Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

CALEB

Nacho keeps attempting to play with Miss K, who is less amused by the kitten invading her personal space. I would be sympathetic, except I have my own kitten invading my personal space.

“I have work,” I tell Seven, who is lying with his head in my lap.

Seven rolls onto his back so he can stare up at me. “Yeah? Then why are you watching TV?”

“Why am I watching the morning news?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “I was finishing my coffee when you decided to spread out on the couch.”

Seven shrugs and turns back to the TV. “Seems like you weren’t in that much of a hurry, then.”

The news switches to a local crime story. I don’t recognize any of the names involved, so I tune it out.

Seven’s been acting strange since his outing with Havoc two nights ago. I’d asked Havoc what had happened, but Havoc blew me off and said he didn’t kiss and tell about dates.

I gently scratch the back of Seven’s head. “I wasn’t in a hurry, but if you don’t move, I will be late.”

“So be late,” he says, closing his eyes. “You’re the boss, right? So it doesn’t matter.”

“That would be disrespectful to all the people who work here.” I sigh and turn Seven’s head to look at me. “If you’re bored, I can find something for you to do.”

Something flickers in his gaze, something I can’t quite figure out, but he shrugs. “I can go down and play some slots or something. Maybe try some more blackjack.” That makes his brow furrow. “Not that I’m trying to learn how to game the system or anything.”

“All you’re learning is how to lose a lot of money,” I say mildly. “I don’t think blackjack is your game.”

“Well, I’m not lucky enough for roulette,” he retorts. “In case you haven’t noticed, my luck is kind of shitty.” He glances at the television. “Not as bad as theirs, though, I guess.”

I sigh and take the remote to change the channel. It lands on a home gardening show. “There. Learn how to make a plant survive in my apartment.” I lift his head off my lap and stand.

Our eyes meet again, and Seven tenses.

He’s afraid of something.

I move my hand to his throat and stroke gently. “I’ll take you out for lunch today. Meet me in the lobby at 1.”

“Sure,” he says, not quite looking at me. He goes back to lying down, looking at the TV, but I don’t get the sense that he’s paying attention to it.

I don’t have time to cajole him into answering questions right now, but I will get to the bottom of this later.

I go down to the office. Grant is already waiting for our morning briefing, and he launches into it even before I’ve sat down. It’s the usual stuff: issues with guests, meetings we need to arrange, some gaming commission that wants their hush money.

Before Grant is finished, my executive assistant knocks on the door.

“Come in,” I tell her—and freeze when I see who’s behind her.

My grandfather, Leon Spade himself. The head of the Spade family, and the man who built the empire that I’m now profiting off of.

I immediately stand up and go to shake his hand. “Grandfather! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

He sniffs disdainfully. “I can’t come to visit my grandson?”

Not unannounced , I think, but I keep smiling for him. “Of course you can. If this is about Uncle Earl?—”

“It’s not about Earl,” Leon says. He glances at Grant, who is frozen in place. “Grant, I don’t need you. Get out.”

Grant’s face turns red, but he nods and moves out stiffly. My assistant hurries after him, just as unwilling to piss Leon off.

I spot Vortex on the other side of the door. He gives me a bewildered look, but I give a quick shake of my head.

Once the door is closed, Leon takes a seat in the armchair. Normally I take that spot, but I don’t say anything.

“So. Have you heard about this investigation ?” Leon says.

He manages to make every single word sound like a judgment.

“I have,” I answer quickly. “Would you like coffee or tea, Grandfather?”

“Coffee, black.” Leon folds his arms in front of himself. “What are you doing about it?”

I serve the coffee and take a seat on the couch. “I’ve had people looking into the man’s finances. I think there’s an angle?—”

“Too slow,” Leon interrupts, and he scowls. “That’s the problem with you young people. You’re too damn slow.”

I fight not to scowl right back. “It’s harder to make somebody disappear without a trace these days. Especially somebody who is essentially a public figure.”

“Public? What do you mean, public? He is a man on the internet!” My grandfather scoffs. “There are hundreds of miles of desert out here. Bury him under a rock, and nobody will ever find him.”

“If he’s ‘just a man on the internet,’ then it doesn’t matter if I take a bit more time—” I start.

“Are you contradicting me?” Leon interrupts. “You understand that it’s my good will that lets you keep operating the casino. You are lucky I supported you against Earl. But if you are going to let some nobody tarnish the casino’s reputation, maybe you don’t deserve it.”

Anger spikes through my chest. I own the casino on paper, but if my grandfather decides somebody else should have it, I wouldn’t be able to stop him from taking it.

If I fought him, I would be one of the people buried under a rock in the desert. I don’t believe for one second that my relationship to him would get him to go easy on me.

I nod slightly. “Understood, sir. I will take care of the situation.”

Leon stares at me for another long moment before he gets up. He places the coffee on my work desk. “I expect things to be done within a week. And your coffee tastes like shit. You need a better secretary.”

I grimace and wait for him to leave.

Fuck.

As soon as he’s gone, Grant and Vortex enter my office.

“What was that about?” Grant asks.

Vortex looks around the room like he’s expecting to find a physical threat. Obviously, there’s nothing, but I suppose it is easier for him to fight off something he can see than something as convoluted as mob politics.

“He came to remind me that there’s some guy tarnishing the casino’s reputation. Which we all already know.” I sigh and sit down at my desk again. “It’s that internet streamer, the one who fashions himself as an ‘investigative journalist.’ Grandfather must have seen that short interview with him on the news last night.”

Grant makes a disgusted sound. “Oh, him. I’ve had our guys looking into his finances. No obvious connections to anyone important, and he only has about thirty grand in the bank, along with student loans debts. If we go forward with the lawsuit?—”

“No,” I interrupt. “That’s too slow . Grandfather wants him gone entirely.” I glance at Vortex. “So that’ll be your job.”

“All right,” Vortex says, shrugging. “So gone-gone? Not just a warning?” He knows that just because my grandfather wants things a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s always the best way.

I don’t want to invite a murder investigation into the casino. I know Vortex will do a good job and nothing will get linked to us, and I have enough friends in the Calamity City police that I’m certain we can skate by.

But it’s sloppy, and it looks bad. It certainly won’t make the rumors about the Roi de Pique evaporate.

“What do you think?” I ask Grant. “Is this guy going to stop after a warning?”

Grant shrugs. “No girlfriend or kids. He’s been posting that he won’t cower to bullies.”

That reminds me of somebody else. Good thing Havoc isn’t part of this side of the casino.

“Just get rid of him, then. Make him give you all his online account information so we can scrub it, too.” I groan in annoyance. “I wish Grandfather would let go of this place. I don’t need him micromanaging. He wasn’t doing this for Earl!”

Vortex’s brows furrow, but he glances at Grant before seeming to decide not to comment. Vortex had been working for one of the other branches of the Spade Family business, but I’d poached him when I’d taken over the casino. He’s only vaguely aware of how things were before. He’s only ever seen Earl interfere with my business.

Grant looks like he wants to say something, though, so I bark, “Spit it out.”

“Earl deferred to Leon in a lot of things.” Grant shrugs. “Yeah, the place was failing, but it was less… clean.”

I glare at him. “So he wants this place to have a fucking target on its back? It needs to look like a legitimate business. If we rake in earnings while not a single person attends the casino because it’s a fucking shithole, the IRS would never believe that the cash is clean.”

Grimacing, Vortex offers cautiously, “I didn’t see how it was before, but I think your reasoning is solid.” He looks at Grant again, irritating me with how he’s deferring to him. It doesn’t matter that Grant is the casino’s official manager. Here, those things matter less than honesty and working through these problems.

“I didn’t say it was better before!” Grant says defensively. “Just that your grandfather misses the old days.”

Of course he does. Family gatherings often include him regaling us with stories of the good old days, when Calamity City was more lawless—when the four families ruled the city openly, and when nobody ever dared to stand against us.

It hasn’t been like that for at least forty years. The fucking IRS and FBI did a whole sweep of the city, and the families had been left scrambling with half their members arrested and the others under extreme scrutiny. It’s fucking lucky we still own the casino—and we wouldn’t still own it, if Earl had continued to use its assets to pay off his debts.

“Fine, fine.” I hit the spacebar on my keyboard with more force than necessary and watch the screen wake up. I have a hundred new emails, but I have no interest in dealing with them right now.

I switch over to the burner email I’d made for my new project. One new message. At first I think it’s spam, but when I hover over it, I see the message preview.

We heard you were looking into a certain lost pet.

“Boss?” Vortex asks. “You need anything else?”

I nod, distracted, as I open the email. “Yeah. Did you find out anything more about Seven?”

Vortex shakes his head. “Not much. He’s not from Calamity, but we knew that. If he’d had an ID or something, it would’ve been easier, but I don’t have a name to track him down with. It’s not like Seven is his real name, and I don’t even have an age to go by. Missing persons in the tri-county area don’t have anything on him.”

The email is short.

We heard you were looking into a certain lost pet.

Any information about him would be handsomely rewarded. It could be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“You could try missing persons in…” I stop myself and consider how much I want to reveal. I have my suspicions, based on what I know of the illegal markets in the country, but nothing concrete. “Try the east coast. You can start with Benton or New Bristol.”

“Benton or…” Vortex repeats, giving me an incredulous look. “You think he traveled that far?”

It’s one of the major human trafficking hubs, even after one of the biggest families went under after an FBI raid several months ago.

“If he’s a missing person, he might have gone missing years ago.” I press the reply button and consider what I want to write. “You could try to press Seven for information too. See if he’s willing to tell you where he’s traveled.”

Actually, that might be a job for Havoc. Seven doesn’t trust me or Vortex, but he’s less wary about Havoc—or he was, before the date. I really need to find out what happened there.

“Yeah, I can try,” Vortex says, nodding. “I don’t know how much he’ll say. You know he’s locked tighter than a safe, and he’s been…” He scowls. “Fucking Havoc.”

So I’m not the only one who’s noticed his strange behavior.

Grant makes a noise. “Wait, I thought Seven was your new boy toy, boss?”

“He is,” I answer, glancing at Grant. “But he’s young and bored. I’m not going to kill him for being restless.”

“Restless,” Vortex repeats with a scoff. “All right. I’m taking him on a date tomorrow after I deal with this shit. I don’t want to push too hard, but maybe he’ll get to talking.”

Grant shakes his head. “You gay guys have it easy. If I tried that shit with a woman, she’d have my balls.”

“Hardly. My grandfather had at least two mistresses while married to my grandmother.” That always made family reunions a riot, depending on which mistress and illegitimate children made it to the gathering,” I respond.

“Isn’t at least one mistress required, these days?” Vortex jokes, but I can tell his attention is no longer on me. “I’ll do some more research on this journalist and figure out the best way to get rid of him. And I’ll work on Seven, but I won’t push too hard. I’m not going to spook him.” He pauses, then adds reluctantly, “Maybe Havoc found out something, but he wouldn’t tell me if he did.”

“I’ll talk with Havoc. I can think of a few ways to put pressure on him, if it comes down to it.” I notice Grant scowling. “What now?”

“Why’d you hire Havoc, boss?” Grant asks. “That asshole should be banned.”

“He is banned, in a way. He can’t gamble here anymore. And this way, I can keep an eye on him.” It sounds like a reasonable reason, but truthfully…

I know I did it for Seven.

I need another pair of eyes on Seven, and it’s easier if Seven likes the man.

It also helps that Havoc is a handsome man, and Seven looks good riding his cock.

Vortex doesn’t look any happier than Grant does, though he’s irritated for entirely different reasons. “All right. I’m heading out,” he says. “That okay, boss?”

“Yeah, get out of here, both of you.” I wave them away, and they both leave me to this email.

I have to figure out how best to couch my response.

I am amenable to hearing your offer. However, I do not deal with people I don’t know.

Even if they don’t respond, I’m feeling more confident in my guess.

Seven wants to be a mystery, but I don’t intend to let him.

He hasn’t figured out yet that I own him completely—and that includes all his secrets.