Chapter 4

I gathered the crew in the casino’s private count room. Ten men. Vance. Two union liaisons. Ellis’s security captains. The room smelled of cigar smoke and fear. I put the cigarette case on the table. I put the hospital bracelet beside it.

“Ellis Crowe has been holding my sister in this building for ten years,” I said. “He fathered her son. He forged her death. If any of you knew, you have one chance to tell me now.”

Silence. A few men looked at the floor. One, a security captain named Rourke, started sweating.

“Boss, we didn’t know,” Vance said. “Ellis kept the sub-basements off the logs. He said they were flooded.”

“Then why did he give you private orders?” I asked.

Vance’s face went tight. “What?”

I nodded at the door. Two of my men brought in a guard named Pryce. He was young, nervous. He had been on Ellis’s personal detail for two years.

“Tell him,” I said.

Pryce swallowed. “Mr. Crowe told us to watch the B-2 corridor. If anyone from the family came down, we were to call him first. Not you. Him.”

The room went cold. Rourke shifted his weight. I saw his hand drift toward his holster.

“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice. Rourke froze.

“Ellis is gone,” I said. “The casino is mine. The city is mine. If you’re with me, you stay. If you’re with him, you leave now and I won’t follow. But if you lie to me again, I’ll bury you under this building.”

No one moved. Then Vance put his gun on the table. One by one, the others did the same. Rourke was the last. His hand shook as he set his weapon down.

My phone buzzed. A video message from Ellis. I opened it.

Danielle filled the screen. She was thin. Her hair was long and tangled. She had a bruise on her cheek and a cut on her lip. But her eyes were the same. She looked into the camera and spoke.

“Marcus,” she said. “Don’t let him hurt Toby. I’m alive. I’m under the casino. B-3. He moved me because the boy escaped. Please. Don’t trust anything he says.”

The video cut off. I closed my eyes. Ten years. Ten years of grief, and she had been right here, beneath my feet, while I drank and built and pretended I had buried her.

“Boss?” Vance said. “What do you want to do?”

I put the phone in my pocket. “I want to agree to Ellis’s trade. Then I want to put a key in a door he thinks I don’t know about.”