Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series (17 page)

But yet...there were so many
yets
. Her lover looked
so handsome in the twilight of the Vegas strip. He had saved her, hadn’t he?
But hadn’t she always figured that in her life, she’d be her own savior? Hadn’t
everything taught her that she didn’t need to rely on people—men—the way
everyone else did? People all seemed so hasty to give themselves away to
another, but Romy saw no fundamental appeal in ownership. When Bryson had said
he was falling for her, most of her heart had opened wide with glee (this was
what she wanted, wasn’t it?), but another part had erupted with an unfamiliar
fear.

And yet another part of her heart was whispering stranded
lyrics, over and over again. The words to a song she’d mostly forgotten,
referred to now after years. A song a floppy-haired boy had wooed her with, in
a teenaged bedroom:

Don’t tell me you can’t feel it

with your body next to mine

wish I had you in my bedroom…

Bryson emitted a rattling, pleased snore. Romy cozied
herself further into his nook. She let her tired eyelids flutter.

She’d think about it—everything—tomorrow.

After collecting his winnings, Kellan remained on the
Needle—as a means of keeping up the team's ruse. He wandered in and out of a
few mid-level poker tables, losing by hairs to other high-rollers. Lefty looked
on affably, without a shred of suspicion: a drunk rocker throwing cash around
was par for the Saturday night course.

As the sun began to peel over the tops of neon buildings at
street-level, making the rooftop lounge look
especially
like a mounted
hell, Kellan downed his last drink of the evening. He didn’t make a habit of
counting his intake, but could tell from the bartender’s imperious raised
eyebrows that he’d had...a fair amount.
Whatever.
He sloshed towards the
exit, leaving a small bread-crumb trickle of spilled chips. His brother
wouldn’t appreciate this lack of...conduct. Well, fuck his brother.

“Is there a hotel room where we could store Mister...um, Mr.
Vaughn?” a pretty waitress asked the room at large. He appeared to be clutching
her arm. Why was he clutching her arm? Now he was on all fours...oh, boy…

Suddenly, Kellan perceived the scrape of what-felt-like
talons on his back. Looking up, he noticed the severe Eastern European woman
who’d been running the tournaments all evening. She did not look pleased.

“Special guest of Mr. Lefty’s?” she simpered. He flustered
to recall her name; Lisa? Vita? Dom Deluisa? This took too much energy. Kellan
leaned heavily against the bar, instead. The room was spinning, now.

Scary-Bond-Villain-Woman was now motioning to the ghostly
set of bouncers flanking the elevator. They approached like stealthy bears: all
muscle, full of foreboding. Kellan scrambled to stand.

“Please escort Mr. Vaughn,” she drew out the syllables of
his name with disgust “to main casino floor. I am sure he can find his way back
to whichever rat hole he came from, down there.” Looking especially witchy,
Zaida flicked her cold eyes about the room, as if to ensure Lefty was not
listening in. When she ascertained that her boss had left the premises, she
shoved Kellan sharply in the back. A wave of nausea propelled him forward.

“Get out, garbage man!” she yelled, in a ferocious, accented
English. The bouncers hemmed him in on both sides.

After two sickening elevator rides, Kellan found himself
back on the main floor. The world was blurring about the edges. He felt cool
marble against his cheek. He heard the gruff sounds of the security guards, as
they exchanged flat, stupid noises he took to be laughter. And then: nothing. A
seeping, silent nothing.

Upon waking, Kellan immediately sensed an unfamiliarity in
his surroundings. The air smelled sweet—like pancakes and lavender lotion, with
undercurrents of something he recognized but couldn’t place. Old Spice? Dirty
laundry? A pairing of both?

He was bound in a quilt, pinioned flat as hospital corners
in a twin bed. The room he was in contained a sewing machine and heaps of
multi-colored fabric. The blinds and curtains were drawn, so he had no means of
knowing what time of day it was—much less where he’d landed. A shooting,
crystalline clarity came: it was Sunday. Sunday, the day after the tournament.
Yesterday, he’d finished the evening...well, somewhere on the Sunset Strip.

But this wasn’t the motel he’d checked into. His guitar was
nowhere to be seen. It was very clearly a person’s home he’d landed in—though
from the looks of it, this wasn’t the sexy boudoir of an obliging lady of the
night. Abruptly, he placed the smell that had evaded him before—teenage boy.

There was a clattering noise from beyond the closed door,
then a muttered, “Oh, shit.” Kellan struggled to place the voice. For an
unthinking second, he imagined it was Romy Adelaide outside the room, cooking
him breakfast. He might’ve died and gone to heaven! But no, heaven would surely
be free of the splitting, thumping headache that he was slowly waking to, the
flat, sickening pain of an impending hangover that now strode across his mind.
He felt sloshy and precarious, like the inside of an uncooked egg. He hadn’t
been this hungover in years.

The feeling reminded him of those earliest days on the road
with The Prattle, before he’d made the resolute decision to clean up his act.
That life—
his
life—seemed so laughable now. Distant. The stuff of
someone else’s memory. To the current Kellan, there was only the immediately
tangible: the frightened look in Romy’s eyes. The flick of her elegant wrists
as she passed him cards. The Sunset Strip.

The door burst open. Though the figure on the threshold was
flanked by an upsetting light, Kellan determined 1) “it” was a lady and 2) she
was older. Warm. Probably a Mom.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” the woman trilled, proving his
second theory to a tee. Adjusting his eyes to the light, Kellan drank in the
full spectacle of her—she was tiny, but trim. Someone who worked out, who took
great care of a petite but lovely figure. Her eyes were moist and large. Her
hair was a crackly bottle auburn—not unlike his own mother’s—but she wore it
high and tight on her head, in a bun. She had the effervescence of a former
beauty queen. And on closer inspection, his hero wasn’t so old. Perhaps early
forties. Time had done a number on her posture, that was all.

“Where am I?” Kellan managed, feeling the iron-y taste of
yesterday on his tongue. In answer, the woman procured a glass of water from a
bedside table and passed it to him. He drank quickly.

“Don’t go so fast. Can’t have you getting sick again, can
we?” Kellan’s cheeks flushed—
again?

“Where am I?” he repeated slowly, chugging all the water in
one gulp and passing the glass back. “And who are you?”

“I’m Paulette,” said the woman cheerfully. “Owner and
proprietor of this here lovely ranch house. And you, my friend, are a drunk I
took in. Y’hungry?”

The thought made him sick again. But Kellan forced the
nausea away; now he was too curious.

“Why did you do that?” he whispered, grasping again for the
water. Paulette grinned down at him.

“You reminded me of a man or two, after my own heart.” Her
voice seemed so utterly sans malice. And could it be true? Had he been saved by
the last wholesome person in this whole godforsaken city?

“Thanks, Paulette. I really appreciate it.”

“Is it a girl?”

“Excuse me?”

Paulette pulled up a pile of mismatched prints and sat down
heavily. “You were in a real state last night, champ. I just wondered...was it about
a girl?”

It hurt too much to think about, and with a hefty hangover,
the ache seemed to double. Skittering visions of Romy kissing his older brother
raced through his mind, tripping over and across flashes of her face in high
school. Seeing Paulette’s waiting, open face, Kellan elected a response: “Yes.
There’s a girl involved.”

“You want some advice?” Gosh, she moved quick. There was a
spitfire intelligence to this mystery angel. Kellan realized how long it had
been since he’d spoken to anyone intimately. With an unsourced pang, he thought
of The Prattle. He had only been a week away from their company, but he already
missed his friends on the road.

“Sure.”

“You have to move on,” she said now, slowly, in a dulcet,
soothing Mom voice. “Any woman who makes you feel this way—like you’ve got no
control over the world, no reason to make meaning in it—she’s no good for you.
And wait, I take it you’re something of a romantic?”

“Why do you say that?” Kellan snapped. He tried to keep the
edge from his voice, but the hangover was descending like a zeppelin over all
his thoughts.

“Your hippie hair, sweet pea,” Paulette said. She leaned
forward to ruffle his damp forehead. Her touch was cool and careful. “And all
the calluses on your fingers. I’m guessing...a musician?”

Without waiting for a reply, she cackled at her rightness.
So, Paulette was a woman who liked to be right. Good to know.

“I guess I’m a little romantic, sure. Who isn’t?”

“Well, that can be a burden. People very rarely live up to a
romantic’s astronomic expectations. We’re all just humans, crawling around in
the muck, wanting the things it occurs to us to want.”

She stood then, and regarded her charge with a steely gaze.
“So don’t fly off the handle for a single
human
, okay? No right-thinking
woman will respect a guy who can’t take care of himself, anyways. Who can’t
hold his liquor.” She smirked, as she turned to walk out of the room. Kellan
was left to contemplate her words.

“When do you need me out of here?” he thought to yell at her
retreating back. This was the first of a dozen more questions that sprang to
mind; who was she really? How had she found him? What had he said last night
that enabled her to be so magically perceptive this morning? He was
disappointed that this practical inquiry was the first thing to fly from his
mouth. But Paulette just grinned again.

“Stay as long as you need to. Company’s just fine with me.”

It was just as before: Romy rose in the morning to Zaida’s
ferocious knock, and took the money. She contemplated her sleeping lover,
tangled up in the expensive sheets. It seemed too good to be true. Were they
possibly...free?

“Bryson?” Romy whispered, shaking his plush arms. “Wake up.
Bryson!”

“Mmm.”

“Shouldn’t we be getting our things? Hightailing it out of
here? Bryson?”

He creaked his eyes open. They were caked with well-deserved
sleep. “Romy,” he said slowly, reaching for her.

She recoiled. “I should have known. Goddamnit, Bryson!”

“What should you have known? You don’t even know what I’m
going to say!”

“I know that—” Romy found herself blinking back angry tears.
“—I know that I’ve just spent this whole week being manipulated. Not just by
Lefty, or Zaida, who I knew I couldn’t trust...but
you
. And your
brother
.
Jesus.
” She sat heavily in a far armchair. Bryson rolled up, fully
awake.

“Shhhhh, keep it down!” he hissed, whispering now. “Remember
we're in
their
hotel.” I didn’t mean to manipulate you,” he said
quietly. His voice betrayed his shame.

“You come over to my house, you teach me how to
count
cards,
of all things! You tell me this is all this big escape plan, to get
me out of here, to save my life and then you throw all these curveballs! When
are we really leaving?”

“Another week, okay? We can leave right after that...just
one single week!”

“Why? WHY? Is this just about the money to you?” A grim
silence landed in the space between them. Romy failed to suppress a noisy sob.
She hid her face.

But Bryson had enclosed her in his arms—his huge, strong
arms. He rocked her as she cried, slowly sapping her of energy, the will to
fight with him. How was it that he had this calming effect, always?

“I know you’re strong. I know you’re smart. The reason I didn’t
tell you about the whole plan is because—well, I’m figuring out a lot of it as
we go along. There’s not as much of a plan as you’d think.” He took her dewy
face between his hands. “And I wasn’t lying about the most important thing,
Romy. I am truly, truly, falling for you. I want to be with you. In the
daylight, away from this town. I want to wake up beside you every single day.”

“You don’t even know me,” she sputtered, hating the
petulance in her own voice. But wasn’t that a little bit true? It had been two
weeks. A dramatic, crazy two weeks, sure, but 14 days nonetheless.

“I think I do,” Bryson swaggered. She fought an urge to seek
out his by-now familiar, easy grin. She had to be smarter. She couldn’t fall so
easily into the trap of a handsome face.

“Let me tell you all I know,” he crooned. “Okay?”

Romy nodded dully. Her lover drew breath:

“Okay. So Lefty DiMartino, proprietor of the Windsor and
resident evil, is a real nasty piece of work. But you already knew that. What
you
don’t
know is how deep his operation goes. The man’s got his fingers
in Mexican drug cartels, some highly dubious shipping operations on the Eastern
seaboard, human trafficking, and he can be connected to at least sixty murders
in the past ten years alone. Following so far?”

Romy moved to perch at the edge of her armchair. She blinked
rapidly, indicating he continue.

“...Great. So what I mean to say is: making a significant
dent in his operation is going to require a lot of trust. A lot of confidence.
And most of all, a lot of
money.

Now the Aces have lent me and Kelly the sizable nest egg
we’ve been gambling with so far, which we’ve managed to make some nice returns
on. Though if I know my brother, half of what we won last night is being peeled
off the Needle’s floor this morning...regardless. So now there’s all this money
at stake. My family’s, my club’s, mine—basically the life savings of a dozen
operations are in play. And we wouldn’t take a risk like this, Romy, unless we
fully expected to make a difference. To topple DiMartino to the best of our
ability. Now to pull off a stunt like that, we’d need: a woman on the inside.
Check, that’s you.”

“So you USED me?” Romy blurted. She made to stand, but
Bryson rushed to her side again.

“
Absolutely not,”
he said firmly. “You’ve got to
understand that my family, with its connections, could hurt a man like Lefty
DiMartino in far less, shall-we-say expensive ways. Falling for you, even
recognizing you as an employee at the Windsor...none of that was part of this.
I swear to God.”

She resumed her position in the armchair. At this point,
what choice did she have but to believe in Bryson? And their sweet week of
bliss, of lust...that all had to mean something, didn’t it? Even as a liar, he
was still the best man she’d known in who-knew-how-long.

“I. Swear. To. God,” he repeated ardently. “But you can see
the appeal of the amended plan. Instead of hurting Lefty like a bunch of thugs,
we can take from him what he cares about most: power. Credibility.
Money.

My brother is involved, namely, because he’s the best
card-counter I’ve ever met. Games come naturally to him; it’s his inner
performer. Plus, people like him, and I can trust him. Lefty has taken an
unexpected shine to him, which ended up being helpful last night. Took lots of
the heat off me and you. And I didn’t tell Kellan about us, didn’t tell you
about Kellan, because, like I said, I got scared. I know you two used to have a
thing together, and even if it was small and ancient...I didn’t want to risk a
rekindling. It was selfish.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Yes. That was a mistake. I admit it. But I want you to
myself,” He took another heavy, inflating breath. “And now here we are, right?
Last night we took the casino for another cool three hundred, four hundred
grand. That’s a big hit. But more importantly, we’ve gained the trust of the
target himself. If we barter on that and wait a week...just one more week...we
could sink him
hugely
, Romy. Walk out of there with enough money to
hobble his empire, without raising an eyebrow.”

“He’s not an idiot, Bryson. I’m sure he’ll be watching both
you and Kellan hyper-closely the rest of the time you’re in Vegas. He’d already
traced you to my house.”

“And he’s already seen us make love like animals, all
throughout his hotel. He knows you’re terrified of him. He only knows me as a
nameless suit. Why should he be more suspicious of us than any of the other slime
bags up in the Needle?”

Though her mind tripped on this bit of logic, Romy nodded
her head. The rest of the plan—laid out like so—made enough sense to keep her
listening. She urged him on, with another dainty incline of her head.

“So what happens when we walk out of here, then? Next week?
With more money?”

“Well first, we skip town. Fast, fast, fast.”

“Sure.”

“And a week will give us enough time to make the right
arrangements. You can withdraw from school, we can get your dog to a safe
place, et cetera. We get far enough away with enough money, you call in an
anonymous tip to the Feds and tell them everything you can about DiMartino. We
sink him like a submarine. Presto!”

“And Kellan?”

“When I win at the final tournament, we’ll all divvy up the
profits fairly. And Kellan will go back to his band, I guess.” Bryson’s brow
furrowed. They sat in silence for a moment.
It’ll work, Romy. It’ll be so
great,
his eyes seemed to say.

Her whole life, Romy realized, was centered about
intelligent gambling. She studied probability, the likelihoods of certain
outcomes. She measured actions on the probability of their positive outcome.
But the past week felt like an outrageous departure from all that structure;
she’d pawned herself along on the basis of other people’s assessments of
danger. It was a precarious place to be, but she had to admit; it was also a
thrilling one.

“I understand why you wouldn’t want to believe me,” Bryson
was saying heavily. “Everyone’s lied to you. For so long.”
But not me. Not
my brother.
“And I don’t want you to think this is your only choice. If you
go to the police, if you walk away now—the Devil’s Aces will do everything in
their power to protect you. I swear that on my life.”

Feeling the crumpled cash growing damp in her fist, Romy
finally availed herself of her lover’s eyes. They told stories. Here was a man
who’d been everywhere, who'd seen everything, who’d always said yes to adventure.
Building a life with him would demand her acceptance of uncertainty, of
not-always-knowing. She couldn’t yet contemplate the choice in terms of
forevers, but in that damn impish grin, she read one word:
yes.

“Bryson,” Romy said slowly. “About what you said last night.
It was very…” But he rushed forward then, pressing a thick finger to her lips.
“Wait,” he told her. “We have plenty of time for that.”