High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) Read Free

 
    Which is the point.
    Girl’s got my back.  
    Quickly, I slide my stacked chips to the double zero’s in a low-percentage bet called the basket.  
    The basket pays out at eleven to one.  
    Double zero’s are my second luckiest number. I’ve always loved James Bond. I give an excited hoot, then smack my Long Island off the table with my elbow.  
    “Oh shit!” I yelp as the glass hits the green carpet and half-melted ice scatters across the pit floor. “What a klutz I am! Jason could you—”
    “That’s it for bets folks,” the croupier says.
    “But I vant to bet,” Maya pouts.
    “And you will, hun,” the croupier says, forcing a polite smile at a customer she obviously finds irritating as hell. “Next spin and the spin after that…”
    Jason steps back from the table, waves at a waitress to get help with cleaning up—
    The wheel’s slowing. Tick tick tick and the little white ball isn’t doing anything right. For a second I lose the act and lean over the table, eyes glued on the bouncing ball. At eleven to one if I lose I’ll owe the house five thousand six-hundred and ten dollars. But that’s also what I stand to win, minus everyone’s cut.  
    My breath stops in my lungs and if anyone with any sense or experience sees me now they’ll know I’m no rookie, they’ll see the flushed cheeks, the laser focus, the way I’m tapping my palm with my index finger real quick, a tell I could never get rid of that made me shit at poker, gave me the street name Miss Palmer, and now the wheel’s crawling around and man do I need this payout, a grand could go a long way to keeping my moms in meds and I could go grocery shopping and fix the fucking blown-out muffler on my 1997 Civic that leaks exhaust into the car at every traffic light—
    There’s all that, yeah.
    But even better would be knowing I drew an eleven to one score from Landon fucking Stone on the opening night of his soft launch in the largest, poshest most high-tech casino in the world—
    Half a spin more. The double zero’s are there.  
    Right there.
    I haven’t drawn a breath.  
    Landon was plastered all over TV for months, bragging about how he spent more on security in his new casino Savannah’s than it takes to build most casinos, and wouldn’t that be a laugh, taking a score nicknamed Savannah after a stripper from a high-roller’s red-rug casino of the same name—
    The irony’s delicious.
    I got this play. I know I do. I know it.
    The wheel shudders to a halt.  
    Boom.
    We need to get the fuck out of here.  
    Now.

C H A P T E R T W O
L A N D O N

    “WHO IS SHE?” I ask, eyeing one of the forty screens linked to the closed-circuit cameras above my casino’s roulette tables. There’s a woman at a table who’s not feeling right. Call it a vibe.  
    So yeah, I’m glued to the screen. My breath quickening.
    I want to see if she’s going to try and rob me. Takes a bit to focus on that. Because the girl…the truth is I can’t stop looking at her. Wondering how her skin feels beneath my lips. What she looks like with her blouse off. Leaning over me, slipping a leg over my waist, straddling me—
    Christ. She’s a thief. Trash .
    I take a sip of ice-cold water, wishing I could shower with it.  
    I haven’t been in Vegas long, but already I’m learning there are two kinds of people in this town: those who want to rob you blind, and those who want to take advantage of you. Or maybe that’s only one kind?  
    One of my computer guys swallows hard, wipes a line of sweat from his brow. “We’re working on it, sir.”
    Sir .  
    No matter how often I tell my staff to drop the formalities, they still insist on calling me ‘sir.’ I don’t mind the respect. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. Built an international corporation from the ground up. But ‘sir’ makes me feel like a crusty old bastard.  
    I’m still years away from thirty.
    The woman on the screen leans into her boyfriend. Kisses his shoulder. Tosses