Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“Then Gen and Ethan will be backup.”
Ethan perked up. “I’m part of the team now?”
Gen elbowed Kierse. “Told you we’d get to go on the next vacation.”
Kierse laughed. Sure, a heist in Las Vegas for a rogue warlock and the accomplice to her parents’ deaths, the perfect vacation.
“And me?” Lyra asked, drumming her fingers against her leg.
“Do you know the head of the MGM vampire syndicate? I know he has a storied past with your family.”
“To put it mildly,” she said, flashing her fangs. “After what he did to my mother…”
“Will he meet with you?”
“Well, yes, we’re in a truce but…”
“Then set it up. We’ll need the distraction.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why?” Kierse asked her.
Kierse had never seen Lyra look uncomfortable in all the time she’d known her. She couldn’t blush, but Kierse was pretty sure she would have.
“His son hates me,” Lyra said with a shrug.
“Then fix it,” Graves said.
Lyra opened her mouth as if she were going to object but then carefully closed it. “Sure. I’ll just work on that, then, I guess.”
Kierse wondered what exactly that meant. Why he would hate Lyra and how difficult it would be to mend.
“That’s our distraction.” Graves nodded at his team, clearly pleased at how quickly it had all come together. “Get your affairs together. We’ll leave in the morning.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Vegas,” Ethan said dreamily. “Can I bring Corey? He’d love it.”
“It’s not actually a vacation,” Gen said, tossing her pencil at him.
Graves put his hand over his eyes. “This is going to be a long flight.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Everyone report in,” Graves said as they strode across the Bellagio casino floor.
Kierse was in a slinky black dress that sparkled like the stars. She held a glass of prosecco, and her hair was down in long waves. Graves at her side in a black tuxedo. Hiding in plain sight was a skill that she may never get used to. But they’d spent the day playing the part of high rollers while their team got in position all around them, silently infiltrating the casino.
“Walking into my dinner,” Lyra groused.
Lyra hadn’t explained why the son of the Vegas vampire syndicate hated her, but she’d complained frequently about having to get his attention. It might have been avoided, but it was useful to have the owners exactly where they needed them to be.
“I have control of the security room,” Schwartz said.
“Key card incoming,” Laz said.
Laz stepped around the corner in a casino employee uniform. He moved past Kierse, slipping the card to bypass security into her hand. She pocketed it into Graves’s suit and continued walking as if nothing happened.
Graves removed it with his gloved hand and cleared the scanner into the inner workings of the hotel and casino.
Las Vegas had always sounded so fake to her. In the middle of a desert wasteland was a glittering world of sin and excess. Towering casinos and shows and showgirls all wrapped into one dazzling package as long as you didn’t look at it too closely. Then the image would all fall apart.
They’d entered the warren where everything fell apart. Long, barren corridors, cement floors, and dark service elevators.
“Looping the feeds now,” Walter said. “Take the second elevator. I’m sending it to you. No one will be in it.”
“We’re in position for backup,” Gen said.
The second elevator dinged open, and she stepped onto the lift with Graves.
“That went smoothly.”
“Good. I want us to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“Don’t want to stay and gamble some more?”
He shot her a look. “If you’ve been to Vegas once, you’ve been a hundred times.”
“Are you saying you’d rather sit upstairs and read a book?”
“Always.”
She laughed. “My little introvert.”
“Books give me more joy than people ever have.”
Kierse had been mesmerized by Las Vegas. Part of it was that the more distance she put between her and New York, the better she felt. He wasn’t in Vegas. Like he hadn’t been in London.
So she got to enjoy it. It was so different than New York, yet it felt the same in so many ways. Like that all the casinos were owned and operated by monsters. When the monsters had revealed themselves, they also showed that human casino owners had been a front. Now that they were recognized, they came out of the shadows to claim their property.
Half of the casinos on the Strip were split between vampires and werewolves. Vampires owned the MGM properties, including the Bellagio, which they currently stood in. They’d merged with a nymph property holding that included Mandalay Bay, making them the largest company, while the werewolves were their biggest competitors with Caesar’s Palace, Paris, and Planet Hollywood. Other monsters owned other casinos on and off the Strip—wraiths held Wynn, shifters occupied the Venetian, and an incubus/succubus pair had apparently started Circus Circus and Treasure Island with a mer.