High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) (6 page)

“Hovering?” I shift slightly on the white leather armchair. “If I wasn’t
hovering
Blake would’ve murdered that girl in the alley.”

Rachael flashes me a tight smile. “She tried to steal from us.”

“I will not dignify that with a response.”

I try and say it in a way that proves I’m not emotionally invested in Summer Mason, but simply afraid for my family pride and my investment. But I remember holding Summer in the alley. Her lovely green-brown eyes that seemed to swallow me up. Her anger and fear were obvious.
 

But was there something more there? A…feeling? An attraction?
 

I think so. It was in how she scented beneath the cheap perfume. How my animal responded to her presence. Demanding her. It’s been a very long while since I’ve experienced that need with any Wildblood lion female.

It’s never happened with a human.

It’s not supposed to. Wildblood and human relations are biologically doomed. Worse, human-shifter unions are a crime the Council punishes with death—

These thoughts, tangled up in my need to hide my arousal from my sister and pride and my worry about Blake, make my stomach fill with churning nastiness.
 

Rachael’s watching me. Intently.
 

Like she scents something’s not quite right—
 

Then she sighs. Plucks at the jewels on her rings. Sapphire, mostly. Rachael says it reminds her of the open sky. She also misses the wilds, although she’ll never admit it. She walks around her desk and settles on the edge right in front of me. She’s wearing a black gown that highlights her close-cropped blonde hair. A lovely gold and sapphire necklace completes the ensemble. She has quick eyes and our father’s proud nose. She’s pretty in an intelligent, even severe way. “Blake’s trying, Landon. You might be his younger brother, but you have no idea how much he looks up to you.”

Shit. Everything comes back to Blake.
 

“You didn’t see him. He almost turned. In
public
.”

Another crime punishable by death—

Rachael nods. “Let me talk to him.”

“No. You’ll let him off too easy.”

“Oh? Then what do you propose? We turn him into the Council—”

“I have more loyalty to family than that,” I snap.
 

“What, then?”

I look out over the indoor jungle. See the zip lines snaking through the trees. No one’s on them at this hour, but tomorrow they’ll be filled with patrons zipping through the jungle canopy. Having the time of their lives. A sudden pang of envy drills into me.
 

“It was a mistake,” I say, very quietly.

“Pardon me?”

“All of this. The casino. My hope it would bring the pride together. That was my hubris. It’s only opening night. And already—”

“You have a flair for brooding, Landon. I’ll speak with him. Blake will settle down. Trust me.”

Trust me.

“And if not?”

“Give me a chance, Landon. That’s all I’m asking.”

“If not I do it myself. I’ve beaten my brother down to where he belongs once before. I’ll do it again if I have to.”

“I’m certain you will. We’re
all
certain of that.”

There’s a sneer of condemnation in my sister’s voice. They blame me for the strife in the family. Always have. I don’t understand why, except that there’s some kind of natural instinct to protect the weaker members of a pride. Not to mention Blake has our matriarch of a mother wrapped around his finger. It’s part of what made me move to Europe and start Blue Line. I needed away from them. Some time to sort shit out for myself.

It didn’t work. You can’t outrun family.
 

I think about what I want to say next. A question’s been hanging between my sister and I for months. There’s no way of asking it without implicating her in the scheme I suspect Blake of. Problem is that’s all it is right now: a suspicion. There’s no evidence Blake is working to undermine me, and certainly nothing approaching proof. But I have to ask.
 

“Where’d he get it?”

“Get what?”

“The money. To buy his share of the casino. Blake’s never had a dime to his name. Then he shows up with three million and the casino proposal. Without that buy-in I never would have agreed to the proposal.”

Rachael gives me her corporate accountant frown. She’s damn good at what she does for my businesses. Manages my accounts, traces paper trails, reads contracts. “I traced the money. Verified the win. You know that.”

“I know you
said
you did.”

There it is. Mistrust.
 

Rachael nearly tisks, a disapproving sound she learned from our mother. But Rachael catches herself. Our mother is nearly dead. When she passes I’ll assume control of the Stone Lion Pride and the Western Division of the Wildblood Council. Until then…this uncertainty.
 

My animal stirs.
 

Uncertainty makes him edgy.
 

Maybe the best thing to do is murder Blake.
 

We’d be better off without him—
 

“We’ve already had this conversation, Landon.”

“Tell me again.”
 

Last time she told me I was distracted. Blake was there, right in my face while my sister backed up his story. I need to look my sister in the eyes.
 

“Blake hit it big here in Vegas.”

“All those years of fruitless gambling finally paid off.”

Rachael shrugs. “He won the Bellagio’s Set For Life slots. Could have been anybody.”

“But it wasn’t just anybody. It was
Blake
.”

“You’re getting distracted,” she says. “Letting old animosities cloud your judgement.”

“You honestly believe that?”

“Yes.”

Damn. I take Rachael at her word. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I check my watch, then remember the look in Summer’s eyes when she saw it. The…greed coming off her in rank waves.
 

Everyone wants something.
 

At least with the grifter girl it’s obvious what she wants.

“I need you to look over these and sign them,” Rachael says, dropping a few files on the desk.

“What are they?”

Rachael shrugs. “Standard paperwork for taking Blue Line public.”

I flick the files a few inches across the desk.

“You can’t procrastinate forever, Landon.”

“Why not? It’s my company.”

“Yes. And Blue Line has reaches a crucial sage in its development. Either we continue to grow…or we don’t. Are you happy with a company that’s already peaked? You’re twenty-seven years old. Ready to retire?”

“You know I’m not. And just for the record…if Blue Line
has
peaked? It’s been a damn good run, don’t you think?”

Rachael smiles. “Sign the papers, Landon. Make Blue Line a publicly traded corporation. Let your baby take her first independent steps. You have a majority share by a long shot. You’ll still be CEO. Still decide the company’s future. Plus there’s the shares Elliot owns—”

“Don’t remind me,” I growl, suddenly hit by the desire to drive out to the Red Rock canyons and go for an all-day trail run. “Where is the wandering minstrel, anyway?”

“Northern India?” Rachael sighs. “I sent him the invite for the casino’s opening gala, like you requested.”

“Let me guess. No response.”

“Ashrams are difficult places to get a hold of.”

“Oh, Elliot got the invite. He can’t be bothered.”

Rachael quiets. Looks at me with concern. “You can’t do it overnight,” she says, almost whispering.

“What?”

“Bring this pride back together. It’s going to take time.”

“Time I have. But you know what I’m wondering? Is it even worth it?”

Rachael stands. Brushes her dress smooth. “Sign the papers for Blue Line. Let me take care of that worry at least. Focus on the casino and the pride and how you want to lead in the days ahead.”

Then she strolls out the door, leaving me alone in her office. I stare at the file like it has teeth. Pick up a pen. I remember how Blake looked when I burst into the alley. His lion threatening to break free. The reek of death and predation coming off him.
 

Then I flip open the file, clamp my jaw closed and sign.

If you can’t trust family—
 

***

It’s nearly four in the morning. Only thirty minutes have passed since Summer and her crew ruined the opening night of Savannah’s soft launch. I haven’t slept a wink in more than a week. Wildbloods have more endurance than humans. But even for me a week is pushing it.
 

I hurry out of Rachael’s office and storm down the hall toward the elevator. Exhaustion gathers behind my eyes. Weighs them down. Messes with my vision. Makes everything seem either too sharp or totally out of focus.
 

The hallways is walled in glass on one side. Even though I have a thousand things on my to-do list for the day, I pause to take in the view. There’s a drop of more than a fifteen-hundred feet to the casino floor below. The view is expansive. I can look down at the casino covered by the sweeping glass arc, or through the bluish arc and out over the Strip and into the desert mountains to the north.
 

The moon’s low over the Red Rock canyons. I admire their striped sandstone, the reds and oranges and violets glowing in the soft pre-dawn light. Vegas’ pollution is a sickly yellow haze blanketing the valley, but the top floor of Savannah’s rises above it. We’re so high up even Luxor’s massive black pyramid looks small.

For some reason looking at the dawn mountains makes me think of the girl. Summer Mason. I’m not sure why I let her off so easy. She’s a known felon. A con and a thief. The right thing to do would’ve been to hand her to Colette and the Gaming Commission.
 

Let them make an example of her.
 

Colette said Summer was out on parole. I don’t wonder what she did to land in jail.

But I wonder why.

I look down the hallway. Take in the plush, imported wool carpet. The real gold foil lining the wainscoting. The gold framed paintings depicting Grecian myths like Sisyphus, Odysseus and Pygmalion. Classical music’s playing on the hidden speakers, Bach mostly, with a bit of Wagner thrown in to deepen the mood. Even the scents in Savannah’s are controlled. Created in a lab, cross-tested against several sample groups, designed to invoke whatever sensations we wish for a patron in that particular area of the casino. Here, in the penthouse offices, the air smells of river bushwillow and bermuda grass and gum acacia. It smells of the African veldt, an endless rolling horizon where my species once roamed.
 

Those smells used to help me connect to what I am.
 

Now they remind me of what I’ve lost.
 

I scent the chemicals that created them. The sterile white lab coats buzzing around with their beakers and test-tubes. Nothing in the casino is natural, except for the animals we imported to fill the indoor jungle safari.

The beasts locked and caged for the rest of their lives.

Like Summer Mason would’ve been.
 

As I step away from the view and enter the elevator my phone buzzes. It’s a text message from my youngest brother and die-hard computer geek, Cole, telling me he’s got something on Summer Mason.

Good
, I think as the elevators whump closed.
 

I’ll pretend to professional curiosity around Cole.
 

But really, I want to know everything about that woman I can.
 

My lion scents an ambush. Someone’s trying to bring me down. And if I’m right, the Stone Lion Pride’s long reign is nearly finished, and I’m going to need the help of every down-on-her-luck Vegas grifter I can stick under my thumb.

***

Cole’s bunkered down in a room in my penthouse suite. He showed up one day carrying a laptop and said he’d find his own place in a few days. The next day some guys arrived with enough computer geekery to finance a small state. That was four months ago.

I’ve tried asking him what he does, day after day, staring at those screens. He tried to answer me once. I glazed over after a few minutes of talk about the tor network and onion routing and the dark web.

Cole leads a double life. This one, the physical, is small and cloistered. But out there, zipping along the binary code, he’s an emperor. It’s a trade I never would have made, even if I had the talent for computers he does.
 

I unlock the penthouse door and step inside. The place is virtually unlived in. Almost sterile. The furnishings are standard to the hotel, all high-end designer stuff with names I don’t bother remembering. I arrived with a suitcase, and that’s still all I have here that’s mine. I don’t have to look to know there’s no food in the massive stainless steel fridge. When I eat here, which isn’t often, I order room service from one of my restaurants.
 

Cole’s door is open. He painted his room pitch black for some reason. Keeps the blinds closed and the AC running full blast. I step inside, blinking against the darkness. It’s almost cave-like.

“You know, brother,” I say into the humming computers. “Keep this up and people will start thinking you’re a vampire.”

“I have bigger teeth,” Cole says from somewhere in the darkness.

“Oh yeah? Last I remember you were the runt.”

I’m teasing, but only partly. There’s something off about Cole’s den. I try and remember the last time I saw him outside the penthouse, then realize I can’t.
 

“It’s like a meat freezer in here,” I say as I step further into the room.
 

The air’s so cold my breath nearly shows.
 

“Heat’s bad for computers,” Cole says in his quiet voice. “Fries their insides.” He’s sitting in an office chair that’s been modified to suit his tastes: he’s taken off the backrest so he can sit on it cross-legged.
 

Like a guru waiting for a divine vision.