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Sometime in the last decade, I’d learned to live with it, learned to vanquish it to a small corner of my mind so that I could live, work, breathe. But seeing Janet tonight, knowing that she still hates me as much as I hate myself, has blown it all wide open again.
“Mr. Caine, it’s good to see you,” says Roman, one of the kids who works the night shift at the valet so that he can go to college during the day. “Are you having a good night?”
I nod, hand him a ten dollar tip. Usually, I’d tell him to call me Sebastian, as I have every night since I got here and he’d laugh and tell me that that isn’t how things at the Atlantis operate. We’d banter a little back and forth and he’d tell me something interesting he learned in class that day. But tonight I don’t have it in me. I’m not even sure I have the energy to make it through the casino and up the elevator to my suite.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, glance at the name. Aria. Of course. She’s probably wondering where I am. Probably wants an explanation for what was a truly bizarre scene. Or Janet already told her the whole story and she wants to tell me to get the fuck out of her life.
It’s my fear of the latter that has me directing the call to voice mail and shoving the phone ba
ck into my jeans. And it’s that same fear that has me ignoring the texts that come through a minute or so later.
I’m halfway to the elevator—no tour of the casino tonight—when Mickey, my assistant head of security, flags me down. She doesn’t look happy and though I really want nothing more than to ignore her, I stop. It’s her boss’s day off and while she’s proven herself more than competent in the ten days I’ve been here, that only reinforces my belief that if she feels like she has a situation that needs my attention, then I need to give it to her.
“Everything okay?” I ask as she falls into step beside me.
“Actually we have a situation and I’m not sure how you’d like us to handle it. Over at the high roller tables.”
It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. Of course it’s the whales. Of fucking course. I swear to God, if this casino wasn’t having a cash flow problem right now, I’d ban the whole fucking lot of them.
We make a sharp left at the end of a long line of slot machines, head deeper into the casino to where the buy-ins are often in the five and six figures. “Petrov Rubinov came in about twenty minutes ago and sat down at one of the poker tables,” she tells me as we walk. “I know that you banned him from the casino after the incident with one of the waitresses the other night, and so I sent security over to ask him to leave. His response was to grow loud and belligerent and he’s refused to budge since. I’ve been over to encourage him to leave, as well, but he’s having none of it.
“Our only choice at this point is to bodily eject him, but since he’s got his own bodyguard detail, that’s going to get messy. However, since he is in the middle of the high roller section, I wanted to run it by you before I took that course of action. Because I can tell you, he’s drunk and disruptive and he isn’t going to go easily It’s going to cause a hell of a scene.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! Of all the fucking nights for him to pull this shit on me, he chooses tonight. Of course he does. Of fucking course he does.
I should probably walk away. When it comes to him, my temper is precarious at the best of times. And right now is pretty much as far away from the best of times as I can get. But someone needs to take care of this and obviously, it’s not going to be Mickey. At least not without the entire casino knowing about it.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell her. “Just get me a couple of security guys to back me up, in case I need to physically remove the bastard.”
“They’re already on their way, sir.”
“Good.”
We’re almost at the high roller area now and I hear him—even over all the bells and slot machines and cash payouts that make the casino a cacophony of craziness at this late hour—before I’ve reached the ropes sectioning this area off from the general public. He’s that loud and obnoxious. And Mickey is right—the way he’s running off at the mouth and slurring his words, he’s obviously drunk.
Plus, his free hand is completely up the skirt of the girl sitting next to him—a girl who I’m ninety-nine percent certain is a prostitute he hired for the evening, and an underage one at that. My annoyance level ratchets up about three thousand percent to infuriated, and only gets worse when he does something—I can’t see what—that makes the poor girl wince, and even whimper.
I come up behind him, stop a couple feet from the back of his chair. I think about trying diplomacy, but the truth is, I just don’t have the patience for it. Not right now, not after how I’ve spent the last hour.
“Rubinov, I believe I made my position clear about your presence in my hotel.” I make sure my voice is ice cold despite the white hot rage rushing through me.
He turns in his seat, glances over his shoulder at me like he’s been waiting all along for me to show up.
“Ah, yes. Caine. Good to see you again.” The words sound particularly snide in his heavy Russian accent. Or maybe my interpretation is colored by my abject loathing of the son of a bitch. “I’ll take a vodka martini.”
No. He really is as loathsome as I think he is. “The bar’s closed.”
“What’s the matter, pretty boy? You don’t like Russians?”
“I don’t like you.”
“That’s too bad, since I enjoy your casino very much. Good atmosphere, good drinks…when the bar is open. Good company.” He pulls his hand out from under his companion’s skirt, puts it on her breast instead. And squeezes until she cries out in obvious distress.
“Okay, that’s it.” I grab him by his collar, yank him to his feet. “You’re out of here. Now.”
I can hear the gasps around us, know that I’m making a spectacle when that’s the last thing I planned on doing tonight. But as his security detail starts to make a fuss behind me—and are stopped by my security people—I have to admit that I don’t give a damn about whether or not we attract attention. I don’t care how many Tumblr or Instagram or Twitter accounts the picture shows up on, I’m not putting up with his shit. And neither is my staff. Not for one more minute. Not for one more second.
“You’ve got two choices,” I tell him, speaking quietly so that any recording devices that are trained on us right now can’t pick it up. “You, and your security detail, can walk out of my casino right now, under your own power. Or I will march you to the door myself and I won’t be gentle about it. Everyone in this casino will see me taking out the trash.”
