The desert heat blinds my thinking. It’s nighttime and the sun is long gone, dipped low past the horizon like a mirage I want to chase.

If it was any other girl, I might have let the boss take her and do what he wanted. I can’t help myself this time. I can’t explain it. It’s different.

I don’t know if it’s because I know her father and feel bad for the old man. Maybe it’s because she’s so damn innocent. She’s so unlike me, so unlike this world. She doesn’t belong here.

But I feel her behind me. She belongs there - not hidden, but guarded. Shielded. Protected.

The pair of goons tries to muscle past me, but I hook my cigarette between my lips and put my hands out to stop them, pushing my palms into their chests.

“Don’t touch the girl.” I flick my cigarette into a rare nearby puddle on the steaming asphalt and it extinguishes with a hiss.

I grab her gently by the arm and lead her into the hallway, with my two cousins following closely behind. We duck into a hidden elevator off to the side of the dark hallway and I hit the button for the top floor.

What’s about to happen is inevitable now. I can feel it in my bones.

“Men,” I say, “I want you both to meet Cherry. I’ll explain everything once we’re in your father’s office.”

Kevin scratches his head and cocks his chin up, looking at her with skeptical eyes. Mike laughs and scratches his chin.

“You think her pussy is made of gold and that’s worth her debt? Forty thousand dollar gold-plated pussy?”

My blood rushes up into my ears and I resist turning to him and pummeling him. Kevin smacks his brother on the back as I look at Cherry. Her eyes paint a picture of fear across her face.

“I’m going to let that fucking go, but if you talk like that about my fiancee again I will have no trouble laying you out.”

I look straight ahead as the elevator dings and lands at the top floor. I feel the energy in the tight elevator shift, and it fills with tension between the four of us. One of my hands is curled up into a tight fist and the other slips down and takes hers.

I steady my breathing for the both of us. No one moves. I can feel my cousins looking at me slack-jawed, like the fucking cro-magnons they are.

My cousins. The two pieces of shit that are more like brothers to me than cousins. I remember all the times in school when they tempted me to the dark side. It was all kid shit back then. They hid in the bathroom stalls in the girls’ room in high school and jumped out at the girls. One time they raided the tampon machine and threw the things all over the bathroom, filled the sinks with them. Unwrapped them, too, on top of it. The boss called it an innocent prank and laughed it off. My father found it to be a cruel joke.

They still say nothing as we get off at the floor where my uncle runs his business from. We’re in what now is properly considered the hotel. I have a permanent space here, as do my two cousins, as three of his most trusted men.

Trust. I laugh at the word, but I don’t let anyone see. The laugh is on the inside. Outside, I remain like steel.

“Your father is just going to have to understand,” I say as we stride down the hallway.

His office is inside one of the suites. I don’t bother knocking as we make our way to his room - it’s labeled with a gold-plated 1, because my uncle is a prick like that - and Cherry remains silent and hard to corral as we pass through the sleek, modern sitting area with a panoramic view of the strip.

I look down at her, at her pale and luscious face. She doesn’t look frightened anymore. She seems resigned to what’s happening.

But is it resignation? I’ve never been good at reading people. Unlike poker, blackjack doesn’t require you to read people. It’s all up on the surface. It’s a game of calculation and rules. It’s an exercise in logic, and that’s how I like it. I couldn’t have become a fucking expert at poker because that requires a level of interpersonal recognition that I don’t want to touch.

I like the coldness and the distance of blackjack. You set up the rules for yourself at the beginning and you don’t deviate from them if you want to win. Winning means staying on script and not deviating. The house may come out ahead, but I am the house. It’s what I represent.

The house is the family, and I win. I get what I want.

Cherry stumbles slightly as two men, hired muscle who are retired NYPD and came out here to end a fucking miserable life of chipping ice off their minivans, eye her up and down.

“She’s with me, she’s good,” I say as they drag their eyes up and down her, gazing at every inch of her covered, concealed flesh. The tight outfits leaves nothing to the imagination - and even though she’s mine for now, I’m not the only one who can see her. Everyone in the room can see her, from my two cousins to the two men who I know haven’t fucked in a long time and pay for it when they do.

The each grab a handle on one of the thick wooden doors leading into the boss’ office.

This room has been converted from one of the guest suites into his private office, or I guess it never was a guest room to begin with. I can’t remember now. I’ve been in so many of the rooms in this high tower, that I can hardly remember each of them, and even though we built this place from the ground up, I don’t remember what it looked like in our imaginations when it was just a distant fantasy, not yet erected in steel and glass.

“Boss?” One of the men says, unmoving except for his terse lips. These guards always look like this. They’re wound up. They’re wooden. The talk and move like marionette puppets, controlled by some unseen, unnamed person or thing up above us all.

My uncle is peering out the window. He’s a short man, and he’s more like a father to me than an uncle, although in this business, with bloodlines so close and so paramount, sometimes I think a father and an uncle are closer than you think. My cousins and I share a set of grandparents, and they say the bond between a grandparent and grandchild can be stronger than that between father and son.

“Come in,” he says casually. He’s always had a veneer of grace. He doesn’t seem like the unpredictable man I know him to be. His demeanor is soft, almost feminine. He seems nurturing in his office right now, the way he tells us to come in so inviting and friendly.

And then he sees the girl. His eyes don’t widen the way a man consumed with lust would open his eyes to her, like I felt myself do early today when I saw her in the flesh for the first time. No, his eyes close slightly, the lids hiding his view slightly. It’s as though he doesn’t want to see all of her. He only wants to see certain parts. He doesn’t want to see what makes her real, what makes her tick, what makes her her. He wants to see what he can use.

“Sit,” he says. “Not you two. You two get out,” he says to his sons, but it doesn’t sound mean-spirited. It sounds like he’s joking, but he isn’t. He means it. “I should tell you to get out too, but this is your find, and I want you to thank you for bringing her to me.”

I look back to my two cousins as they back away from me and Cherry toward the door. The big double doors close in their faces as they keep backing away. Cherry and I step forward to my uncle and take a seat in either of the chairs facing his desk.

“This is the girl you were talking about when you said she was just a kid, isn’t it?” my uncle asks, taking a seat behind his desk.

He’s an older man, and he looks like my father, if my father had thinning hair and a greying moustache. No, my father is handsome, with thick, black curly hair and a square jaw, and at just under six feet, I’ve seen women try to pick him up when we go for our weekly dinners at the local bar and grill. His brother, on the other hand, had thinning hair and is short. He wears more expensive clothes, though, and could buy and sell my father. He’s spent more money on the furnishings in this room than my father’s entire net worth.

“Uncle, I have to tell you something. I have to tell you the truth.” My words hang in the air between us as I look away from my uncle and to my right, where Cherry is sitting. I couldn’t let her endure whatever the hell my uncle would do to her for being unable to pay. I wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror. I’d reach out with my fist and smash it to pieces if I saw myself in it. I’d do the same to my own fucking face if I could.

“The truth?” My uncle gets up from his desk and slips a hand under his chin. “I’m sure we always tell each other the truth, Sean.”

“I haven’t.” Heat rushes between my ears. I can feel Cherry’s energy next to me as I inhale and exhale a deep breath. I consider what I’m about to say. I’ve come this far, and my only options now are either telling this lie or feeding her to the wolves.

A lie in this life, it’s not like a lie in any other. I remember going to confession when I was a boy. The confessional seal was a sacrament. It was sacred and the priests would protect that covenant. You could confess anything. Everything. The sacrament of the confessional was revered. It still is. The confessional is sacred. And I’m about to confess something that isn’t true at all.

“She’s my fiancee,” I say. I exhale the words through my mouth. “I am just learning about all of this now, as you are. Cherry and I keep secrets from each other, like the fact that her father owed this money. But it’s out in the open now, and she can’t pay up, and I’m taking on her debt. Anything you want to do to her, do it to me instead.”

My uncle folds his hands under his chin and clasps his two index fingers together, putting them to his lips. He nods and smiles. I know his smile doesn’t signal mirth.

“Sean. This woman is your fiancee?” He pushes away from his desk and walks over to the window overlooking the strip. “What about last week when we had the engagement party for your cousin? You didn’t think to mention that you had a girl of your own?”

I clear my throat. He’s right. I seem shady as fuck right now, and I don’t blame him for questioning me.

“I didn’t want to take away from Kevin’s celebration. You know how Bianca can be.”

“That’s right,” my uncle says. “Bianca is a brat. He can do better. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” I say coolly. “I just didn’t want to take the focus off of them. They deserved it. They deserve all the happiness in the world.”

My uncle clears his throat and comes back over to his desk, sitting down.

“Where did you meet this woman?”

He barely conceals his disgust as he speaks. He looks at me with anger. I can see it on his face, though I’m not sure Cherry registers it. He wanted her, but he’s out of fucking luck.

“I’m a waitress, actually,” she says, leaning forward in her seat. My girl. My good little girl. She’s rising to the occasion and doing beautifully. I can feel her instinct kicking in. She’s coming alive. She’s going along with it. “We met when he was sitting for a game of blackjack at my casino. He ordered his favorite drink and gave me a big tip. I thought he was someone I should talk to.”

“So you liked him for his money?” My uncle asks as he laughs. “I should warn you that he doesn’t have as much as you think. I have more. You want a real man, you come to me.”

“You trying to steal my woman?” I joke, but his steely cool gaze is still trained on her.

“I just thought it was intriguing,” she clarifies. “I thought he must really want to talk to me if he was giving me a tip like that for one drink. Plus, he won four hands in a row. He split Aces. I mean...it was impressive.”

She’s hamming it up for him. I know she isn’t mine for real, but my cock stirs at the way she’s teasing my uncle right in front of me.

“And we just hit it off from there,” I say, reaching over to take her hand.

My uncle rises from his chair and shoots daggers into my eyes. My stomach churns into a knot. I just pray that whatever he’s about to do doesn’t include calling my bluff.

This is a delicate dance. It’s a match of wills. Brawn can be left for another day. Right now it’s just me and my uncle fighting over this girl neither of us really fucking know.