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

her hair back. A pinprick of anger makes my jaw tense. I don’t like seeing her with that guy. Not at all.
    She’s mine.
    The thought arrives in a flash.  
    There’s a heat to it. An energy.  
    I check my watch as a way to drag my attention from the screen. “I’m due for an engagement in ten,” I say to the security guy, hoping to hurry things along.  
    “Plug her face into the system,” my older brother Blake snaps.
    The security guy gives Blake a nervous nod. Hits a button on the keyboard, bringing up a wealth of police data. Moves some images around, codes through a few passwords—
    If she is acting, the nameless girl sitting at my high-roller roulette table deserves an Oscar. I can’t see anything suspicious about her. Neither did any of the security paid to watch every patron’s every move.
    It was Blake who spotted her.
    He has a nose for sniffing out thieves and criminals.
    Takes one to know one.
    I press my fingers to my eyes, trying to block out the cynical thought. This casino is a new start for Blake. A new leaf. But I can’t help thinking about all the other new starts over the years. The mistrustful, guarded part of me already has this figured out.  
    Blake will do what he always does.  
    Play at being loyal while it suits him. But then he’ll start to slip. The resentment he feels working under me will begin to show. He’ll start undermining our pride, maybe even sabotaging the casino. It’ll all be subtle at first. Then one day…not so much. Blake’s angry at the family he’s convinced always thought he’d be a fuck-up, and so that’s what he became. He’ll start to poison—  
    Blake’s pacing beside me, a wrecking ball of barely-contained aggressive energy. He stabs his thumb at the screen. “That bitch is no college girl. I don’t need a fucking database to tell me that. She’s working . Look how she’s watching that wheel. And the idiot croupier—where the fuck did we pick that one up? Fire her. And fire the guy who hired her.”
    “Rachael hired her,” I remind my brother.  
    “What? Oh, fuck sake.” Blake takes a long swig of Scotch and chases it with Red Bull. I tell the security geek to keep scanning the Gaming Commission and FBI databases, then pull my brother away from the computer and say under my breath, “You keeping him under wraps? I need you cool and collected today, brother.”
    Blake fires me an icy glare. He’s a vicious looking bastard. Narrow faced. Thin. Tiny little eyes perched on a hooked nose.  
    But he’s my older brother. Nothing can change that.  
    No matter how much I might wish it isn’t true—  
    “I’m nothing if not cool,” Blake says.  
    “You off the blow?”
    “Totally.”
    “Totally bullshit. Since when?”
    “Since…uh. Fuck it. Stop mothering. I’m good, bro. Really. Just the stress, right? Opening night and all.” Blake’s features twist into a real ugly look, the kind I’ve seen before. It’s the kind of look that means he’s itching to kill someone. “But that bitch. She’s a grifter, Landon. A thief. I mean—opening night! At Savannah’s . She’s got stones. I’ll give her that much.”
    “She could just be a college girl.”
    Blake smiles in a way that reminds me he’s very comfortable assuming the worst about people. “Sure. A fucking college girl—
    “Uh, boss?”
    “What?” Blake and I snap at the same time. Blake gives me a quick look, then sidles out of my way. He might be Chief of Security and a fifteen percent partner in this enterprise. But I’m the casino’s single President and CEO. It was Blue Line, my Fortune 500 company that bankrolled Savannah’s Casino, and it’s my name engraved in gold on the plaque in the entry foyer—  
    “What is it?” I repeat to the security guy while Blake tilts his glass at a waitress, smiling when she hands him another Scotch straight off her tray. There’s four more lined up right behind that one. Booze doesn’t hit our kind like it does