DEBT (6 page)

And he literally held his life in his hands.

And he wouldn't stop using that fact against me, to get me to heel, to keep me submissive.

There was nothing I could do about it either.

I closed my eyes tight, feeling another couple tears slip out as Byron's voice barked, "Sheets, Miss. Marlow. Then coffee." In the bathroom, I nodded a little frantically even though I knew he couldn't see me. "Understood?"

I swallowed hard, not wanting him to hear the tears in my voice. "Yes," I called back, but even to my own ears, it sounded wobbly.

There was a pause before he moved away, closing the bedroom door with a quiet click.

I straightened, wiping my cheeks, then moving over to the sink, splashing cold water on my face.

It was okay.

I could cry. I could purge it out. I was going to allow that so I didn't implode.

But I was going to keep my big-girl panties on and do that shit at night, after my shift ended, in the privacy of my own bathroom. Then, like any self-respecting woman, I was going to put a cold compress on my eyes to erase all traces of it, then move the fuck on with my life.

I was not going to break down in front of Byron St. James again.

I was not going to be a meek, shrinking violet.

I was going to put my chin up, throw my shoulders back, do my job, and not let him break me.

With that, I went into his bedroom and reached for the sheets, grabbing them at the very ends and folding them in toward the center. I knew what happened on them the night before, ya know, seeing as I heard it and all. And, well, I wasn't touching Byron's or Lyla's dried bodily fluids. Nope. No way. With that, I gathered the pile, as well as the clothes in the laundry basket in the bathroom, and the towel he had carelessly thrown on the floor, and headed down the stairs to find someone who could tell me where the laundry room was. You know, like one of the three maids he employed to do things like the laundry.

"What the fuck are you wearing?" I heard said from behind me as I rounded out of the kitchen where the cook told me to go out, take a right, and go into the next room on the left.

I turned with a sigh at being interrupted, knowing Byron was going to give me one of
those
looks when I showed up with his coffee. Like I was late. Even though he didn't exactly give me a set coffee-drinking schedule. The question came from, what I imagined, was one of Byron's men. He was in his late twenties or early thirties with dark hair and eyes, dressed in the requisite suit all his men seemed to wear, his in gray and it was tailored perfectly over his fit, though somewhat slim, body.

"My uniform," I snapped, turning away from him and making my way to the door the cook, Ella, had directed me to.

I had just pulled the lid open on the washing machine when I saw the same man move in beside me, head tilted, looking me up and down. "Your uniform?" he repeated, dubiously.

"Yes. If you have a problem with it, please bring it up to your employer. My objections obviously fell on deaf and very stubborn ears."

"Byron is making you dress like a high-class hooker?"

"I guess it's better than a streetwalker," I mused, reaching for the detergent and pouring it into the filling machine. I turned over my shoulder to see him still watching me, brows pulled together. "Is this really surprising? He's an asshole."

"You think he's an asshole?"

"You
don't
?" I asked, turning fully to him, shaking my head.

"He's one of the nicest men I know," the guy said with a shrug.

Nice?

Nice?

"Last night he made me listen to him have sex with a woman who he told directly after sex that he was a 'one and done' guy."

"Hey, at least he's honest. Have you talked to his other employees? I'm pretty sure they'd only have kind words to say."

"Then brainwashing must have been part of their training," I grumbled, closing the machine and moving toward the door. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get his coffee. Apparently his legs would fall off if he had to go get his own."

"Sweetheart," the man called and I stopped, turning with a brow raise. "I'm his meeting. Figure I'll save you the extra trip. I'll take mine with cream, no sugar."

"Right," I said, nodding and going into the kitchen. He really would save me a trip. I was sure Byron had purposely left out that he had a meeting just so he could force me to go get him coffee again.

Two minutes later, I let myself in the slightly ajar office door, handing the coffee with cream to Byron's guest and then making a big show of placing down Byron's mug carefully as not to spill a single drop. When I looked at his face, if I wasn't completely mistaken, there was a hint of humor in his eyes and around his mouth.

"I didn't catch your name, sweetheart," the man said in a strange tone I couldn't decipher as I moved to go back around the desk toward the door.

"Prudence," Byron barked as I opened my mouth to respond.

"Prue," I corrected, giving him a soft smile.

"Aaron Day," he said, extending his free hand toward me and I reached for it a little awkwardly, absolutely certain Byron was watching the whole interaction and looking for something to use against me at a later time. "I run the security at Mandy's."

"Mandy's?" I repeated, smiling a little.

"Byron's casino," he supplied and I felt the smile fall as I let go of Aaron's hand.

Byron's casino?

His... casino?

He was a loan shark who owned a casino?

What a
freaking asshole.

I turned to look at Byron's face which was a cool mask again, his eyes daring me to say something.

"Have you ever been?" Aaron asked in that strange tone, drawing my attention back to him.

Had I ever been to Mandy's? Oh, only about a couple hundred times whenever I tracked my father down there over the years. It was his favorite casino. He liked the atmosphere and the selection of games. It was a massive, gorgeous building on the main strip in A.C. There wasn't too much to write home about on the outside, nothing flashy, nothing eye-grabbing. The inside, though, was where it was at. Whereas many of the casinos had gone through a ton of upgrades over the years, recently leaning toward minimalist and streamlined, a little cold, Mandy's was like stepping back in time. It was a place you half-expected to see Sinatra and Crosby hanging out, smoking cigars, sipping gin, and playing craps, gorgeous women at their sides to blow on their dice.

The interior was low-lit with dark woods, deep reds, and lush creams. Each time I had been there, it had been immaculate and full of men in suits and women in dresses and heels. No lowlife, down-on-their-luck gamblers in sight.

Save for my father.

But he never looked the part.

He was always in a suit as well. He always fit in with the men with deep pockets.

I guessed that was why he was always getting into such huge sums of debt.

"I don't gamble," I answered honestly, avoiding the question and directing my answer at Byron.

"Never?" Aaron asked, sounding shocked. We did, after all, live in one of the gambling capitals of the States.

"Not even a scratch-off or guessing how many jelly beans in a jar at a county fair," I told Aaron, giving him a smile that I knew came off a little sad. "Have a good meeting," I told Aaron and excused myself from the room.

I walked back to the laundry room to wait for the cycle to finish, munching on the granola bar I had tucked into my skirt, and thinking over what I had just learned.

Byron St. James
owned
Mandy's.

That was how he knew my father.

That was why my father seemed to know him so well.

And the bastard to rule all bastards preyed on the gamblers in his casino who were down on their luck.

Like my father.

So, yeah, technically, he had loaned my dad over a quarter million. But I was sure my dad sank it right back into Mandy's and, therefore, Byron's pockets.

That was just lovely.

FIVE

Byron

The first time I had seen Prudence Marlow, I was twenty-seven years old, the same age she was as she stomped around my house in the heels she made it perfectly clear she hated. She had been sixteen and trying to get into Mandy's with a fake ID At the time, my uncle was still around and running the casino, doing so with an iron fist and all-seeing eye. So when the ID got scanned and came up fake, though it would have passed a visual inspection in a heartbeat it was so well done, Uncle John was made aware.

He'd brought up the screen from the front doors where we saw a very young, very pretty teenage Prue standing there in a simple black dress and heels, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping impatiently. Like her time was being wasted. Like she had a mission. Curious, John had told them to wave her in. It wasn't that fake IDs were uncommon in our business, but it wasn't every day you saw a single girl trying to get into the club with nothing more than a coin purse in her hand.

"Place your bets," John called to all of us in the room as we watched Prue take back her fake license and shove it in her coin purse as the door was opened for her and she walked inside.

"Working girl," one of the guys called.

"She's just a kid," another objected.

"When the fuck has that ever factored in?" the first guy shot back.

"Byron?" my uncle asked.

"Fuck if I know," I said, watching the screen as she stopped inside the main room, her shoulders slumping a little as she scanned the tables. Her hair was pulled up and twisted in a style way too old for her and she had her makeup done to match any other of the women in the building, heavy on the mascara and with a vivid red lip. Judging by the way she was chewing said lip, she was not someone who wore lipstick often, if at all.

"Well, I'm putting it on... looking for a job," my uncle said, throwing a fifty in the center of the table as we all stood back and watched the whole thing play out like a fucking reality show.

She moved forward, looked around, moved further into the room, looked around some more. Her arm was snagged as she passed a table by a high roller from the city who curled her young body into his side and held up dice to her face. And while most women in that situation would have played along, even just to diffuse a situation that didn't need to have a big deal made of it, her little body stiffened and she shoved his chest and wrenched away from him, saying something to the man who had the good sense to shrink away from her with a head shake. With that, she turned back to the room, body even more tense than it had already been.

Then, she spotted what she was after.

You could tell the second her eyes found what they were searching for. Her shoulders relaxed. Her eyes closed. She exhaled hard. Then she wiggled her shoulders a second and stormed across the room, moving in toward a blackjack table and slipping an arm around a man in middle age with deep brown hair and a smiling face.

Mack.

Everyone knew Mack.

Everyone who crossed paths with him, loved him.

He was actually a good gambler a fair amount of the time.

He just never knew when to quit, unfortunately.

Uncle John loved him for that.

When he lost, he lost big.

And we won huge.

"Told you," the guy declared. "Working girl," he said, jumping up and reaching for the pot.

"Not so fast," I said, shaking my head as I watched the screen. Prudence leaned up, resting her chin on Mack's shoulder as she spoke in his ear. At whatever words she said, Mack's smile faltered a little as his arm slid around her waist and he nodded at her. He reached for the still-abundant pile of chips he had, slipping them into a bag, then letting Prudence lead him away from the tables and out the front doors.

"Oh, fuck off. That was
so
a working girl!" he objected when my hand slammed down on his as he tried to take the pot again.

"That was Mack's daughter," I countered and I felt my uncle's gaze fall on me.

"How do you know that?"

I turned back to the screen, catching the outside camera where Mack was shuffled toward a old white beat-up sedan, incidentally it was the same fucking car that she had parked in my driveway, then shuffle Mack inside.

I reached for the pile, shuffled the bills together then went into my pocket and threw double the amount into the pot and put it on a shelf. "Give it a week. If she's not back fetching him from the table and dragging his sorry ass home before he gambles away their rent by the end of the month, that's all yours."

Needless to say, he didn't get his money.

Prue didn't lie to Aaron.

She'd never gambled in her life.

Because she had spent her entire life trying to get her father to stop.