I shook my head, then shuffled a deck of cards. “Just another day in paradise,” I winked. Derek smirked, then slid into the seat across from me. He hit the table, and I dealt: one card face down and a seven for me, and a king and an eight for him. I peeked at my card, then nodded at him.
“You’ve done good with the place,” Derek said. The truth was that he was supposed to take over Jimmy’s, as well as the rest of the family business, with Axe and I as leading enforcers, but I hadn’t wanted that for myself. I didn’t mind killing; in fact, I enjoyed it. But when it came to the gambling hall, I wanted a piece of the pie for myself. Besides, I was Uncle Jimmy’s namesake. Wilhelm James Adler. What a name.
I didn’t respond to Derek’s comment. He was leading to something. He tapped the table and I dealt another card. A king, an eight, and now, a two. There wasn’t much of a chance of getting better than that.
I hit as well, then flipped over my second card. A seven and a nine and a face-down mystery. If he was smart, he’d stand.
“You hear anything from Muro’s men?” he asked. He put a hand over his cards. Good man. I showed him my final card: a five. The house won again. I always did.
“You were close that time,” I said. He shook his head, smiling. “And about the Muro’s men, they weren’t giving their share.”
We had negotiated with Miles Muro of Midnight Miles Corporation a decent, but low cutback, since we had delayed delivering a man who had stolen a rather large diamond from him. Our response, to keep things civil, was to agree to terms in which Muro could spread his drug trade in our region without dealing with a large percentage cut. We each specialized in different substances, so it made sense to work together, and our cut was reasonable, as an apology for the lacking delivery. We were supposed to deliver the diamond stealerandhis daughter. But my half-brother had fallen for the woman and ran off with her. So her father was deliveredeventually. But not her.
We needed to smooth things out with Miles Muro. That was part of my job.
“They didn’t pay?” Derek asked. “What’d you do?”
I nodded towards the back doors. “Let them out.” I shrugged. Gerard, our mob boss and my father, insisted that we kept things civil. The Adler family had networked with other syndicates for ages; we had to keep that reputation. “Didn’t kill them. Just told them to get their shit and leave.”
“Have you talked to Muro about it?”
I shook my head. “I was waiting for you.”
I was good with networking and making connections, but Derek was still the next-in-line for the throne, which meant everything had to go through him. I could respect that. He had proven, repeatedly, that that’s what he had been raised to do. But it was boring bureaucratic shit if you asked me. I’d rather deal with the connections and numbers behind the scenes, with the drug fiends and the gambling addicts without a home to keep them in line.
“You want to set up a meeting then?” I asked. Derek nodded. “I’ll make the call.”
“Good,” he said. He nodded towards the exit. “We got you a present, by the way.” Then he shook his head, smiling to himself. “Axegot you a present,” he corrected.
“It better not be—”
He smirked. “Not this time,” he said. He tilted his head. “Let’s go.”
I shrugged. What did I have to lose?
After I left a few of my men in charge, we drove back to my place in a high-rise in the middle of Sage City. My home was on the thirty-sixth floor, a penthouse with the rooftop patio all to myself. Axe stood up from the kitchen island, his clothes as clean as ever. Had he already taken care of Brad, or was the body still in his car downstairs?
“I hear you got me a present,” I said.
He gestured towards the guest bedroom door. “She’s inside.”
“She?” I asked. He nodded. “Who is she?”
“Don’t know,” Derek said. “She could barely utter a sentence.”
“Doesn’t remember where she came from,” Axe said.
“It’s perfect,” Derek said. “You’re always talking about wanting to play god, right? This is it. This is playing god.”
“I never—”
But then I thought about it. Really thought about it. If she didn’t remember where she came from, and therefore, didn’t have a past, then who was I, but a god, to her? To mold and change and shape her life. To make her fit to serve me.
And if not, I would move on. She would be killed. Like any angry god would do.
Intrigued, I opened the door. On the bed, sitting on the edge of the bed, was a woman with light brown hair. Full pink lips. A toned, muscular body, but softness there too. Her breasts hanging and bare.
“Found her naked in the woods,” Axe said.
