Chapter One — Elena
Las Vegas never slept. That was the first thing I’d learned when I arrived here years ago. The thrilling and glamorous city operated on a relentless frequency, humming day and night with the same electric indifference. The Strip never dimmed; the casinos were never empty.
There were times when I found comfort in all the buzz, lights, and constant movement. There were even times when it excited me. Times when it made me feel like all this color and vibrancy couldn’t surround a life that was doomed to gloom. But tonight, I just wanted to disappear into all that buzz.
I shouldered through the exterior door and stepped into the alley behind the club where I worked. The night air carried the faint sweetness of a spilled cocktail from somewhere down the block. Adjusting the strap of my bag, I started walking.
I got about twenty feet before I felt the prickling at the back of my neck. The particular awareness of eyes on me, and certainly not the admiring type. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I’d felt it; it had become a sad norm. And I’d learned to trust it the hard way.
Instead of stopping to look over my shoulder like a normal person would, I kept my pace even, my chin up, and kept walking. Not that I was remotely more courageous than a normal person, just that I’d rather not put my mind on the kind of not-so-unfamiliar danger I was in. So my mind sifted through the recent memories and settled on my conversation with Sofia over an hour ago when she’d found me hunched over my phone in the dressing room.
“Lena,” her voice had cut through the noise of blow dryers and overlapping conversation.
She had appeared in the mirror behind me, already half out of her cocktail uniform, sharp eyeliner and red lips still flawless at the end of a six-hour shift. She always looked like that—like she’d stepped out of an advertisement and wandered into real life by accident.
“You’re doing the thing with your face again.”
“I don’t have a thing.”
“You absolutely have a thing. Your eyes go all—” She made a pinching gesture near her temples. “Tight. Like you’re trying to hold your skull together from the inside.”
I put my phone face-down on the vanity.
“Do you always have to use those weird descriptions?” I questioned, sighing playfully. “I’m fine.”
Sofia dropped into the empty chair beside me and crossed her legs. “You got another message, didn’t you?”
It sounded like a question but I knew better than to think she was asking me an actual question.
I simply blinked.
“How much now?” she asked quietly.
Double.
“Well… more,” I answered, chuckling in attempt to sound not-so-bothered.
She sighed deeply like she often did whenever she was trying to choose her words carefully.
“Lena.”
“No, I’m fine,” I cut in without missing a beat. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“These people might not want to back off, eventually. Maybe this is time to involve—”
“There’s no one to go to.” I turned back to the mirror. Up close, my stage makeup looked grotesque to me—the false lashes, the heavy contour, the overdrawn lips. “I signed documents. Everything they did was technically legal. There’s nothing a cop can do about a legal loan, Sofia.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she suggested, “You shouldn’t walk home alone tonight.”
“They just need to think I’m scared of them. You know, for their badass ego,” I said, raising a brow as a small smile crossed my face. “They aren’t going to do anything to me. I’m their moneybag, after all.”
Sofia watched me in the mirror for a long moment, and I could see the argument forming behind her eyes.
“Text me the second you walk through your door,” she finally said.
“Yes, mom.”
“Nothing is funny.”
