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“Nice to meet you.” Her cheeks flushed as she shook his hand.
“Hunter Cruz.” Hunter nodded at her. He was never the most demonstrative with any of his feelings aside from crankiness, but his eyes lingered on her a touch longer than necessary. “We’ll give you the rundown of what you need to do, then we’ll leave you to get familiar with the policy guide.”
It was also very much like Hunter to get straight to business. We told Brooke about our schedules, a few priorities, and the things we needed each day as she furiously took notes. After, we took her back to her desk, which was right outside of all of our offices, and headed back to the conference room in silence.
Once Chase closed the door, I sat in the big chair at the head of the conference table with a sigh. I’d been so wrapped up with Brooke that I’d put the big problem we were handling on my mental back burner. But we couldn’t put off the problem anymore.
“Did you guys put any more thought into what we should do about the mountain of problems we inherited?” I asked.
Chase raised an eyebrow. “Calling it a mountain of problems makes it seem unsurmountable. Our issues aren’t insurmountable, but they will require a lot of work to get over.”
“Some days, I wonder why the fuck we decided to buy this place.” Hunter ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “It’s like we want to be driven to the fucking edge from all of this.”
“It has a lot of potential,” Chase said. “And if you look at the financials, we don’t have to dothatmuch work to get things back on track. But the clientele is a whole other problem that requires more thought.”
When we first bought this casino, we thought the occasional seedy-looking character appearing at the gambling tables was par for the course. We were in Vegas, after all, which wasn’t known for being squeaky clean.
But then, Chase started to dig into the security footage to back up his hunch and noticed that these guys didn’t just seem seedy. They actually were criminals who’d recently gotten out of prison for a variety of crimes. All of them were regulars, chatting with each other. Maybe they were just fans of our place, but the number of them, and the fact that they all socialized with each other, felt off.
“Well, do you two have any ideas?” Hunter asked, leaning back in his seat and folding his hands over his stomach. “Because mine are to just confront them directly and get this problem off our desks.”
“And scare them off?” I shook my head. “No, we need to be more subtle.”
All of us sat in silence for a few moments. My eyes drifted toward the door, and a crazy idea clicked. It was nuts, but it was more subtle than Hunter’s idea.
“What if we sent in a mole? Someone to pretend to be a dealer?” I asked. “She’d monitor them up close and report back.”
“She?” Both of Chase’s eyebrows rose.
“Yeah, a beautiful woman is perfect. We’ve seen all the stunning women that hang all over them, so why not give them one as a dealer?” I shrugged. “Brooke would be the perfect mole.”
CHAPTER3
Hunter
“Fuck no,” I said. “We are absolutely not sending in our brand-new executive assistant to spy onfucking criminalsfor us.”
I’d seen the woman for all of ten minutes, so I completely understood why he’d choose her. She was beautiful in an understated way that always made me want to look at a woman longer—her soft features, forest green eyes, and deep brown hair caught my attention and held it.
In an outfit that highlighted her curves, she’d do the same for most men. Then again, she was enticing me by just wearing a plain gray pencil skirt and a buttoned-up blouse. The clothes didn’t look expensive, but the way the skirt hugged her hips and ass made it look like it was made just for her.
But that was the problem—she’d be a target. She was completely innocent in all of this. She didn’t need to be thrown in front of fucking criminals. Who knew what they’d do to her if she was found out? Crime rings weren’t known for sparing the messenger.
“It’s not an awful idea,” Chase said slowly, as if he couldn’t believe he was saying it.
“There are a lot of levels of negative side effects between awful and bad,” I said. “Like just plain shitty. And this idea is that.”
“We could pay her extra.” Lucas shrugged. “And we can give her a fake name, too. It’s not like she has to give her real name and tell all of her real personal information.”
I ran a hand over my face. “You don’t think they could find out her real name if they wanted to? People in the office already know what she looks like, and you know that we’re having issues with them.”
We hadn’t cleared out all the employees when we came in because they were doing a fine enough job. But some of them set off some alarm bells in my gut that I didn’t have proof of. My gut feelings were usually pretty on point, so it was just a matter of time until I found out who was causing problems.
“Do you really think they’d notice?” Chase asked. “It’s her first day. I think most people here go into the office and go home without a second thought. And the people who work the floor don’t interact with the people who run the office.”
“Still. It’s a risk.” I threaded my fingers through my hair. “One that we don’t need to take.”
“Listen, she’s a nice person,” Lucas said.
