by Rebel Hart
He forced me through training day in and day out to learn how to adopt any persona and get anything our family needed from someone by any means necessary. It was through this task that I came to briefly cross paths with Justice Puckett, entering into a relationship with him to get insider information about his family and their industry. He was boring even by wallpaper standards, and as soon as my father decided the Pucketts weren’t a threat anymore, I quickly left their company. As far as I knew, Justice went to the grave thinking I was just some girl that ghosted him.
Which was, of course, what I wanted him to think.
TJ and Marcos got much luckier with the exciting jobs of handling my father’s drugs and arms as his underbosses. While he sat up in his stone and iron tower, my brothers got to hit the streets moving the foreign drugs that made Las Vegas the wicked party city it was and selling the artillery that you often see on the news in the hands of someone who should never have that sort of weaponry. He sold both for 300% over the market average because we were the only people in the entire country that supplied most of what we put on the streets. TJ was the weapons expert, while Marcos worked with the drugs, and both of them had a much more adventurous path than I did. The most exciting thing I was doing right now was sitting on the board for a tech company.
And it was hard as hell not to fall asleep during those meetings.
“I’m almost down a third crate,” Marcos answered my father.
“Hm,” my father hummed. “And how are people reacting to this one? Where’s it selling best?”
“It seems like taking it gives people this insane reaction to lights and sounds, so it’s doing the best in the nightclub market. I brought two pounds with me to the strip last night, and sold out within about thirty minutes.”
“Wonderful,” my father replied. “This one is from Cambodia and is particularly cheap because of the ingredients. I’ve got a good relationship going with the distributor, so I’ll order more. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir,” Marcos replied.
TJ glanced over at my dad and then frowned at what was left of his steak. Our family was rich enough to power the entire state of Nevada, but the currency we were all after most was also the saddest one.
My father’s pride.
He didn’t dole it out frequently, and when he did, it was as rewarding for the recipient as it was degrading for those who didn’t get it. It was a double-sided coin and the implied insult screamed, “Well done, you. What are you other two doing?”
Because my father had tunnel vision to whomever was performing the best at any given time, it didn’t matter if you had a bang-up day. If someone else performed better, you may as well have done nothing. That was the story of my life. No matter how well I did—no matter how many board meetings I didn’t fall asleep in—my job was to open doors and lay groundwork for success down the road. I almost never had immediate payoff, so I very rarely had anything to show for my days in my father’s eyes.
‘Hey dad, I managed to convince someone I’m a redhead instead of a blonde,’ doesn’t come across as successful as, ‘Hey dad, I went down to the strip and sold fifty-thousand dollars’ worth of drugs in thirty minutes.’ My brothers would always have a leg up on me.
Such was my lot in life.
“Marianna,” my father said to me. “How was your day?”
I bit back a laugh, because I knew he couldn’t care less how I was doing. “Productive. I’ve cemented my roles in MGM and the Aria, and I’m working on documentation now for NDOT. Within a few weeks I should be high enough there to have access to everything, and then there won’t be a single thing cropping up on the strip that we won’t know about immediately.”
“You got in at the Department of Transportation?” Marcos said. “That’s sick.”
“It’s something,” my father replied. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what the outcome of all of that hard work is, won’t we?” He gave me a smile that reeked of disappointment, and I gave him one right back.
“I guess so.”
Dinner returned to silence after that. Occasionally, forks could be heard clinking against plates, but otherwise nothing. My father was the first to leave the table, as he usually was, and my mother went after him. I lingered, still frustrated with my father’s dismissal of my work, even if I expected it.
“Don’t let it get to you,” TJ said. “You know Dad. He’s all about the payoff. One day in a few months he’s gonna be able to use your shit to his advantage and he’ll be happy with what you’ve done.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” I responded. “When he gets there, it’ll be all about how I should have acted faster, or it would be better if he had more access.” I waved my hand through the air. “It’s fine. I’ve come to expect this. Nothing I do is good enough for him. Never has been, never will be.”
“Well I think you’re killing it,” Marcos said. “Keep up the good work.”
I smiled at him and appreciated his attempts to make me feel better, although I did think that the youngest sibling needing to tell the oldest that they were proud was a little pathetic. “Thanks.”
“Alright. We’re outta here.” Marcos stood up and tapped TJ on the shoulder. “Come on. Saturday night on the strip is a gold-mine.”
“You got anything going on tonight?” TJ asked.
“Drinks with the MasCat board,” I replied. “I’d rather shoot myself in the foot.”
“Then just drink straight tequila all night. It’s basically the same thing.” TJ walked over and kissed me on top of my head, followed by Marcos wrapping a hug over my shoulders and they both walked out of the dining room. With my head pounding and dread in my heart, I got up from the table and returned to my room to get ready for the night.
Picking out a dress and shoes to wear wasn’t the most difficult part of preparing to meet with people who’d crossed paths with one of my personas. A typical, ‘little black dress’ and stiletto heels could keep enough attention off the details of my appearance and focused on my assets, but I still had to become someone else entirely for the engagement.
In the back of my room was a walk-in closet, but it wasn’t the average person’s receptacle for clothes. One wall was lined top to bottom, end-to-end in wigs of every shape, size and color. From bobs to ponytails that flowed clear down to the waist, I had something for every single occasion. On top of that, I had just about every color imaginable, and made sure to have multiple styles in each color to make my personas that much more believable. I even had wigs that had fading roots to make it look like my natural hair color was peeking through something dyed. All to make things more convincing.
On a shelf in the back, I had stacks of different colored contact lenses for changing my eye color and a vanity with piles of makeup stacked high on either side. I snagged one of the deep auburn wigs, in a down, flowy hairstyle in contrast to the updo I typically wore in this persona, then I grabbed a pair of lavender contacts and walked over to the vanity and sat down.
Makeup helped me do what my wig and contacts couldn’t. It wasn’t just about appearing different at a glance; I wanted it to be so that if someone took a picture of my natural face and one of my personas, they’d have a difficult time telling the difference. If Clark Kent had his glasses, I had contour to make my nose look thinner and my cheeks wider and more defined. I’d only applied prosthetics on two occasions, and thankfully this wasn’t one of them.
I pulled the wig on and secured it to my head, then popped the contacts in and looked myself over in the mirror. Between the obvious and the meticulous details I’d applied with makeup, I’d successfully transformed myself for the night. I hated being people I wasn’t, especially for no payoff from my father, but I understood the importance of what I was doing.
Plus, I’d never been a person to do things half-assed. If I was going to have to do it regardless, I might as well be the best at it.
When tourists came to Las Vegas, they often found themselves on the strip, but locals knew
that the best places to go were actually downtown. You could still find casinos, if that was your thing, but there were also tons of bars that had Vegas strip energy without being packed with promoters and peddlers. One in particular, simply named Here, was one of my favorites, and it was the meeting spot for drinks with my fellow board members at my request. We were the twelve people responsible for making the biggest decisions for MasCat Technology, the largest casino tech company not just in Nevada, but in the country, and that, we felt, had earned us a drink.
“Over here!”
I walked through the front door, and almost immediately, one of the other board members, Mary, put her hand up and called me over. She and a handful of the other members had already gathered and grabbed a table, and it looked like they were already on their second round.
“We thought you weren’t going to make it,” one of the members, Rick, said. He and the rest of the board members were much older than I was, but they let me take them out and pretend they were young again.
It helped me manipulate them quite nicely.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said as I sat down.
“What are you drinking?” Rick asked. “First one’s on me.”
“A tequila shot would be great,” I responded, choosing to take TJ’s advice.
“You look fantastic,” Mary commented as Rick ambled off. “You always put us to shame.”
I waved my hand at her. “Oh please. I had to make sure I was keeping up.”
Those at the table started to laugh, and another board member, Lindsey held up her glass. “That’s our Jade, ever humble.”
Mary lifted her glass as well. “To Jade Meghan!”
I laughed as everyone else brought their glasses up to clash with hers. “To Jade Meghan!”
For the next few hours, that point was where Mariana Westun ended, and Jade Meghan began.
3
Bryce
Rather than continuing our conversation in the living room, my mother invited me back to her office. It did not inspire confidence that her request was going to go in my favor.
My mother, who had formerly been the most successful technology developer in all of Colorado for a time, had lost her trust in me as of late. She’d put in fifteen years before Baylor and I were born, building a company from the ground up with a boyfriend from high school, only to have that friend take her ideas, take their company and run off. His company was nothing without the technology she supplied for it, and the idea to start the company had been hers.
After dealing with an abusive single mother growing up, being bullied her entire school career, and then having her high school sweetheart steal everything from her and take off, my mom’s final shred of faith in humanity snapped. She decided that the only person worth helping in life was herself, and she decided that laws were suggestions, not rules. She started her own company, and after crippling her own stolen company and taking the scraps for herself, she embarked upon a course of bringing all of Colorado to its knees.
Fortunately, she took a single risk to trust again with my father, otherwise my brother and I wouldn’t be here. It was my personal belief that after everything my mom suffered through, some deity looking out for her brought her a man who was more than happy to dedicate his entire existence to making her happy. My father lived and died for my mom and helped her grow her small, illegal outfit into a booming empire, complete with giving her two sons.
The eldest of whom repaid her by getting her kicked out of Colorado by being a shit starter…
It was for that reason that, since moving from Boulder to Las Vegas, my mom had given me very little in the way of tasks or missions. I only had myself to blame, I nearly destroyed everything she’d built, almost single-handedly, all because I couldn’t control my temper. I turned all of Boulder’s seedy underside against my family in a single blow. If my mom hadn’t already been laying the groundwork for an eventual shift to Nevada to expand her market, it might have killed us.
Ever since making the move, I’d been asking my mom for her forgiveness. Though she’d been very clear that she never lost love for me as a son, she’d said that she didn’t feel she could trust me as a businessman anymore. So though I’d spent my entire childhood and teenage years mastering stealth and thievery in order to take on the branch of my mom’s business that obtained information and sold it, I’d been put on ice because I couldn’t be trusted.
That verifiably meant that this mission she was planning to give me was either a garbage dump task meant to keep me busy so I didn’t keep causing problems, or a pity mission because she felt bad, and I had no idea which would be worse.
“Mom, I really am sorry for that show today,” I said. “Really, I didn’t start it.”
She walked around and sat down behind her desk, floor-to-ceiling windows showing the last of the sun descending behind the mountains behind her. It made her look even more imposing. Rather than crossing her arms or looking frustrated, she elbowed down on her desk and set her head in her hand.
“You got your grandmother’s bad temper. I was hoping that your father would have shared some of his gentle nature, but it seems he wanted to keep it all for himself.”
“I don’t know, Baylor’s pretty soft,” I grumbled.
“Your standard of softness is considerably different from others’ standards,” she spat back. “He hides it better than you perhaps, but your brother’s temper is nearly as bad as yours.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You boys are going to be the death of me.”
“Well, let us make you lots of money before then,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s the plan. Which brings us back to this.” She nodded her head at the folder I still had clasped in my hand. “As you well know, I’ve been trying to forge a relationship with MasCat Technologies. Their company provides the software for almost every single major casino on the Las Vegas strip, and a fair amount downtown and on the outskirts.” She turned around and tapped the window directly behind her to reveal one of her personally patented invisible screens. “I’ve offered to sell them my software for a fraction of the cost for a large contract. We’ll get a percentage of every monthly cost from the properties that have their machines to use and maintain them, but the machines will also take a monthly fee MasCat won’t know about. That money comes straight to us seamlessly.”
“It’s brilliant.”
“It is,” she admitted, “but here’s the problem. Such a large change cannot be approved unless all the members of the board will sign off on it. Now I’ve either charmed or extorted my way into the hearts of all of the board members, except for one. Everyone, including the CEO, is ready to sign off on this deal apart from one person.”
“This woman,” I said, looking down at the beautiful redhead in the photo. “You said you don’t know her name, but I don’t understand. There’s one listed here.”
“Yes, well that’s the issue. On the website, on her business card, and on any official paperwork at MasCat, her name is Jade Meghan, but looking into her, I can find nothing else on her. By my vast network’s standards, she’s a robot who’s powered off at the end of the night at MasCat and turned back on the next morning. There is a single public record for a driver in the state of Nevada named Jade Meghan with that exact same picture on the license, and that license is not attached to anything in this state or any other.”
“So it’s a fake name,” I said.
My mother groaned. “It seems that way, but I’ve searched high and low and can’t find hide nor hair of the woman anywhere. For all intents and purposes, she doesn’t exist.”
“So you need me to find out who Jade Meghan actually is?” I said.
“I want you to do more than that,” she said. “If she’s this skilled at hiding her identity, I imagine she’ll be equally as skilled at hiding her assets or anything of value to her. She’s turned me down several times, so she isn’t interested in being charmed, but without knowing what she holds most dear, we can’t extort her either.
That really only leaves one solution.”
It all clicked into my head. The reason my mom gave me this task wasn’t because she was punishing me or pitying me. She gave me this task because I was her wild child. “You want me to kill her.”
Clicking off her screen, my mom turned around and faced me once again. “Well, it isn’t as if I didn’t give her ample opportunities, but given she’s using a fake identity, I imagine she’s got some stake in the game that she’d be giving up if she let me in. For all we know, she’s one of our new rivals trying to stop us from getting a leg up—not that I could blame them. You know I don’t like to fight,” she crinkled her nose up. “Well, messily, but what must be done must be done. I trust you to make a good decision.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You do?”
That broke a laugh out of her. “Well, no. I don’t. But I know you like to have your fun. Consider it an early Christmas present.”
“Some men get ties,” I said.
She pursed her lips at me. “Would you prefer a tie?”
I glanced down at my leather jacket and plain black t-shirt. “You know, I’ve never been a tie guy.”
“Now listen to me, Bryce. You have full rein on this task, but I want to be kept abreast of everything. Once you have her real identity, before you make any sort of move to kill her, I want to know what you’ve learned. Nothing happens before I say so, is that clear?”
I nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“Good. Then you may go.” I stood up and started to leave, when she called out, “Bryce. This is a wonderful opportunity to show me you’re ready to take more responsibility around here again. I’d take extra care not to let me down.”
