ACE: Las Vegas Bad Boys Read online

  I try to remember a younger Janie, before she became the girl who left me to pick up the pieces alone after our parents died. I need to remember, because I can’t seem to see straight.

  “It’s been like ... a dream ... a nightmare ...” she says, blinking heavily as if this is the most difficult thing of her life. Maybe it is. “The crash was bad?” she asks. “Did anyone die?”

  “No, no one died, thank God,” I tell her, holding both her hands in mine. “I came to Vegas as soon as I heard you’d been hurt. And I know it’s been a long time, but Janie, I’m here. For you. Any way I can be.”

  My phone starts ringing, but I know that right now I need to focus on my sister. I want to ask more about Ace. I need to focus on her.

  “So everyone is alive from the crash?” she asks again.

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “And you said Ace was driving?”

  “Yeah,” she says, nodding her head slowly, her eyes suddenly more alive. “It was Ace Royalle.”

  My phone rings again, and this time I reach for it. Maybe I need an out, because right now I can’t breathe.

  “Hello?” I ask.

  “Emmy?” Ace says. “Baby, I’m in jail.”

  “What?” I ask, shaking my head, looking back at Janie who’s getting checked out for the millionth time by the nurses. I step out of the room, pressing my hand to my chest.

  “Grotto framed me. I’m here being detained for your sister’s accident. I just need you to know I’m okay, and I have my lawyer sorting this all out.”

  “Ace,” I say, my words choking as I say them. “Janie started talking.”

  “Oh, fuck, really? She did?” Ace sounds surprised, but also ... unhappy? “What did she say?”

  “I think I need to talk to the police before I talk to you, Ace.”

  “What are you talking about, Emmy? You can tell me anything.”

  “I can’t do this, Ace.”

  “Do what?” he asks. A steel edge sharpens his voice; it hurts to hear him like this.

  “You. You aren’t who you say you are.”

  “I’m everything I say. I got one fucking call when they brought me in, and I called you. You, Emmy Rose. You. Don’t fuck with me now.”

  “I’m not fucking anything.” My words are ice, everything within me going cold.

  I don’t want to be this way. Not with him. Even if that makes me a fool.

  Being with him is the only thing that has ever allowed me to begin to thaw, allowed the frozen pieces of myself to melt away.

  So, in a whisper, I breathe the words I know I shouldn’t. If Ace has played me, anything I say may help his case. But I can’t not. The memories of the past three days flash in my mind. The Nutella sandwiches and the shower where he held me, the whispered words as we made love. I can’t erase them. I don’t want to.

  “Ace,” I whisper. “She said you were driving.”

  He starts to defend himself, but I can’t listen. It hurts too much and confuses me too much. I don’t feel safe at all. Grotto just blindsided me, and then Janie did too.

  I need to think.

  I hang up my phone and search my contacts for Detective Clark.

  I look through the hospital room window at my sister, and see the nurses helping her sit up. She looks weak, like she might topple to the ground. Her hands grip the rails on the bed, her chin raised, as she takes deep breaths. Like she’s fighting to stay above water.

  But right now I’m the one in way over my head.

  ACE

  I slam the phone down. Slam my fist into the concrete wall. Fuck. I press my palm around my bloodied hand, trying to shake it off.

  But it’s not possible.

  What the fuck sort of lies is Emmy’s sister feeding her? Telling her I was driving the car that crashed? It’s bullshit.

  How many fucking times do I need to tell Emmy the truth for her to believe me?

  I look around, screwed. Of course she doesn’t believe me. I’m the one who just got hauled off to jail.

  Denzel says my arraignment is tomorrow, and that’s not gonna fly. I need to get the fuck out of here. Now.

  In the cell, I sit with a few drunks and a cokehead. How the hell did I get here?

  I run through the possibilities.

  My friends would never have sold me out like this. Mark has my back—he’s trying to get my arraignment sooner–so I know he isn’t out to fuck with me.

  There are only a few people left.

  When I met Janie, I knew she was trouble. She sauntered out to my car high as a kite—by the looks of it, she had the same appearance as this cokehead across from me. She’d clearly been doing hardcore drugs.

  I need to know her connection with Grotto. Whatever Janie and Grotto are doing to try and frame me is going to bite them in the ass.

  I own this town, and it’s time they motherfucking remembered that.

  One thing that eases my fear, as I sit on this stone cold bench in a fucking City of Las Vegas jumpsuit, is that whatever shit Grotto says he has on my family, on me, isn’t so deep. He doesn’t know about my true connections with the mob; if he did, he’d have told the cops my real name, told them some actual shit.

  Not this story he fed them about me driving the car the night of the accident.

  And that eases some of my worry.

  But when the afternoon turns to night, turns to the early morning hours, and I’m still in this cell, my worry is replaced with anger. With rage.

  What doesn’t sit right, the thing gnawing at the back of my mind, is Emmy.

  She’s is hell-bent on not trusting me, and she hasn’t been fully on my side since the get-go. Then the moment her druggy sister woke up, sounds like she believed her. And why, when everything Emmy has said over the past few weeks about Janie is criminal? She ran out on Emmy years ago, never calls. Has never reached out to her sister once.

  So why would Emmy trust her over me?

  Unless.

  Unless Emmy is in on this.

  Unless Emmy has been drawing me in, ready to pounce.

  And maybe she’s getting ready to hit me where it will hurt the most.

  My fucking heart.

  24

  EMMY

  I hated ending the call with Ace. I hated talking to Detective Clark. I hated sitting with Janie, trying to understand the situation.

  It’s the day after the phone call, and I’m still reeling from it.

  Maybe I’m a selfish girl. Maybe I want everything and that’s not fair. Life up until I met Ace sure seemed like a fucking disaster—and then he showed up, promised to pick up the pieces ... and I believed him.

  Against my better judgment. Against everything I’d been taught about men. I believed.

  Why? Because I’m beyond tired. Beyond the point of no return. I’m ready for easy. I’m ready to live somewhere beside the edge all the time.

  I want to sit back, away from danger. I want to sit back, and be held.

  And fuck me now. The one person I wanted to have hold me was Ace.

  And then Janie drops this.

  It’s like I lost everything I never really had.

  “Janie,” I say. I’m in her room; she’s been sitting up for awhile now, still clearly struggling, but also not out of it completely. I can’t wait any longer for this conversation, even though the doctor warned me not to stay long. “Why were you with Ace the night of the crash, anyways?”

  “Emmy, I was with him because he was trying to hire me to be his prostitute.” She doesn’t look me in the eyes, and I can’t tell if it’s shame or if it’s because there’s more to this story.

  “Like his escort, or for a company that had a contract with his hotel?” I ask, shaking my head. “Because he told me it was–”

  “Wait, you know him? Bullet?”

  “Yeah, Janie,” I say. “I do. I’m sort of ... like, with him.”

  “With the man who almost murdered me?” Janie asks, her voice rising to a pitch I remember from back when we were little.
<
br />   “You weren’t almost murdered. It as a car accident, a crash. It wasn’t—”

  “It wasn’t what?” Janie asks. “You weren’t there. It was no accident. That’s why I need to speak with the detective. I need to make sure he knows the truth.”

  “Well, Detective Clark will be here any minute,” I tell her.

  “Good. I need to speak with him privately,” she tells me. “And I can’t see you right now. Not if you’re fucking the man who tried to kill me. I know Vegas is a small town but, Emmy, this is too close to home. We’re family, and you were fucking my murderer.”

  Home? Family? Does Janie even know what those words mean? Do I? Because my whole life I’ve been trying to figure them out. Home and family have always been desperate words I’ve clung to with a crazy hope. I’m here for Janie now because I’m still holding onto that same flawed logic.

  Janie didn’t want me before ... why do I think she’ll want me now?

  I wanted her. Want her. I am so tired of being alone.

  “Janie, no one was murdered,” I say, trying to talk sense into her. Not that I have all that much sense in my own brain at the moment, but I swear, Janie must be doped up on whatever is running through her IV. She seems determined to upset me.

  I won’t let her.

  “Ace didn’t murder you,” I repeat. “You are alive. It’s a miracle. We can be a family again. It’s like we got another shot at this.”

  “Oh, girl, you need to go for awhile. You need to step outside for fresh air. I live in the real world,” Janie says, coughing on her words. “Family is family, but what does that really mean? From where I’m sitting, it never got me very far.”

  “But I wasn’t the one who ran away,” I say as softly as I can muster, because if I don’t err on the side of meek, I know I’ll lose my shit. “I’m still here. I’ve been here for two months. For you.”

  I want to tell her more, tell her everything. Tell her that the past can be just that. Because this can be the start of our future.

  But she isn’t listening. I just don’t get it. I thought she’d wake up and see me, and realize that I was what she was missing.

  But all she does is eye the phone on the bedside table and then tell me to go.

  ACE

  The arraignment goes quickly. The judge sets my bail and Mark calls Landon to come get me out. I have a hearing set in two days time, and I need to work with Mark to figure out this shit with Grotto before then. He has to be the one behind this.

  I need to find out if everything that’s happened with Emmy is just Grotto’s doing.

  Maybe she’s here to set me up—and, fuck me now, it worked. I love that woman, but she may be playing me.

  It’ll kill me if that’s the truth.

  As I sit in the holding cell, waiting for Landon, I wonder if in some ways this is my fault. If I hadn’t been so dead set on proving myself, I would never have pushed for that fucking piece of property. My casino should have been enough. But no, I wanted to take more. More control, more money—and that set Grotto on my tail.

  Fuck. My pride is killing me. But no way in hell am I going back to jail. I didn’t leave my home, leave NYC, start over—just to get screwed by another gangster.

  “Bail was posted,” a jailor says, opening the door to my cell. “You’re free to go.”

  I change my clothes, get my shit, and sign out. Mark and my crew are waiting for me in the lobby, and I feel like a fucking fool.

  Jack gives me a bro-hug. “Dude, what the fuck?”

  “You genuinely freaked us out, Ace,” Landon says. “You disappear with Emmy for three days, then you were supposed to meet up with us and the real estate agent—and you go MIA.”

  “Shit, I know. Glad Mark could fill you in.” I nod at my lawyer, more grateful than ever to have him back in my court.

  “Anybody ass-fuck you in there?” McQueen asks, and I smile. It’s a good thing these assholes showed up because I was getting fucking depressed in the jail cell.

  “I avoided the ass-fucking. Weird though, how that was the first fucking thing on your mind,” I throw back at him.

  We walk out of the jail and the guys jump in Jack’s pimped-out SUV. Mark pulls me aside before I get in with them.

  “Listen, Ace, Grotto screwed you over once and we can’t let him do it again.”

  “I fucking know that,” I say, shaking my head. “You hear that Emmy’s sister woke up?”

  “Yeah, I just got off the phone with Detective Clark. He’s with CCPD and has been on her sister’s case for months.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He just met with Janie. Apparently she’s pretty effed up still. Twitchy and skittish. Not sure what is coma-related and what is just her.”

  “She’s an addict, Mark.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She was a prospective hire for the escort service the hotel uses. I met her once, like I do with all the girls contracted with Spades. We have high standards.”

  “And she wasn’t up to par?” Mark asks. “Sounds sketchy, Ace. For you.”

  “Not what I mean. She was high when I met her, totally fucked up. I wasn’t going to tell Emmy all this, she wants some happily-ever-after with her sister, but Janie is a fucking wreck. I don’t trust her.”

  “But you trust Emmy?”

  “I don’t know who to trust.”

  “You can trust me, and those guys.” Mark points to the car. “We have your back.”

  My jaw is tense, my shoulders tight. This has been a long fucking twenty-four hours.

  “Do you think you can get anything out of Emmy?” Mark asks.

  “You want me to trick her into talking?” The mere thought of it confirms everything I need to know about myself.

  Emmy’s no fucking rat. She’s my woman. So fine, she can blame me for her sister’s crash. Or, fuck, be in on it with Grotto, try to frame me for shit I didn’t do.

  But I don’t believe she’s that woman.

  She’s no liar. She’s the fucking love of my life.

  “Regardless, Ace, we need to know what the Grotto and Janie connection is. And we need to figure it out stat—if we don’t, this could all blow up in your face in two days. I’ll call Clark again, see if he’s heard anything else.”

  “Keep me posted.” I turn to go, but Mark calls out.

  “If you can get your girl to talk, call me.”

  I jump in the car, knowing I’ll never trick Emmy into anything. She may have played me, but shit, that woman will never be a means to an end. Not when she’s the one who made me believe I could have a fucking new beginning.

  EMMY

  Janie’s on the phone with someone for the second time today, while I stand in the hall with Detective Clark.

  “Ace’s lawyer called. Everyone is working to figure out the Grotto connection. You really have no clue what it is?”

  “No,” I tell him. “But when I was in the limo with Grotto he told me he and Janie were close.”

  “Let’s go talk to her again,” Clark says, shrugging.

  “We can try ... but she gets so skittish when we start asking. And the doctor is not cool with us forcing the issue. She needs to recover before we stress her out too much,” I say. I’m still on the defensive as far as Janie is concerned.

  “I don’t care what the doctor says right now. Right now, I want to understand what’s going on with Grotto. We’ve been trying to get dirt on that guy for years. This might be the time.”

  “I see,” I say, shaking my head. “So this is all just for another notch in your belt?” I’m a little surprised; Clark has come off as a little slow on the uptake, not exactly a man chasing a medal of honor. And now he wants to bring down the big, bad Grotto? I guess I don’t blame him.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Clark says, chuckling.

  I cock an eyebrow in the air, and Clark smiles.

  “Okay, maybe that’s one of the reasons I want to force the issue.”

  “What�
��s the other reason?”

  “Justice.”

  “You’re a good detective, Clark,” I tell him, grateful to have a good man on my side. “So you really think Grotto’s behind this, not Ace?”

  “The phone we found in the vehicle was a burner phone. Janie had used it a few times to text Bullet. No other numbers, no other calls. When the number connected to Bullet is called, the call is dropped. I think it was a fake conversation, that she was trying to set him up.”

  I swallow hard and look through the window at my sister, who is sitting in the hospital bed. She’s awake and alert now. Her fingers drum against the tabletop. Tiptaptiptap. Her eyes dart around furiously, as if trying to see something that isn’t there.

  “I wish I knew what she was like before the crash,” I say softly. “The whole time she was in the coma, I thought up a version of Janie that I don’t think was ever real.”

  “Sometimes we let ourselves see people the way we want to see them.”

  “Is that bad?” I ask Clark.

  “I don’t know. I’m a detective, Emmy. My job is to look beneath the surface.”

  “And beneath the surface you think my sister is guilty of something?” I ask, my eyes filling with tears.

  “Beneath the surface, I think you know the answer to that.”

  We look at Janie again; this time she’s gnawing on her fingernails. A rush of blood drips off her forefinger from the skin she’s bitten open. She grabs a tissue and dabs at the broken skin.

  She’s a mess. And it’s clear this isn’t a result of the coma. This is the result of a lifetime of choices.

  “Should we go talk to her?” I ask Clark.

  “You know, I think we should hold off. Let’s not upset her or make her suspicious. She isn’t stable. The last thing we need is for her to do something out of desperation.”

  “Alright.” I pause, debating if I should ask what I really want to know.

  Clark reads my mind.

  “Ace Royalle was released on bail this morning, so looks like your boss has a few days to clear his name. I know I’ll be doing my part to solve the case, and so will his lawyer.”