Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two Read online

  Wages of Sin

  Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two

  Michelle St. James

  Blackthorn Press

  Contents

  Wages of Sin

  Copyright

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Links

  Also by Michelle St. James

  Wages of Sin

  Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two

  by Michelle St. James

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 by Michelle St. James aka Michelle Zink

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Isabel Robalo

  Prologue

  Nico Vitale hung up and sat back in his leather chair. He opened the top drawer of his desk and removed his rosary. Moving it between his fingers had little to do with religion. His parents had been devout Catholics, and while Nico had raged against God — against the world — after their deaths, Angel had rescued him from the anger that had threatened to consume him. Working the rosary had become more meditation than prayer, something he did unconsciously as he sorted through the problems of the Syndicate.

  And the Syndicate had a very serious problem indeed.

  He turned to face the window that looked out over the courtyard of the villa in Rome, his eyes on Angel laying by the pool. The smile that lifted the corners of his mouth was entirely beyond his control, a product of looking at his wife, his soulmate, his heart.

  She was stretched out on a lounge chair, sunglasses covering eyes that he knew shone like polished emeralds. Her blonde hair, still damp from the pool, was slicked back from her face. Her black bikini bottom was stretched taut across her hip bones, the triangles of fabric doing little to cover the sensuous swell of her breasts.

  He was struck with the sudden urge to lift her into his arms, carry her up to their master bedroom on the second floor of the house, make love to her. He knew exactly how she would taste — of vanilla and chlorine from the pool, of oranges and home.

  He glanced at his watch and was working out how much time they had before Stella got home from preschool when his phone rang. The name on the display forced Angel from his mind.

  “What’s up?” he asked into the phone.

  “Good question,” a crisp British voice said on the other end. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”

  Nico sighed. Farrell Black was his equal partner in the Syndicate, a consortium that oversaw organized criminal enterprises all over the world. They had two other partners — Christophe Marchand and Luca Cassano — but Farrell was always the biggest pain in Nico’s ass.

  “I have nothing new to report,” Nico said.

  “That’s a problem, isn’t it?” Farrell asked. “It’s been a month. DeLuca is still cleaning up in Vegas, Draper has hired a private detail with more firepower than most third world nations, and as far as I can tell, your guy is just pissing away more of his trust fund.”

  “Maxwell Cartwright isn’t my guy,” Nico said. “We all agreed he was our best shot at shutting down Jason Draper and bringing the DeLuca family around to working as a territory of the Syndicate.”

  It was all true, but he knew what Farrell meant; Nico had taken responsibility for Max the same way Farrell had handled Damian Cavallo, now head of the New York territory.

  “Best shot is a low bar in this case,” Farrell said.

  He wasn’t wrong. Bringing New York — and Damian — under control hadn’t been easy, but Max Cartwright made Damian look like a choirboy by comparison. Neither man wanted to be part of the Syndicate, but Damian had already been in the business.

  And Damian had at least started out controlled and rational. It had all gone to shit once he fell in love with Aria Fiore, his rival’s sister, but there had still been remnants of the discipline that had helped him build a multimillion dollar criminal enterprise during the Syndicate’s absence.

  Max Cartwright was something else.

  On paper, he was a trust fund baby whose only nod to discipline had been a stint in the Army that had earned him both a spot in Special Forces and a dishonorable discharge for disobeying orders. He’d gone back to Vegas and proceeded to drink his weight in whiskey, earn a place at every high-roller table, and sleep with nearly every cocktail waitress and showgirl in town.

  He’d only agreed to work with the Syndicate because he’d been worried about his childhood friend and now-lover, Abby, and her proximity to Jason Draper, Max’s former best friend turned rival. Jason had built an empire whose cherry on top was the Tangier Hotel and Casino, but it wasn’t Jason’s success that had prompted Max into action — it was his involvement with Fredo DeLuca and the Vegas Mob.

  “You still there?” Farrell asked.

  “I’m here,” Nico said.

  “What’s our move?”

  “I’m working on it,” Nico said.

  Nico had been in touch with Max on and off since Abby left town. None of their interactions left him feeling hopeful. His sources inside the FBI couldn’t confirm Jason was the one who had tipped them off to the DarkNet poker game that had been raided, but Nico was willing to bet it had been Draper.

  How else to explain the raid that had resulted in Max’s arrest, something Nico had had to pull significant strings to reverse? How else to explain the fact that Jason and his body man, George Filippovic, had been absent from the game when the FBI arrived?

  Draper had to have known — or at least suspected — that Max was a mole. Either that, or he was just pissed that Max had sealed the deal with Abby, the woman who had been the third member of their childhood Three Musketeers.

  “Any chance you can work faster?” Sarcasm dripped from Farrell’s words. “Because that asshole Draper is still walking around Vegas like a king, still meeting with DeLuca’s men. Money is being moved — a lot of money — and we’re on the outside. Plus, it burns my ass on principle that someone like Draper is in charge.”

  Nico understood; Jason Draper was a viper in a suit, all the more dangerous for the veneer of respectability his legitimate businesses provided him. It wasn’t his connection to DeLuca that made him dangerous — Nico understood men like DeLuca, men who made their living by monetizing crime.

  Hell, he was one of those men.

  It was the kind of crime that bothered Nico, the Darknet games where trafficked women — among other things — were being traded like cold hard cash. It was a violation of the Syndicate’s rules, of the new paradigm they were bringing to fruition in their international enterprises, one with a focus on digital operations and ground rules that prohibited involvement in trafficking and selling drugs to kids, taking advantage of people who were already vulnerable.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Nico said. “See if I can come up with a way to rally Cartwright to the cause.”

  “All right,” Farrell said. “But the clock is ticking. I
f we don’t figure something out soon, we should consider a replacement.”

  Nico didn’t want to think about the prospect. Not yet. Cartwright hadn’t been ideal, but thanks to his former friendship with Jason Draper, he’d been the most viable option for breaching Draper’s enterprise. Nico didn’t even have a backup in mind.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Nico said.

  “Any word on the woman?”

  Nico wasn’t surprised by Farrell’s avoidance of Abby’s name. Farrell respected women, liked them even, but in Farrell’s mind, Jenna Carver was the only one with a name.

  “Still in Mexico,” Nico said.

  Abby Sterling had left Vegas after Jason Draper showed her footage of Max at the DarkNet poker game. Of course, Draper had omitted the part where he was running the game and profiting from it.

  Nico didn’t blame Abby for running. Framed the way it was by Draper, the footage of Max at the game was damning, but her flight had sent Max into a tailspin.

  Farrell was right: Max was all but worthless now.

  Farrell sighed. “Let me know if I can help.”

  “Will do,” Nico said. “How are things in London?”

  “Better than Vegas,” Farrell said. “See you soon.”

  The line went dead.

  Nico set down the phoned and turned toward the window. Angel was gone, the lounge chair empty. A moment later he caught the scent of her, felt her hands slide over his shoulders, down his chest. Her damp hair was cool against his neck, her lips soft enough to send a jolt of desire between his legs.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  He pulled her into his lap and slid his arms around her bare waist. “Define ‘okay.’”

  “Vegas?”

  “Vegas,” he confirmed.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Anything new?”

  “No,” he said. “Max is in a holding pattern, drinking and gambling just like he was when we found him.”

  “Women, too?”

  “No,” he said. “No women.”

  She nodded, understanding lighting her eyes. Max had been gutted by Abby leaving, cheated out of the possibility of revenge when Jason Draper had shut down the DarkNet game. Everyone knew he was still involved with the DeLuca family — including the FBI — they just didn’t know how to prove it within the bounds of legality.

  He exhaled his frustration. “After everything that happened — putting up with Cartwright’s bullshit, fielding complaints from Farrell and the others — we’re right back where we started.”

  She touched her lips to his and pulled away to look at him. “You’re not back where you started, my love. Not if you have Abby Sterling.”

  One

  Max Cartwright moved his chips around on the felt table, covering the numbers that had been serving him well, removing his hand just before the croupier gave the wheel a spin.

  Max watched it turn dispassionately, the ball skimming over the dividers between numbers, bouncing as the wheel started to slow down. A few seconds later, the ball landed on 32.

  The croupier called out the number and took most of Max’s chips before paying out an anemic win he’d placed on even numbers at the last minute.

  He fucking hated roulette. Some would argue that it took a certain instinct to choose a table whose wheel was turning in a certain pattern, falling on certain numbers more regularly than others. Those people would also argue that it took a certain instinct to see the patterns and play to them, to know when the pattern had changed.

  Max didn’t buy it. Poker was his game, or in a pinch, blackjack.

  But that was before.

  Before Jason Draper. Before Abby had left him without a word.

  Now he needed something mindless, something that didn’t require him to think.

  Something that would allow him to look around the Tangier. To observe.

  The dealer finished paying out the other players at the table. The tall skinny guy in a suit who’d sat down a half hour before picked up his remaining chips and said goodbye to everyone at the table before stepping away. He’d told everyone at the table that he was from Illinois and was in town for a risk assessment conference. Judging from the loss he’d taken, Max could only hope there wasn’t much riding on the man’s job.

  Max placed his next bet as the remaining three people at the table did the same. The couple from San Diego hovered over the numbers, bickering good-naturedly as they made their decision, while an older woman Max pegged as a local resolutely placed her chips.

  “Drinks?”

  He looked up to find a cocktail waitress balancing a tray in her hands. She was tall and buxom, with dark hair and the revealing harem costume that was standard for cocktail waitresses at the Tangier.

  “Whiskey, neat,” he said.

  She smiled and leaned a little closer than necessary as she reached for his empty glass. He caught a whiff of something flowery and perfumey overlaid with cigarette smoke.

  Two months ago, the smell would have made him hard. It would have promised a couple hours lost in the warm flesh of a willing stranger, a few unencumbered laughs.

  Back then, unencumbered everything had been his favorite. Ingenues new to Vegas, wanna-be models working as cocktail waitresses, showgirls looking for a stepping stone to a dance troupe or tour gig.

  He and Abby had been comfortably ensconced in their friendship — smart-assed texts, Friday drinks at Herbs & Rye, easy camaraderie with a tinge of sexual tension so carefully buried and ignored that he hadn’t even realized it had been building.

  They had their shared history: the childhood and adolescence that had bonded them with Jason Draper before Jason’s betrayal of Max, their young-adulthood and the emails they’d exchanged when Max was deployed to Afghanistan, both of which had further cemented their friendship.

  Then he’d looked up when they met for drinks and she was suddenly more beautiful then he’d let himself believe, more beautiful than he’d let himself acknowledge. He’d held her too long when they said goodbye at her car, had felt her in his arms not as a friend but as a woman.

  And the rest, as they say, was history.

  He focused on the turn of the roulette wheel as the cocktail waitress walked away. He couldn’t even muster regret about his lack of interest in her, in anyone but Abby.

  He knew now that she was the only woman for him. That all the years he’d spent boozing and gambling and sleeping around had been about more than forgetting Jason’s betrayal of his father, more than forgetting everything he’d seen in the Army.

  It had been about keeping Abby away. About staying too busy, too drunk, too preoccupied with his latest conquest to really look at her.

  Then, in one unguarded moment, he’d seen her, really seen her.

  Now he was lost and she was gone. He’d hired a private detective the day he’d found out she’d left town, but so far the guy hadn’t found a trace of her. Wherever she’d gone, she’d paid cash and was laying low.

  The ball jumped as the wheel slowed down. Max looked at his chips spread across several positions. He barely remembered placing them, had no idea if there had been any method to his madness or if he’d reached the point where he was just throwing money away.

  He’d lost well over a hundred thousand dollars in the month Abby had been gone. He didn’t care. The respite gambling gave him from his own thoughts was worth every penny.

  The ball landed on 17 and Max watched as the dealer stacked Max’s chips and removed them from the table. The couple from San Diego had won five hundred dollars, the woman squealing and jumping up and down as the dealer paid them out. They tipped him, smiled at Max and the older woman still at the table, and left holding hands.

  The older woman glanced over at him. “Just you and me, kid.”

  She had a voice like sandpaper, a two-pack-a-day voice, and Max marveled that anyone could think him a kid. He was thirty and felt as old as the ages.

  Old and tired.

  The co
cktail waitress came back with his drink. Max avoided her eyes as he gave her a twenty dollar chip.

  He checked his watch — it was almost three p.m. — and placed his bets. Then he looked around the casino, focusing on the area around the chip window.

  He’d been coming to the Tangier to drink and gamble since the day after Abby had left town, the day after Nico Vitale had sprung him from jail following the raid on the DarkNet game.

  At first, his choice of casino had been a big Fuck You to Jason. He’d avoided the Tangier for years, not wanting to give Jason Draper a dollar of his money or a minute of his time after the betrayal that had destroyed Max’s father.

  But after Abby left, the casino had become a battleground, one where, ironically, Jason had limited power. It was his place of business, a business that was monitored by the IRS and Vegas law enforcement, and probably, the FBI.

  Sitting there day after day, looking up at the security cameras, knowing Jason might very well be watching, gave Max a perverse kind of enjoyment. He’d spent two weeks drinking and gambling, relishing the times when he came away a winner, knowing he was taking money out of Jason’s pocket even as he knew it was a drop in the bucket of Jason’s wealth.

  It might have gone on like that forever — Nico calling to brainstorm ideas for continuing their assault on Jason and the DeLuca family, Max getting drunk and gambling — if Max hadn’t started to notice something.