The Job (Auctioned) by Cara Dee (highly illogical behavior txt) 📕

the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and I was Jack’s complete lack of surprise to discover he worked in the Enforcement Division.

Corrupt motherfucker.

Well, if investigating organized crime was this criminal’s job, I might as well contact TJ right away.

I grabbed my phone—still no text from Boone—and sent my buddy a message through the usual app we used. No risk of any nosy fuckers seeing.

Oi. Got time to meet up soon? I have some questions about an AJ Lange at the NGCB.

He usually replied quickly. Despite being some ten years younger than me, that guy was hungry to climb ranks and lived and breathed work.

I sent another text to Boone while I waited.

You can’t shut me out completely. I’m worried about you. I swear I’m not reading into what happened earlier. I’ve done stranger things at low points in my life, you know that. Just talk to me.

I’d barely pressed send before TJ’s response popped up in three quick messages.

Oh, that fuckin guy.

Sure. When?

I have time tomorrow and Sat.

Tomorrow could work. It was Friday. Boone’s week with Ace, so he or Mom would pick her up after school.

Tomorrow, usual place. 3pm?

TJ and I met up at a diner on the outskirts of town the following day. The place was dead. People hadn’t gotten off work yet, and the lunch crowd was long gone.

“It’s been a minute, my man.” He slapped his hand into mine. “How’s life?”

“Killing me,” I chuckled. “How’s the family?” All two hundred of them. TJ and his family had been here since the ’70s, and they’d…made themselves known in their Italian-American way, so to speak. You couldn’t really live a life in the underworld and not know of his family, even today.

He widened his eyes and slid into the seat across from me. “Killing me, of course. It’s what they do.”

I smirked and flipped open the menu.

When the waitress came over, we ordered some sliders and shakes—best strawberry shake in all of Nevada—and then got down to business.

“So you got beef with Lange or what?” he asked.

I shrugged, not wanting to get into detail. “I guess I wanna know how secure his future is with the Commission.”

He snorted. “Too secure, in my opinion. His work protects him, and he’s in the pocket of some mameluke down in Florida.”

I nodded once. “His pop.”

We halted our conversation as the waitress returned with our shakes.

It must’ve been some sight, two grown-ass men living on the wrong side of the law sucking strawberry milk shakes from straws with a swirly design. But we owned this shit. Well, to each other. No need to tell others.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m not gonna ask what your plan is. But if getting rid of Lange is the goal because you got personal issues with him, my best bet would be to pin somethin’ on him. Right now, his record is spotless—always has been. Because the Board knows of his biological affiliations. Which means, you know, he’s gotta watch his back and constantly be the golden boy. Smallest suspicion from the higher-ups, and he’s done. That’s my two cents.”

I nodded slowly, thinking, and the truth was, I didn’t know exactly what Darius’s plan was. It didn’t matter to me. He’d asked me to find out as much as possible about Lange, that’s all.

“You don’t seem like a fan of him either,” I noted.

He chuckled. “Fuck no. But they’re all the same to us. If we get rid of one, another takes his place.” He shrugged. “I’ll admit, AJ’s in a league of his own because of the pressure he’s under. He works around the clock to shut down any casino-related business that has so much as a typo on the permit. But at the end of the day, you gotta pick your battles, and a lot has changed just in the past twenty years. We don’t really deal in gambling anymore.”

I knew that much. I’d lived through some of those changes myself. Vegas would probably always have a lot of crime, though it’d shifted to a smaller scale. It wasn’t a town run by the mob anymore.

Unless you counted politicians…

Six

“Sweetie, I’m sure you’ll work things out.” Mom stroked my back while I kept my face hidden against the back of her couch.

Christ, I’d fallen apart.

It was a good thing Ace wasn’t with me.

The pain was crippling. I still saw his face every time I closed my eyes. I saw the raw hurt in his expression, then the anger that’d followed. The sheer rage.

“You’re dead to me, Boone. You’re fucking dead to me.”

I swallowed hard against a new round of emotions and screwed my eyes shut.

“Can I stay here awhile, Ma?” I croaked. “Case is moving out of the apartment, and I can’t afford the rent on my own.”

“Oh, of course, baby. Stay as long as you need.”

I didn’t even care how pathetic it made me. I was too consumed by the loss of the center of my universe.

I squinted past the sleep in my eyes and read Boone’s message half a dozen times.

Several years ago, you made me promise never to hook up with anyone around you. I didn’t understand why, and you refused to explain. I broke that promise three times, never seeing the big deal, and then you cut me out of your life. I’ve been living with that regret ever since, and sometimes it becomes too much. I’m not depressed, Case. It’s just grief. I’m not coping well without you.

I gotta ask something selfish. I need this job. I need the payout so I can start over and afford a place for me and Ace. But before we see each other again, I want your word that we won’t speak of what happened yesterday. I’m embarrassed as fuck, and you’re not exactly the smoothest guy to make things less awkward. I can’t explain right now anyway.

“Ugh.” I dropped my phone, and my head hit the pillow again.

If the sun wasn’t up, neither was I.

That used to apply to Boone too,