Page 28 of Femme Fatale
Glitz appeared at the doorway, face smudged, one earring missing. She held up a battered tablet. “Surveillance pulled the backup to the cloud. Nines got the footage.”
“Show me,” I said.
She swiped the screen, and I watched in shaky, grainy black-and-white as the attack played out. Ten men, all of them big and dressed for business, had walked in with military precision. They hadn’t looked at the girls, hadn’t touched the money. They’d gone straight for the machines, then the tables, then the back office. Two kept watch by the doors, guns drawn, but I recognized the posture. They weren’t there to shoot, just to keep everyone on the floor. The last man through, the only one who walked like he owned the place, carved a crude S into the blackjack felt with a hunting knife.
“S for Smalls?” Glitz asked, voice flat.
I nodded. “Or for Selene.”
She trembled just a little, and when I looked at her hands, I saw the same bone-white grip I’d had a second ago. She wasn’t built for violence, but she liked to pretend.
“They wanted to make you look weak,” she said.
“They failed,” I said, but we both knew it was a lie.
The damage report was waiting for me on the bar, scrawled on a cocktail napkin. $100,000 in hardware losses. Maybe twice that in reputation. Vegas remembered things, even if it pretended not to.
I stalked through the floor again, boots breaking glass all over, and when I saw the bloodstain by the cashier’s cage, I realized someone had gotten hurt. Just not enough to make the news.
I grabbed my phone, thumb shaking as I dialed Stephanie. She picked up on the first ring. “You seen the footage?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s escalating.”
She sighed, cigarette exhale audible through the line. “You need to calm the fuck down. You go after Jack right now, you’ll lose more than a casino.”
I gripped the phone so hard the plastic groaned. “If I let this go, I’m a joke. I’m nothing.”
“Then don’t let it go. But don’t get yourself killed,” she said, voice steady.
“I won’t,” I said, but my jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. “I need to know you’re backing me.”
“I always do,” she said. “I’ve got chapters all around you ready to go. I’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, and hung up before she could tell me to be careful.
I stared at the ruined pit for a long time, and I wanted to scream, but all that came out was a low, thin hiss, like a tire losing air. If Jack wanted a war, he was about to get one.
***
The meeting with Stephanie had been set for midnight, but she was already waiting when I walked in. I found her at the corner table of the clubhouse’s private back room, cigarette burning down to the filter, the Royal Harlots cut stretched across her back like a flag of war. Her hair was pulled back tight enough to hurt, her eyes rimmed with kohl and exhaustion. If she’d been angry about the casino, it didn’t show; her face was a mask, fixed and unreadable.
“Sit,” Stephanie said, voice soft but impossible to ignore.
I pulled up a chair. She didn’t offer a drink, so I poured my own from the bottle on the table.
“They hit you hard,” she said, exhaling, turning the air blue. She ground her cigarette into the tray, sparks jumping. “You need to be smart, Selene.”
I felt the old urge to talk back, to tell her where she could shove her plan, but I knew better. Stephanie hadn’t gotten to the top of the food chain by being soft or slow.
“I know this city,” I said. “He has connections, but I have people, too. Real people. The ones who make things work and the ones who could make them stop working.”
She considered that, lips pursed, and then reached for another cigarette. “That was true. But people bled easier than systems did. You want to take him out, you go for the heart. Not the hands.”
I stood, started pacing the room. The carpet was stained with secrets and spilled whiskey, and every step echoed off the concrete. “If I did nothing, he’d keep coming. Next time, he wouldn’t just break the furniture. He’d break us.”
And then there was Zeke. Yeah, I’d felt something between us. Something I wanted to take further. We shared a similar past and understood each other’s pain. You don’t let those kinds of people walk out of your life. But I had, whether I had a choice or not.
“You’re right,” she said, “but you can’t fight him his way. You need to be dirtier. Smarter. Use what he doesn’t know against him.”
