Page 35 of Game of Love
“Can you hear me okay?” Wes asked. His voice came across all staticky in my ear piece.
“Fine,” I muttered, doing my best to look inconspicuous on the casino floor.
I was heading to the back offices for my tour with Armand. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to.
“I know you can’t talk buddy. I’m just in your ear,” Wes stated. “See anything interesting yet?”
I got down to a clear corridor where I could answer Wes.
“Nope. It’s all fancy though. This guy sure knows how to do up the place.” I scanned over the cream walls and patent black on the skirting boards. It matched the marble floor and reminded me of the color scheme for a playing card. I was sure that was all done on purpose. Clever.
Wes laughed. “Really Xander? The man is filthy rich. I was looking up his net worth and it’s in the billions. That’s just what we know as listed on Wikipedia.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Anyway. I gotta go.” I was nearly at the end of the corridor. “Meeting the prick in about one minute.” He knew I was talking about Armand.
“Speak later.”
I opened the door at the end of the corridor and there was the prick talking to one of the workers who was pushing a trolley with stacks of money. Money galore.
Jesus, there was an easy million on the cart. Easy.
If anyone got their hands on that they’d have a field day. Set for life.
Armand stopped talking to the worker and focused his attention on me with his fake ass smile. I wished he wouldn’t bother.
The worker moved away and continued down another corridor with the trolley.
“Morning,” Armand said.
“Good morning.”
“Ready to start?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I replied, giving him the same tight-lipped smile.
He turned and I followed him. We walked up to a set of large oak wood automatic doors that opened for us.
Once we got inside I widened my eyes at what I saw.
It was a whole other world apart from the casino.
Below us was an open plan section with rows of desks with workers sitting at them, literally like an office setting. That was practically the whole ground floor and I guessed there were about a hundred people down there.
“This is what we call the back office. Our admin team if you will,” Armand explained. “All paperwork is done here. All business deals filed. Anything to do with the hotel chain and casinos are all managed here. There are separate managers for each department.”
“Wow, I never knew Giovanni had a set up like this,” I stated.
“He sure does. The man is a genius. It’s like a whole ecosystem set to run by itself.”
A whole ecosystem indeed.
It made me realize that the place had different security systems because we hadn’t seen any of this on camera. It was something I could report back and Wes could check out.
“We consider this branch headquarters, although technically the other hotels and casinos on the strip is bigger. It’s just that this was where it all started.”
“Have you been with him for a long time?” I asked because of the admiration with which he spoke.
“Not as long as the others. Six years. Fresh out of college. Our families go back to Italy. I always had a job lined up for me with Giovanni if I chose it.”
