Page 112 of House Rules
I shoot him a look. Maverick always wears his humor like armor, but I’ve seen how fast it comes off.
“I don’t know.” Atticus shrugs, looking…off. The collar of his shirt is open, his sleeves pushed up. His hair, usually neat and sharp enough to cut glass, is mussed from running his hands through it. “Maybe one that doesn’t end up with us in jail and Phoenix on the street?”
“What will they take?” I ask again, sharper this time.
“That’s it,” he says, moving around the couch to drop onto the cushion beside me. “They wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t negotiate at all. Their leader made some comments about us having more ‘bigger’ girl problems.”
The phrase lands like a pebble in my gut. Bigger girl problems. Either a warning or a taunt, and I don’t like either option.
Atticus pulls a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and hands it to Maverick.
“This is a list of missing staff. Any you might have?—”
“I’ve definitely fucked at least a handful of these girls…. I think,” Maverick says. “And I think I recognize the others as girls that have been up here.”
“What about the other staff?” Atticus asks. “There’s a few who I recognize, but others who I don’t.”
“Yeah,” Maverick says. “That’s the dealer I got into it with over Phoenix a while ago. And this one here—night manager…he called me a ruffian and a hooligan.”
I can’t help but smile at the way Maverick says that, clutching his imaginary pearls, and speaking in a fake British accent.
“I told him to suck a dick,” Maverick says, leaning back in the chair. “I never saw him again, but I just assumed he was fired.”
Storm gets up and looks over Maverick’s shoulders and points to a few girls. Atticus nods and hands me the list.
There are at least twenty people on this list, all of whom are now assumed dead or missing. Atticus must have pulled the photos from their employee files because the photos look like mugshots—all forced smiles and dead eyes. I recognize several of them, but not all. A cocktail waitress who used to hum while she worked. A pit boss with a laugh like breaking glass.
Gone. All of them gone.
“Yeah, I recognize a few of them. I couldn’t tell you their names but…I know them,” I hold Phoenix to me a little tighter. She shifts slightly but doesn’t wake. “Look, I’m not saying that we don’t have to deal with the staff later and figure out a way to nip those rumors in the bud, but I’m not really worried about that right now.”
“I am,” Atticus says as he takes back the paper.
“Why? Phoenix’s issue is far more important.”
“That’s the thing,” Atticus says. “This guy who’s after her? I’ve been doing some digging, and he’s not a low-rent nobody. He’s from a fairly prominent crime family. Not New York or Chicago-big, but he’s from a family that runs the casinos in Atlantic City. I’m thinking he’s trying to move in on the Titan-Wynn operation here, and maybe he sees us as a means of doing that… And maybe Phoenix as a means of doing that. From what I can tell, he’s been doling out a lot of high-risk loans and going for the classic kneecap return on his investment when people don’t pay up. I think he’s looking to make a name for himself here.”
I frown. Atticus is usually pretty dead on as far as seeing patterns in chaos. If that’s what he thinks ishappening, he’s usually right. But in this case, we know why these guys were after Phoenix. It’s just not that complicated. “That’s a lot of supposition. I think he just wants to use Phoenix as an example. Show the locals why killing yourself isn’t enough to erase your debt?”
“It started that way, sure,” Atticus says. His jaw tightens, the only sign he’s still carrying that phone call in his head. “But now there are other variables at play. He also told me straight that money’s clean, but when it’s family, blood’s cleaner. And Storm got ‘too fucking enthusiastic’ with one of his men. His wife’s cousin. That changes the balance for him.”
Maverick sits forward, elbows on his knees, humor gone.
“And then it occurred to me that with having Phoenix here as his eyes all this time…he may look at pinning the disappearance of our employees on us to take us down and then our parents. If he does that, Titian-Wynn and all the casinos attached to us, not only on the Savannah River, but the Mississippi and even out west in Scottsdale and Reno, would be ripe for the picking. Not to mention the resorts all over the world.”
“But we’re not the ones killing the staff. They are probably mostly alive,” Storm says. “So why bother have Phoenix spy on us?”
“I think it’s a wild goose chase, and he knows it,” Atticus explains. He is always three steps ahead. “I think he sent her here to spy on us and find some dirt, or some coincidences that he could link to the disappearing staff. I think he meant to use whatever intel he was able to get from her to frame us.”
“Fuck,” I say, running my fingers through Phoenix’s hair. She sleeps so soundly I’m not worried about her waking up, but I just need to touch her.
At least right now, she’s here. Warm. Breathing. Untouched.
For the moment.
But the air in the room has shifted—thicker, heavier. Atticus is still scanning that list like he’s memorizing every face. Storm’s fingers twitch at his thigh, like he’s already picturing how deep his blade would go. Maverick’s humor hasn’t come back; he just stares at Phoenix like she’s the center of a storm we can’t outrun.
I keep my hand on her hair, not sure if I’m trying to keep her calm or myself. Because it’s not lost on me that if the Atlantic City bastard really wants to make a point, he’s already chosen the perfect target.
