Page 21 of Vicious Little Games

Just as I suspected, right at midnight I hear quiet footsteps on the stairs. Guess someone’s dick couldn’t wait any longer. Asshole. I’m going to make him regret his decision.

I finally move to stand on the third-floor landing, so he'll see me in the darkness in plenty of time to not shoot.

“Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!” the big guy mutters softly, clutching at his barrel chest but thankfully not pulling a gun from his suit jacket. Those few seconds are all it takes for me to hate the son of a bitch.

Like August, Mike, and all the other guards, he’s tall, wide through the shoulders, with short brown hair. Average looks yet swollen enough to be slightly threatening. What the hell does Cass see in him? Does she like meatheads? I’ve put on some weight the past year when I didn’t have to scrimp for meals, but I’ll never be as thick as this fucker.

“Cole, right?” he asks, keeping his deep voice lowered. “Titus told us you were living here on the second floor this summer.” He pauses. “Wait. What are you doing on the third floor?”

I throw his question back to him. “What are you doing coming up to the third floor?”

“I’m just patrolling. It’s my job to walk the house,” he answers quickly. Yep, he’s definitely Cass’s guy. Or at least one of them. My fists tighten by my sides with the urge to slam them into his stupid face simply because he…what? Touched Cass? Fucked her? Has seen her naked? Rolled around in her bed naked with her?

The answer is yes to all of the above. Why I give a shit who she fucks is beyond me. I just can’t believe Dante could be so blind to not know what’s going on in his own damn house. Cass can do better than some hired muscle who will never offer her more than a quickie because he’s too scared of his boss.

“You’re not allowed to patrol the third floor,” I remind him.

“Oh, shit. You’re right. I-I must be tired tonight. I’ll grab some coffee…” The idiot makes the mistake of turning around, giving his back to me. I lunge down the steps to him, then plant my forearm across his throat. Standing on the step above him gives me an even bigger height advantage which I need since he definitely outweighs me. At least I have the element of surprise going for me.

“You’re tired? Really?” I whisper in his ear. “You were sneaking up to Cass's room, weren’t you?”

“How did you...” he croaks until I pull my right arm back to apply more pressure on his windpipe.

“You would be the worst spy ever, dumbass.”

“Please…please don't…tell Dante,” he wheezes.

The man is terrified. What a pussy.

“Here’s what you’re going to do, in this exact order if you don’t want me to hand you over to Dante,” I tell him quietly. “You’re going to give me your gun and then your cell phone. After that, you’re going to walk your ass out the front door, quit without giving a reason, and never come back to this hotel or even this city again.”

“What the...you can't make me do shit!”

“I can't? That’s seriously what you think?” I pull back on my arm across his throat harder, cutting off all his oxygen. Biggie may have about forty pounds on me, but I grew up poor as shit, learning to defend myself early because poverty paints a giant X on your back for bullies. Besides, the guard is in enough shit that he won’t add hurting me to his list of transgressions.

His flailing arms try to remove mine. When they don’t succeed, he drops to his ass, sitting on the step and I go with him, only removing my forearm from his throat long enough for him to concede. “Okay, okay, okay. Fuck!”

“Keep your voice down,” I remind him. “Now, remove your gun from the holster and lay it on the step beside you.”

He does as commanded. Again, he’s too much of a pussy to try and shoot me with it.

“Now put your cell phone beside it.” It’s funny that he hesitates longer on the phone than the gun. I bet he’s calculating exactly how much a new device is going to cost to replace it and hating it since he’s also losing his steady income tonight.

“What’s your code?” I ask him once he eventually, slowly, completes that command.

“What code?” he asks.

“The fucking code for your phone.”

“Oh. It’s one-one-one-one.”

“Of course it is,” I mutter. The big dummy probably never thought anyone would be stupid enough to try and rob him since he works for Vegas’s mafia king and carries a firearm. He was wrong.

I start to pull my arm away from his neck, only to pull my fist back and then ram it into his nose with a triumphant crunch.

“Ow! Goddamn fuck!” he exclaims, clutching his nose while I collect his gun and phone from the stairs and get to my feet. I enter the code right away to make sure it works. It does.

“Off you go,” I tell him. “Don’t cancel this number yet either. Get a new one with your new phone,” I add before giving him a kick of my foot to his back to get him moving.

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