with us. It was all I could do for the victim.
“Marcus, do you have anything at all—”
“Mr. Mazur?”
I closed my eyes a moment.
“Can it wait, Luke?” I asked in a quiet, even tone, the sa
me I always managed to maintain. It was my mask.
“Bart says he urgently needs the time you just promised Mr. Anderson.”
“Tell them I’ll call them immediately after this,” I said with finality, and Luke nodded.
“This is a witch hunt,” Marcus scoffed, finally looking at me and gesturing to Devin. “He decided he wasn’t interested in me, so suddenly ‘sexual harassment’ starts getting thrown around.”
“You are a human resources officer, Marcus,” I retorted, and the edge in my voice even made Marcus wince. “If there is anyone in the company who should know the definition of sexual harassment and the behavior of a harasser, it is you, plain and simple. If that weren’t enough, you’re the one person that employees should be able to come to about this kind of thing for help, not be seeking help from.”
“Exactly,” Marcus caught on, leaning forward. “That’s what makes me such an easy target for these accusations. One misunderstanding, and it’s easy to act out for attention to make up a case like this where I can’t even be the mediator.”
“Is that so?” I asked, nodding to Luke, who handed me another folder that I opened on the table. “Then why have four other employees come forward about incidents of harassment since word of this hearing got out?”
Marcus’s face went cherry-red as he looked at the anonymous email reports that I’d been receiving all weekend. It really was a domino effect—when one person was brave enough to come out about a serial harasser, the rest would follow.
Marcus was one of the relatively new hires we’d taken on since opening the nightclub and nearly doubling the foot traffic in the Sentry Casino and Hotel. We were practically rolling in money since Zane sealed the deal with Diego Castillo, but the side of things that only we operations managers saw was the tripled workload that came as a result. And as head of operations, I was the mouth of the river that literally everything flowed out of, sooner or later.
And all these new hires came with their own sets of problems.
Usually, growing the staff took place over time, so we could sort through the ones that obviously weren’t going to work out. We’d have time to train everyone properly and screen those that caused trouble. Right now, though, we were overflowing with problems, and there was no end in sight.
“I don’t have to defend myself against this nonsense,” Marcus said simply. I sat back, raising an eyebrow at his audacity. He’d come with high praise from the last firm he worked for. I wondered how many harassment cases he’d left in his wake there. People like Marcus never stopped at just one.
“Marcus, what we’re looking at is a textbook case of serial harassment that amounts to nothing less than a gross abuse of authority,” I said.
“Oh, so you’re pretending to be a lawyer, now?” Marcus scoffed. “Do you get off on that little power trip?”
“Your employment here at the Sentry is terminated, Marcus, effective immediately,” I said, shutting the folders in front of me and giving him a hard glare. “Pack your desk and leave the premises before I have security escort you out.”
“What?” he blurted, suddenly startled. “You can’t just—”
“I can and just did,” I said simply. My tone rarely wavered. The even finality of it carried all the weight it needed to. “You’re dismissed.”
Marcus stared at me for a few moments before shaking his head and muttering a stream of foul language as he got up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
The three of us were alone, in silence for a few moments except for the sound of me closing my folders before I turned to Devin.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, but thank you for coming forward. You’ve made the workplace a much safer environment.”
Devin cracked a smile and nodded after a moment. “I appreciate being taken seriously.”
“We might be pressured to hire too many people too quickly,” I admitted, “but this is one issue I will always set aside time for.”
“Mr. Mazur,” Luke said. Still holding eye contact with Devin, I cracked a smile, and we shared a knowing look. “Two of the new security guards have been dismissed for pickpocketing some of the drunk guests after taking them to their rooms. We’re going to need to start reviewing the backlog of job applications today. The college Spring Break crowd is going to be rolling in soon, and we need as many people as we can handle.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said patiently, despite the fact that my headache was blooming into a migraine fast.
The paperwork for firing a higher-up HR official like Marcus was just another drop in the overflowing bucket of tasks I had to finish. It was already past noon, and my daily workload was beyond what most people could handle in a week.
“As I was saying,” I continued to Devin, “I want to make sure you never feel ashamed about bringing this kind of thing to our attention. Yes, it makes the Sentry look bad, but it looks worse to have people like Marcus prowling around without getting checked.”
“I understand completely,” Devin said, but he still looked crestfallen and weary from the whole ordeal. “Thanks, Mr. Mazur. Do you mind if I wait in here for a few minutes? I’d… rather not run into Marcus while he’s on his way out.”
“Of course, you can,” I said before glancing to Luke. “But just in case, Luke, let’s get a member of security to keep Marcus company and make sure he doesn’t drag his feet.”
That was code for making sure he didn’t steal or vandalize company property or lash out against anyone on his way out the door.
“Of course, sir,” Luke said. “But while I’ve got your attention, one of the new IT workers seems to have made an oversight in the backdoor coding and reported a possible compromise.”
“And why is the IT manager not already handling it?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.
“He walked out this morning,” Luke said, apparently just getting the news himself, judging by the look on his face as he scanned his emails. “No reason given.”
“Right. That makes sense,” I said, feeling like I was about an inch away from snapping. “Thank you, Luke. Come on, let’s get to the next meeting.”
I stood up with Luke and shook Devin’s hand one last time before handing him my card in case he needed anything further from me. I made my way out the door and down the hall with Luke at my side, and between there and the elevators, no less than three more urgent messages needing my immediate attention popped into my assistant’s inbox.
“Mr. Mazur,” Luke said as the elevator doors closed us into the little box, and we began our descent. I took a deep breath.
“You know, Luke,” I started, “I cannot express how good of a PA you are, but part of the reason I never take the stairs is that elevators are supposed to be dead zones where urgent emails can’t reach you.”
“It’s not that—but thank you,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I just… I’ve worked for executives before, but I’ve never seen anyone taking on as much as you do. I hate to keep bringing up these fires for you to put out, but there should be three people doing your job, at least.”
I turned to Luke with both eyebrows raised.
“I’m a perfectionist, Luke,” I said simply. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Vegas, it’s that if you want something done right, you do it yourself.”
Wise words that are going to kill me, sooner or later, my headache told me silently.
CHAPTER TWO - MICK
By the time I was crossing the casino floor, the day’s meetings were just one big blur. Luke was off getting us coffee, because god knew we still had a long day ahead of us.
I hadn’t even had time to stop and take some medicine for my migraine. I was running on fumes, and the casino floor was anything but helpful. There were bright lights, loud, sudden noises, and guests who’d had too much to drink all around me.
By now, weaving through that kind
of crowd was second nature to me. I could navigate even a rowdy bunch without getting tripped up anymore. Becoming an expert at going unnoticed in this kind of environment was something I was quietly proud of.
For a split second amid the white noise of the casino, I felt something unusual.
It was like a moment of tense silence that felt too calm for this time of night, like something was just slightly out of place enough that it felt wrong.
Before I could look around and see what the source of that feeling was, I heard it at the same moment the tense pause broke.
“Hey fucker, that’s my friend’s drink you just knocked over! You gonna buy him a new one?”
“Excuse me? You’re the one who’s been bumping into us all night like you own the damn place!”
Shit.
My head swiveled in the direction of the noise, and my heart dropped. Those were the sounds of a fight brewing, but it was worse than it sounded. There weren’t just two drunk men squaring off at each other.
Two entire groups by the roulette tables were starting to get interested.
The first man who’d spoken was around my age, in his late twenties, and he was with about seven men about the same age and similar builds, all dressed fairly nicely. I knew a bachelor party when I saw one.
The man who spilled his drink couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, and the half-dozen men coming to back him up looked about the same, all of them wearing preppy outfits that screamed college frat.
Those two kinds of groups were a powder keg on their own on the best of days. Together, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
I looked across the casino and didn’t see any security on the way.
“What the fuck,” I muttered, heart racing. This was the sort of thing that should have been handled already with a fully functioning staff, but with all the overflow of business, we evidently couldn’t keep up. Meanwhile, things were escalating fast.
“I don’t have time for this, get your frat-boy-ass out of my face.”
“Hey what was that? You want to say that to my face instead of walking out like a little bitch?”