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I brush my fingers over velvet and silk. Scowl at price tags. After a quick dip into the changing room, I head toward the door wearing a green satin dress under my coat, my jeans and sweater stuffed into my purse.
Somewhere between the doorway and the sidewalk, an alarm starts screaming.
“Hey!” comes a voice behind me.
Shit.
I tighten my grip on my suitcase and break into an awkward run. I’m used to running—from store security guards, from my problems, whatever—but it’s a hell of a lot harder when you’re wearing a dress two sizes too small and are weighed down by your worldly possessions.
I steal a glance over my shoulder. The sales girl is wobbling after me in impossibly high heels, her cell to her ear. As she pulls it away to glance at the screen, I seize the opportunity to shove my body against the nearest door and fall through it.
A few moments later, she gallops past on the other side of the glass, a furious expression cut into her face.
I slide a few inches down the wall and let out a huff of hot air. It melts into a laugh of disbelief.
Shit, that was close. Despite the twisted victory humming under my skin, I know that was stupid. I shouldn’t be stealing at the best of times, but right now, I need to keep a low profile more than ever.
“Are you coming in, or are you going to stand there all day?”
A gruff voice steels my spine. When I spin around to locate its owner, I’m met with cold eyes that fill with thinly veiled disgust as they roll over me. They belong to a man with a sharp suit and a face I’d happily put my fist through—you know, if I weren’t five-foot-two and trying to be a better person.
Coming in? I shift my gaze around the small, dark room, and realize it’s an entryway. He’s guarding the top of a staircase, and next to him, there’s a vacant desk with a neon blue sign behind it.
Blue’s Den.
Odd. I’m not saying I’m an expert on every bar in town, but I can say I know them all by name, at least.
It must be new. I straighten up and smooth down the front of my coat. “This is a bar?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
I stare at him for a few beats, letting my retort ripple through me like a silent wave. Only when it’s left my system do I grab my bags and squeeze past him.
“A yes would have sufficed, asshole,” I mutter.
Couldn’t resist.
I don’t take too kindly to men with attitude problems—never have. I guess it’s hereditary, because my mother was the same. I grew up underneath the poker tables of the Visconti Grand Casino, where both my parents worked. My mother as a dealer and my father as security. If a patron gave my mother even the tiniest dash of sass from across a velvet table, they were out on their ass, sans their chips, long before they could grab their jacket from the coat room.
Our hatred of men was the only thing my mother and I had in common. Even in the looks department, we only mildly looked related if you closed one eye, squinted the other, and tilted your head to the side. She and my father were tall and slender. I’m short and kind of dumpy. They were tan and dark-haired, but I’m on a different Pantone color chart entirely. In the winter months, I’m borderline translucent, and in the summer, I’m a constant shade of pale pink. My hair is copper, which, according to my mother’s stupid logic, is because she ate too many tomatoes while pregnant with me.
My father used to joke that I was the milkman’s daughter. That joke turned into a bitter belief once he and my mother graduated from wine coolers and craft beers to hard liquor. By the time they were killed, I was wishing I was anyone’s daughter but theirs.
Stepping off the bottom step feels like stepping into silk. Soft jazz and low lighting caress my cold skin, and the scents of tobacco and aftershave unlock nostalgic memories I didn’t know I had.
Unlike the street above, this bar doesn’t scream money; it whispers wealth.
I make a beeline for a seat in the corner that has a great view of the bar. As I slide between tables, my eyes shift from left to right, right to left, raking over the clientele.
My brain rattles through my well-worn checklist.
Wearing suits midweek? Check.
Drinking hard liquor instead of beer? Check.
Sitting alone? Check.
A zap of excitement shoots down my spine, and the scar on my hip burns. It always does when I’ve hit the jackpot. There are a dozen men in here, and all of them tick the boxes of a good mark.
