"I didn't catch your name, sweetheart," the man said in a strange tone I couldn't decipher as I moved to go back around the desk toward the door.
"Prudence," Byron barked as I opened my mouth to respond.
"Prue," I corrected, giving him a soft smile.
"Aaron Day," he said, extending his free hand toward me and I reached for it a little awkwardly, absolutely certain Byron was watching the whole interaction and looking for something to use against me at a later time. "I run the security at Mandy's."
"Mandy's?" I repeated, smiling a little.
"Byron's casino," he supplied and I felt the smile fall as I let go of Aaron's hand.
Byron's casino?
His... casino?
He was a loan shark who owned a casino?
What a freaking asshole.
I turned to look at Byron's face which was a cool mask again, his eyes daring me to say something.
"Have you ever been?" Aaron asked in that strange tone, drawing my attention back to him.
Had I ever been to Mandy's? Oh, only about a couple hundred times whenever I tracked my father down there over the years. It was his favorite casino. He liked the atmosphere and the selection of games. It was a massive, gorgeous building on the main strip in A.C. There wasn't too much to write home about on the outside, nothing flashy, nothing eye-grabbing. The inside, though, was where it was at. Whereas many of the casinos had gone through a ton of upgrades over the years, recently leaning toward minimalist and streamlined, a little cold, Mandy's was like stepping back in time. It was a place you half-expected to see Sinatra and Crosby hanging out, smoking cigars, sipping gin, and playing craps, gorgeous women at their sides to blow on their dice.
The interior was low-lit with dark woods, deep reds, and lush creams. Each time I had been there, it had been immaculate and full of men in suits and women in dresses and heels. No lowlife, down-on-their-luck gamblers in sight.
Save for my father.
But he never looked the part.
He was always in a suit as well. He always fit in with the men with deep pockets.
I guessed that was why he was always getting into such huge sums of debt.
"I don't gamble," I answered honestly, avoiding the question and directing my answer at Byron.
"Never?" Aaron asked, sounding shocked. We did, after all, live in one of the gambling capitals of the States.
"Not even a scratch-off or guessing how many jelly beans in a jar at a county fair," I told Aaron, giving him a smile that I knew came off a little sad. "Have a good meeting," I told Aaron and excused myself from the room.
I walked back to the laundry room to wait for the cycle to finish, munching on the granola bar I had tucked into my skirt, and thinking over what I had just learned.
Byron St. James owned Mandy's.
That was how he knew my father.
That was why my father seemed to know him so well.
And the bastard to rule all bastards preyed on the gamblers in his casino who were down on their luck.
Like my father.
So, yeah, technically, he had loaned my dad over a quarter million. But I was sure my dad sank it right back into Mandy's and, therefore, Byron's pockets.
That was just lovely.FIVEByronThe first time I had seen Prudence Marlow, I was twenty-seven years old, the same age she was as she stomped around my house in the heels she made it perfectly clear she hated. She had been sixteen and trying to get into Mandy's with a fake ID At the time, my uncle was still around and running the casino, doing so with an iron fist and all-seeing eye. So when the ID got scanned and came up fake, though it would have passed a visual inspection in a heartbeat it was so well done, Uncle John was made aware.
He'd brought up the screen from the front doors where we saw a very young, very pretty teenage Prue standing there in a simple black dress and heels, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping impatiently. Like her time was being wasted. Like she had a mission. Curious, John had told them to wave her in. It wasn't that fake IDs were uncommon in our business, but it wasn't every day you saw a single girl trying to get into the club with nothing more than a coin purse in her hand.
"Place your bets," John called to all of us in the room as we watched Prue take back her fake license and shove it in her coin purse as the door was opened for her and she walked inside.
"Working girl," one of the guys called.
"She's just a kid," another objected.
"When the fuck has that ever factored in?" the first guy shot back.
"Byron?" my uncle asked.
"Fuck if I know," I said, watching the screen as she stopped inside the main room, her shoulders slumping a little as she scanned the tables. Her hair was pulled up and twisted in a style way too old for her and she had her makeup done to match any other of the women in the building, heavy on the mascara and with a vivid red lip. Judging by the way she was chewing said lip, she was not someone who wore lipstick often, if at all.