Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two

by Michelle St. James

  “That’s not your problem. Your number one job is to take care of yourself. Max is a big boy. He’ll be fine.”

  Abby laughed. “Sympathy isn’t your strong suit, is it?"

  “I’m plenty sympathetic,” Meredith said. “It sounds like a shitty situation. I’m sorry he suffered, but you did what you had to do at the time. No point beating yourself up for it.”

  Abby could always count on Meredith to distill everything to its most important points. While Abby would still be agonizing and analyzing weeks later, Meredith would already have moved on.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “I am.”

  Abby laughed.

  “So what about your job?” Meredith asked.

  Abby sighed. “I’m still figuring that out.”

  “You can’t seriously be thinking about going back to work for Jason!”

  Abby rubbed her fingertip along the formica table top. “I’m not sure.”

  “Abby, no.” Meredith wiped her mouth on a napkin and threw it onto the plate with her half-eaten sandwich. “If Jason’s doing something illegal at the Tangier, you could be implicated just by working there.”

  “I know, but I could also help put a stop to it.”

  Meredith looked around nervously. “Jesus, Abby… you’re scaring the shit out of me. You do not need to get involved in this. You have a stellar resume. You have money in savings. Just… find another job!”

  Abby sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

  “It seems pretty simple to me.”

  She hated that she couldn’t tell Meredith more. She thought of Angel Vitale and wondered if she had any friends, wondered how she talked about her husband’s business to people outside her world. Was she lonely? Was it worth it?

  She saw Angel as she’d been in Mexico, the strength in the lift of her chin, the light in her eyes when she’d spoken about her husband, and decided it must be.

  “I know,” Abby said. “I just… there are things I can’t tell you,” she finally admitted.

  Meredith shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s more to the story.” Abby hurried to continue when Meredith opened her mouth to interrupt. “And before you say more, I can’t tell you. I just can’t, Mer. It would only put you in danger, and I don’t want that.”

  “If telling me would put me in danger, then going back to the Tangier would put you in danger,” Meredith said. She glanced at her phone, then slipped it into her pocket, and pulled out her wallet. She threw cash on the table and looked at Abby. “Listen, you’re a grown up, I’m not going to push this — ”

  “Thank you,” Abby said.

  “But I am going to tell you to be careful,” Meredith said. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I know you said you can’t tell me, but it sounds like it’s no joke. You’re home. You’re back with Max. Why risk all of that?”

  Abby drew in a breath and slipped out of the booth as Meredith did the same.

  “Thank you for taking care of the house while I was gone,” Abby said, giving her a goodbye hug. “It means a lot to me.”

  Meredith pulled back to look at her. “It was nothing. Key’s in its usual place.” She hesitated. “I love you, Abb. If you ever want to talk, I’m here to listen. I’m not afraid of Jason Draper.”

  She turned to go and Abby watched as she made her way to the front door, an unspoken response ringing through her mind.

  You should be, Mer. You should be.

  Eleven

  Max carried his and Abby’s plates into the kitchen while she cleared off the rest of their dinner dishes. His heart had been in his throat when he’d crossed the threshold into the house, his last visit branded in his mind: the realization that Abby was gone, the finality of it, the flash drive that could only have come from Jason sitting on the console table.

  But it was Abby’s house, and it meant the world to her. They couldn’t stay at his place every night.

  “Just leave them in the sink,” Abby said when Max turned on the water to start rinsing them for the dishwasher.

  “No way,” he said. “You just got back. I’m not sticking you with dishes.”

  She slid her arms around his waist and kissed his shoulder.

  “Are you trying to distract me?” he asked, setting one of the plates in the dishwasher.

  She laughed. “Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you pour us another glass of wine instead?” he asked. “This is only gonna take a minute.”

  “I can do that.”

  He took a ridiculous amount of pleasure in the soft rush of water from the faucet, the clink of dishes, the sound of Abby moving around the kitchen behind him. It was all he’d wanted in the long month that she’d been gone: he and Abby, laughing over dinner, curling up on the couch afterward.

  Domestic bliss was no exaggeration.

  When he was done, he closed the dishwasher without starting it, knowing Abby saved water by only running it when it was full, something he’d taken to doing in her absence. He found her sitting cross-legged on the couch, separating her backed-up mail into piles.

  He sat next to her and took a drink from one of the wine glasses on the coffee table, more than happy to bask in the moment, in the fact that Abby had been returned to him, while she finished going through her mail.

  When she was done, she reached for the other glass and leaned back on the couch, tucking her feet up under her body.

  Max reached for her legs and pulled them over his lap, moving slowly so her wine didn’t spill. She moaned when he started rubbing her feet.

  “Hmmm… you’re going to spoil me,” she said, closing her eyes. “And put me to sleep.”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “The spoiling part at least.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled, and he felt the blood quicken in his veins.

  “How’d it go with Nico and the others today?” she asked.

  He hadn’t told her much, just that he was meeting with the men from the Syndicate to figure out a next step on Jason and the DeLucas. He wanted to keep it that way, to keep her in the dark because it was the safest place for her right now.

  But even as he thought it, he knew it was too late, that it had been too late since the moment Angel Vitale had landed in Tulum and made her way to Abby’s bungalow.

  He almost wished it had never happened, but then Abby would still be in Mexico, and he’d still be living in a state of perpetual drunkenness, unable to eat, unable to sleep for the thought of her.

  For missing her.

  It was selfish as fuck, but he couldn’t bring himself to wish it, which meant he had to deal with the downside — namely, worrying about her safety now that she was back in the same town with Jason and the DeLucas.

  “Max?” she prompted.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The meeting was fine.”

  She smiled. “You’ll have to tell me more than that. You can’t just pretend I don’t know anything, even though I know you want to.”

  He nodded. “They confirmed that DeLuca is dropping money at the casino through a couple of regulars.”

  “So Jason can launder it?” Abby asked.

  “It would appear so,” Max said. He held his tongue on the rest, hoping she’d drop it. He should have known better.

  “What do you do with that information?” she asked. “Can you tell the FBI?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Max said. “The FBI operates within a set of specific legal parameters. It would take them time to get the evidence they need to secure warrants, both to confirm what we know about the money and to confiscate it and arrest Jason and Fredo DeLuca.”

  Her eyes were bright and alert, the sleepiness of a few moments ago long gone. “What are you and the Syndicate going to do?”

  Goddammit. He tried to think of a way to get around telling her they needed to figure out how Jason was moving the money out of the casino. That was a ticket to disaster, to Abby insisting she stay on at the Tangier to find ou
t.

  “We’re working on a few things,” he said.

  Her eyes flashed and she sat up, setting her wine on the coffee table and crossing her arms over her chest. “You can’t keep deflecting. I’m not that stupid.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, Abby. You know I don’t. I’m trying to keep you out of this as much as possible.”

  “We talked about that this morning.” She got up from the couch and picked up her wine glass.

  “Abby…” He followed her into the kitchen where she was putting her empty glass into the dishwasher. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

  “Wrong.” She turned to face him. “You’re making it harder than it needs to be. You could stop fighting me, stop treating me like that kid who could barely pull herself through every day, and give me some credit.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her. “It’s not about that, Abby. You know it’s not.”

  “Well, maybe for me it is,” she said. “Maybe I need to feel like a woman and not some kind of fragile flower that will wilt if the sun gets too hot.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Jesus, Abby…”

  “Please.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt.

  He sighed and looked down at her. Her cheeks were flushed with emotion, her eyes wet with unshed tears, her lips slightly parted with words she hadn’t yet spoken.

  He didn’t know whether to curse aloud or take her to bed, and it didn’t matter, because neither of those things would help them.

  Not right now.

  “Come here.”

  He led her to the couch and they both sat down. It took him a few seconds to start talking. He was crossing a line, telling Abby things he didn’t want her to know. Things that would make her more insistent on helping, that would put her in more danger.

  But he’d seen the look in her eyes, understood that it was about more than a desire to know, that it was about a need to prove herself capable and strong.

  Not to him, but to herself.

  “We know how the money is being dropped at the Tangier,” he said, “but we don’t know how it’s being moved out. We need to figure that out in order to disrupt the process.”

  “What happens if you can disrupt the process?” she asked.

  “We can’t know for sure, but we’re hoping it will create a rift between DeLuca and Jason.”

  “And then?”

  “Then the Syndicate tries to step in again,” Max said.

  “Again?”

  “They already approached both Jason and DeLuca. Neither wanted to play by the Syndicate’s rules, as evidenced by the DarkNet game.”

  “So you need to know how Jason is getting the laundered money back to the DeLuca family,” Abby said.

  He nodded. And here it came, the moment Max dreaded.

  “I can find out,” she said. “My job is waiting. Jason doesn’t know that I know about any of this. I have access to almost everything. I can dig around and no one will be the wiser.”

  He stood and paced the room, trying to quench the anger rising in his body. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Abby.”

  “I’m not asking anything, Max. I don’t have to ask your permission.” The tightly controlled anger in her voice made him turn to face her as she continued. “But I’d like to discuss it, really discuss it, without your default of telling me no.”

  “It’s not a default in anything but this,” he said. “And only in this, because I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I know that,” she said, “and I appreciate it. But if we learn anything from the stunt Jason pulled before I went to Mexico, it should be that we have to work together. Keeping me out of something like this, something that’s taking over your life, something that’s changing your life… it’s no good, Max.”

  “It’s not changing my life.” He said it too quickly, too fiercely, and he wondered if he was trying to convince Abby or himself. “It’s all temporary.”

  The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t buying it, but that was another fight for another time. She would see: as soon as Jason was behind bars — or dead — Max’s life was going back to the way it had been before, with one exception: Abby would be by his side.

  “All right,” Abby said. “Let’s say it’s temporary. That means you’re sure you’re going to bring Jason down.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Then you should welcome my help. Either way, he’s going to be out of the picture, and with my help, it will be sooner rather than later.”

  “I don’t like it.” It was the understatement of the year. The thought of Abby in close proximity to Jason every day, not to mention having her back on the radar of the DeLucas, made him want to punch something until his hands came away bloody.

  And Abby would be back on their radar. The DeLucas were running a business. They would know everything about the people closest to Jason.

  He realized that it was already true. That Abby had been close to Jason since long before he built the Tangier, which meant Fredo DeLuca and his thugs knew about her anyway.

  He kept quiet about it. The last thing Abby needed was more ammunition to prove her point.

  “You don’t have to like it.” Abby crossed the room to stand in front of him. She held his face in her hands. “Let me do this. Let me help you. Let me help myself.”

  He wanted to deny her. To put his foot down.

  But it wasn’t the knowledge that it wouldn’t do any good that made up his mind — it was the look in her eyes, determination mingled with pain, the past a shadow over it all, that forced him to acknowledge the decision wasn’t his to make.

  To acknowledge it never had been.

  “One condition,” he said.

  “Tell me what it is first.”

  He shook his head. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “You get out when I say you get out.”

  She stood on tiptoe. “We’ll talk about it when the time comes. I’ll be reasonable, I promise.”

  Her kiss should have been a salve over their argument. Instead it felt like a bribe — one that would exact a price he would regret paying.

  Twelve

  Walking through the doors of the Tangier was like having a serious case of déjà vu. She couldn’t count how many times she’d traveled around the slots and gaming tables, down the hall that held the coffee shop to the bank of elevators.

  She’d emailed Jason the day after she and Max had their argument about whether she should go back to work at the casino. She kept the exchange professional, telling him simply that she was back and ready to return to work. She’d been relieved when he hadn’t asked about Max, although she knew that could be coming in person.

  She and Max had agreed to keep their relationship on the down-low, at least in public, as a way to minimize the danger to Abby. Neither of them were happy about it — Max because he wanted Jason to know about them, Abby because she didn’t want to conceal such an important detail of her life — but it was only temporary.

  She sighed as she got in the elevator with an elderly couple wearing matching Hawaiian shirts. She shouldn’t be happy to be back, not when she knew what was going on here, but she couldn’t help it. It had been like home for so long, the one place she felt as comfortable in as her little house that she’d given so much love and care.

  It made her sick that Jason had perverted The Tangier. She thought of all the hardworking people in the hotel — the housekeeping staff and concierge, the front desk clerks and the restaurant workers — and the waiters and waitresses and dealers and croupiers who held down the casino.

  It wasn’t fair. What would happen to the casino if Jason was sent to prison?

  She looked up as the elevator stopped on the twentieth floor and smiled as the couple exited into the hall. The doors closed again, and Abby took a deep breath as the elevator ascended to the Executive Office level at the top of the tower. By the time the doors opened again, she’d managed to plaster on her fa
ce what she hoped was a convincing smile.

  She stepped into the lobby, glad she’d come in early. The reception desk was empty, the offices quiet. With any luck, she’d be able to get a cup of coffee and talk to Jason before facing her staff and their questions about her absence. She would need to schedule meetings with them — and with Rosie, Jason’s executive assistant — to insure she was up to speed on everything that had happened while she was gone.

  She’d just rounded the corner into the executive hallway when she almost stopped dead in her tracks.

  A man was sitting at a desk at the head of the hall.

  And not just any man — a mountain of a man.

  He was slouched in a desk chair, a copy of the New York Times open in front of him, but his casual posture did nothing to hide the enormous circumference of his biceps and the wide span of his shoulders. He had a broad face, and his red hair stood in contrast to his clothes, an all-black uniform consisting of military khakis, a T-shirt, and boots.

  She forced herself not to look at the weapon holstered to his side. Forced herself to react the way she would if she hadn’t known this must be Bruce Frazier, the mercenary in charge of Jason’s security detail.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  He looked up at her slowly, like he was in no hurry to acknowledge her presence, like he could simply ignore her if he wanted to.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who are you and why are you in the Executive hall?” she asked.

  “I work for Jason.” The man’s voice was flat, his blue eyes cold. “Talk to him.”

  She hesitated, trying to replicate her natural response. “I’ll do that.”

  She moved past him, trying to calm the slam of her heartbeat against her ribcage. She’d known about Frazier, of course. Max had made sure she was prepared for Jason’s new security team. But she hadn’t expected to see any of them so close to her office, and she definitely hadn’t expected Bruce Frazier to be so unnerving.

  Her office was just as she’d left it, no sign of the turmoil that had led to her flight to Mexico. She set her bag down and unpacked her laptop next to the desktop that belonged to the company. Luckily, it wasn’t unusual for her to have both screens open at once as she checked the casino’s numbers against the bank records. No one would think twice about her using both computers as she searched for anomalies that might indicate Jason’s method for moving DeLuca’s cash out of the casino.