Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
The start of our shift was perfectly routine. I had no way of knowing that what would happen next would change my life forever.
2
Marcus
My flight from New York to Las Vegas got in just before midnight. From there, it was a short cab ride to the Bellagio—my home until I figured out what was next for me.
I was way too restless to sleep and ended up pacing in my suite, until it started to feel like the walls were closing in. Since my cars were in storage, I placed a call to the concierge, who produced a rented convertible within the hour. That was one of my favorite things about Vegas—I could get whatever I wanted, even in the middle of the night.
After picking a direction at random, I started driving. In a matter of minutes, the city lights were in my rearview mirror, and the desert was all around me.
The Porsche’s speedometer slid past ninety, then a hundred. The engine revved, and the wind whipped my hair and raised goosebumps up and down my arms. I welcomed the cold, because it woke me up and made me feel alive.
Even though returning to Vegas had probably been a mistake, I’d missed this while I was in New York. That city felt claustrophobic to me, but I could breathe out here, under the wide-open sky. There’d been a time in my life when I could only dream about this kind of freedom. Now, it was impossible to take it for granted.
I might have driven until dawn. Hell, I might have driven forever, if it wasn’t for a scrawny coyote that wandered onto the highway. My breath caught when he appeared in my headlights, and I yanked the wheel to the right as I slammed on the brakes. The Porsche bounced hard as it left the pavement, and then it skidded across the dirt in a wide arc. Fortunately, there was nothing to run into, apart from a few scraggly bushes that snapped beneath my tires.
By the time the car came to a stop, I’d spun around so far that I was at a ninety-degree angle to the highway. The coyote was in my headlights again, and he looked back at me curiously before trotting off in the opposite direction.
I let out the breath I’d been holding and muttered, “Fucking hell.”
Once my pulse settled back down, I pulled back onto the blacktop and returned to the city at a more reasonable speed. Apparently I wasn’t quite done being reckless though, because when I was back inside the city limits and realized what part of town I was in, I took a left turn and drove someplace I really should have avoided.
The reason I’d left Vegas a couple of months ago was because I’d had a run-in with a two-bit criminal. He was the head of an illegal gambling operation, and I’d made a move on his territory, thinking it’d be easy pickings.
Little did I know he was actually the illegitimate son of a big-time mobster, which made him part of one of the most powerful crime families on the west coast. When I pushed, he pushed back harder, with a whole team of his gangster relatives as back-up. The only thing to do after that was to clear out and let the dust settle.
I probably should have stayed gone, because this shit wasn’t worth getting killed over. And I definitely shouldn’t be taking this detour past his family’s bar, to see if he happened to be there after hours. That was all kinds of stupid.
But because I had a little fantasy of catching this guy alone and punching him in the face, I kept going until I reached the bar. Even though it was nearly three a.m., there was a light on and someone was inside, so I pulled to the curb.
It wasn’t the douchebag criminal, though. Instead, it was a guy dressed in a dark blue jacket that was too big on him. I watched as he retrieved a bottle, then took a seat at the bar. He sat facing away from the door and the plate glass window, so it was easy to read the three big letters on the back of his windbreaker—EMT.
When my former crew had done some research into my enemy—badly, since they’d failed to discover his mafia connection—they’d told me he had a younger brother who worked as a medic. That had to be him.
Since we’d never met, I could probably get away with talking to him. I’d heard the illegal gambling operation had closed up shop, but I wanted to confirm it. Any other information I could gain would be a bonus.
I climbed out of the car and approached the simple, two-story building, watching to make sure this guy really was alone. The last thing I needed was big brother barging in on our conversation and catching me with my guard down.