Page 27 of Femme Fatale
Jack gave another nod, this time to the man holding Simone. He twisted her arm, just a little, enough to make her gasp. Not enough to break, just to remind her of where she was. “Zeke,” Jack said, “last chance. Choose family, or choose a slow death.”
Selene looked at me, then at Simone. She didn’t say anything, but the look said enough. She’d kill every person in the lot, but she wouldn’t let a kid get hurt if she could help it.
My heart stuttered. Every instinct screamed at me to stay, but I could see the play. Jack was never leaving without us. He’d torch the building, leave bodies as a warning, and never stop until he had proof he’d broken me. Or worse. He’d take Selene instead.
I stepped out, hands up. I faced Selene. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. Then I walked toward Simone, toward the men who’d killed more people than I’d ever met.
Simone locked eyes with me as I approached. “You asshole,” she said, but there was no anger, just pride.
I took her hand, and together, we moved to stand in front of Jack. I looked back once, at Selene, her face gone blank and unreadable, as if she’d shut down all emotion in order to survive. Kara was already mentally marking her, preparing for the war to come.
Jack put his hand on my shoulder, a fatherly gesture that made my skin crawl. “Good boy,” he said. “We’ll talk later.” Then he signaled, and the crew loaded us into the back seat of the SUV, Simone between me and the goon.
As the door shut, I looked out the tinted window at the lodge, at Selene, at the army of women I’d just betrayed. And I saw in her face the promise that this was not the end of anything, but the beginning of all-out fucking war.
The engines fired in perfect unison. The convoy peeled away from the club, gravel dust and sunset burning the air behind us. It took everything I had not to look back again.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Selene standing alone on the porch, the officers filing out behind her, their hands tight on their weapons, their faces set. Joker started to raise her pistol, but Selene stopped her. There was no point.
The sun set. The engines faded. And for the first time in my life, I felt like the only way to save anything was to let it burn.
Chapter Seven
Selene
The first thing I noticed was the silence. Casinos were never quiet, not unless something had gone rotten, but that night, Aces Wild had been a graveyard. Not the dignified kind, with angels on headstones and grass kept trimmed. The kind where the bodies never left.
The parking lot had been empty except for a handful of employee cars and my Harley, which had rattled the night to pieces before I killed the engine. I lit a smoke, let it burn to the filter while I listened. There had been no wind. No noise at all, really, except the little tremor in my hand when I put the keys away. Maybe that was the only way you knew something had really gone sideways—when even the rats had enough sense to keep quiet.
I stepped inside, steel-toed boots first. The doors hadn’t even been locked. And in the glow of a single flickering exit sign, I saw what they’d done to my kingdom.
Slot machines, the ones I’d rebuilt with Buck’s sweat and my own fucking blood, lay on their backs like dead horses, guts spilled in a confetti of wiring and broken glass. Some had been split straight down the panel. Others looked like they’d tried to crawl away before someone had finished the job with a baseball bat or a sledgehammer. The entire center aisle had been choked with debris, coins everywhere, none of it spendable. There were stains on the carpet, dark and spreading, and for a second, I couldn’t tell if it had been liquor or something more biological.
The gaming tables had been next. They were overturned, chips crushed underfoot, and green felt scuffed to shit. A couple of dealers huddled by the wall, faces lit up in the weak red of a fire alarm that never stopped flashing. Their hands were shaking. One of them, a new guy from Laughlin, was crying into his tie. The pit boss, Boss, stood guard by the bar, face swollen and purple, blood drying in a curly mustache under his nose. I moved toward him, shoving wreckage aside, glass crunching underfoot.
He saw me and straightened, pride and pain wrapped up in the same shaky breath. “You weren’t supposed to be here tonight, Selene,” he said, voice more gravel than usual.
“Neither were they,” I said, nodding to the carnage. “How many?”
Boss shook his head. “Ten. All men. Three trucks. Maybe twenty minutes, tops.” His right hand, the one that had once killed a man for cheating with a marked deck, was wrapped in a dirty towel, bleeding through. “No faces. Ski masks, gloves. But they knew where the cameras were. First thing they did was smash the main board.”
I looked up at the glass eye in the ceiling. It was cracked, but the red LED was still blinking. “Not all of them,” I said, but my voice was flat. I already knew we were fucked.
He tried to hide the way he leaned on the bar for support. “They didn’t take anything, not really. Just wanted to show you who was boss.”
I barked a laugh. “Funny, that’s your job.”
Boss tried to smile, but it didn’t land. “Could’ve been worse. They could’ve hurt the girls. But all they did was yell, push, and break shit. One of them called me ‘old man’ and told me to tell you, ‘next time, it’s personal.’”
I wanted to tell him it already was, but instead I squeezed his shoulder, just hard enough to let him know he was still needed. “Get everyone home,” I said. “I’ll handle the rest.”
He gave a ragged salute and limped off, rounding up the dealers like sheep after a thunderstorm.
The back office had been worse. Every file cabinet was open, paperwork scattered, hard drives smashed to bits. The safe was untouched, which I almost respected. They hadn’t been there for money. Only to send a message.
My own office door had been off its hinges. I stepped over it and saw that my desk had been turned upside down. The computer monitor was dead, the screen a spiderweb of cracks. The chair was slashed. A single, unbroken bottle of bourbon sat on the floor, untouched. Maybe even Jack Smalls’ boys understood the sanctity of good whiskey.
I stood in the center, hands at my sides, and let the anger work through me. It was the kind of anger that grew slow and cold, like water seeping under a house. I clenched my fists so tight my knuckles went bone white, then even whiter. I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted blood. It was metallic and violent.
