Page 1 of Vegas Baby

1

KIRA

I met Andrei when I was sixteen. Ekaterina sent me to him the first month I couldn’t pay for my aerial silks training. She said he’d have work for me I could do in trade. Even at sixteen, I knew what that meant.

So when I approached the club in the seediest part of Tolyatti — which is saying something — I had no illusions about what might be expected of me. I was prepared for anything: waitressing, being fondled by dirty old men who smelled like alcohol and smoke, scrubbing dishes until my hands bled, or … well, worse.

I’d lived with “worse” for years, after all. My father left when I was eight, after my mother was crippled in an accident at the AvtoVAZ factory she’d labored at for years, stating matter-of-factly he didn’t need a wife who couldn’t even give him sons before she became a lifelong burden. Needless to say, it was devastating for both my mother and me.

After he left, we moved more times than I could count, relying on the charity of others for shelter and my mother’s meager disability benefits and pay from what little work she could manage for food.

With nothing left for the art I’d studied since I was four, I’d taken work under the table at any warehouse, restaurant, or establishment that would pay a scrawny little girl a pittance. Which I used both for my training and to supplement our scant food rations.

It helped us make ends meet … but only until the day my mother gave up. She said the pain was too great to keep going; she had nothing left to give. After a life filled with struggle, rejection, and pain, it was clear her spirit was just as broken as her body.

I was torn, my love and concern for her warring with the misery I endured daily, as well from living a wretched life of backbreaking work that left little time for my art, even when I could afford it. And despite the pain, for my part I couldn’t — wouldn’t — give up. But I said nothing, either because I couldn’t bring myself to argue with her in her condition or because I knew it would do no good.

From then on, she used her monthly stipend not on the small amount of food it used to go toward, but for drowning her sorrows in vodka. The paltry amount I was able to make couldn’t even keep us fed, much less pay for luxuries like training, or the supplies it required.

So not long after, with fear and courage battling inside of me, I found myself standing in front of Rhapsody. And I walked in to meet my fate.

Andrei Volkov. Thirteen years my senior, with golden brown hair and a smile that won over the hardest of hearts, he was nonetheless every inch the wolf his last name means, and he managed Rhapsody like a vicious patriarch.

Taught by his father, who owned and ruled the club with an iron fist, he proved himself a young yet shrewd businessman. Andrei knew how to serve cheap booze disguised by fancy names and devious recipes to men with too much money and too little sense. He was a loving caretaker of the girls who danced there, even more so of the ones he’d sell to patrons for the night or take home for his own pleasure. And he brutally dealt with anyone who crossed him or attempted to harm what he considered his.

It was a single bout of his vile temper eight years after I started working for him, and three years after my mother died, which forced him to flee Russia forever. Having become his favorite pet, he demanded I go with him. With my mother gone and Andrei my only source of support, I let him take me. To the United States. To the city of sin. To Las Vegas, Nevada. A desert oasis of indulgence, excess, and — most importantly — opportunity.

Now, two years later, my skills as an aerial silk artist pay our bills, though it was Andrei’s contacts who got me here. He acted as my manager and used his connections to sign me to Obscurité, a dark, circus-like spectacle of costumes, music, and acrobatics of all manner, spinning the senses into a shadowy mix of lust and excitement. Performing in such an eccentric show in a wildly famous location is a dream I never thought to imagine. It’s intoxicating. Challenging. Exhilarating. A life lived on the edge, in every sense.

But I want out. Well, out of whatever relationship I have left with Andrei, anyway — the most dangerous part of my existence here. My position with Obscurité, however, I long to keep; it’s the calculated kind of danger I’ve lived for since I was a child.

And while Andrei and I were romantically involved for a time, that ended when I grew up. Not in age, but in the realization, finally, at twenty-six, I’ve been used and abused by him for too long. And it’s time to take my power back. Or take it for the first time, perhaps, in my short but difficult life.

Unfortunately, Andrei owns me in ways that are hard to shake. And he likes to remind me of it as often as he can. Like the voicemail from him this morning after I’d left our apartment. The one saying he knows Michael and I are more than partners, despite my (truthful) protests. Even though we’re no longer a couple, he still expects to enjoy the exclusive, shall we say, physical benefits of controlling me, though even those episodes are few and far between since I’ve wised up. Because, not for the first time, his hate-filled vitriol laced with dark promises almost sent me running.

But in a country where I know precious few people who would help me, where I have a job that is the only part of my life I love, I pushed it from my mind to deal with tomorrow. Or maybe never, if he calms down and sees sense, as he sometimes does.

So instead of focusing on Andrei’s latest rage, here I sit, twined in silks, just below the hot lights of Obscurité’s theater in a glamorous Las Vegas casino. Unlike anywhere else I’ve lived or worked, it’s somehow the only place where I feel like me.

Completely in character, I lazily shift my glance to Michael. He looks back, his bare face still holding the expression it will when we’re in full makeup later, waiting for the cue in the swelling, haunting music around us.

I allow the feelings the music, the moment, is meant to invoke to overwhelm my fears and concerns. And knowing what comes next helps too. Because drops are what I live for. The adrenaline. The feeling of freedom. The sense of barely contained control. My entire body fills with delicious tension as it anticipates that note. And when it hits, we fall.

It’s a simple but long bullet drop that is both dramatic and thrilling. As I slide through the silks, my inverted gaze snags on a figure in the wings. Andrei, with murder in his eyes.

It distracts my mind enough that years of muscle memory are overridden. And I don’t stop like I should. Instead, as I fear for what he came here to do, my body begins to tumble haplessly as the silks unwind, limbs snagging and pitching in a frenzy of uncoordinated motion.

Time seems to slow as the fabric evades my rosin-coated hands, his fury rendering me into the helpless sixteen-year-old girl it always throws me back to, making it impossible for my mind and body to remember their training. And I keep falling.

2

SEBASTIAN

“SHMC1, we’ve got a 17-D-3 at 3400 South Las Vegas Boulevard, over.”

With a sigh, I depress the button on the com. “Roger that, dispatch. We’ll be there in five, over.”

I tap on the window behind me. “Ty, we’re up.” I check my dashboard and flick on the lights as I hear the rear doors close, followed by the passenger door opening and Ty sliding into the cab.

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