Soft swirls of magenta, violet and indigo bathe the city’s skyline. It’s dusk. My favorite part of the day. The best time for people like me. Night crawlers. After a day of tracking one scumbag named Ronald Patterson, Cutter and I have ended up at the Majestic Hotel & Casino on the Delaware River waterfront where our target has been floundering at the blackjack table for the last forty-five minutes.

The Majestic is a new hotel and casino built as part of the city’s expansive revitalization plan for this area of the riverfront. After a huge advertising campaign to attract tourist dollars to the area, the casino has turned around one of the most desolate areas of the city and it continues to rise in popularity among gamblers.

The place is so new that you can smell the faint chemical smell of the green felt rising from the card tables. I myself am partial to casinos that are a bit dated. Casinos that remind you of bell bottom pants, cigarette smoke and lots of gaudy decor. New casinos are sleek and sexy, but they have lots of bills to pay, so you’ll never win there. Not big anyway.

I’m not actually surprised that we’ve ended up here tonight. Ronald has been researching nearby casinos for the past two days on the Internet. My guess is that he’s itching to throw away the stack he’s been paid to testify against our client. It’s amazing what people will stoop to for just a thousand dollars. So I knew it was just a matter of time before he landed somewhere like this. A place that gives him the illusion that he’s going to get lucky.

I have to admit, I live for shit like this. The hunting and the gathering. I love what I do for a living, especially when I can do it in one of my custom three-piece suits. Sometimes I get sick of always having to underplay the money I make.

While I know it’s important that we live under the radar and not draw attention to our wealth, there are moments I’d like to say to hell with the sweats or jeans and put on a four-thousand-dollar suit, because I can.

Tonight is one of those nights. I’m rocking one of my favorite custom tailored, midnight blue Tom Ford suits with black lapels and a blue and white Windsor knot tie.

I’m probably a little overdressed for this casino, and in particular this table, because there are no high rollers here, but that’s all right. I’m going to take a seat, play a few rounds, bankrupt Ronald, then make him an offer he’ll have trouble refusing. And by the glances that I’m already getting in this suit, I’ll be rounding out the night in a suite drinking a few shots and getting my dick sucked properly, although I’d rather it would be Jade on her knees.

“What the hell is taking you so long?” my brother whispers in my ear. Apparently impatient with my card playing. What Cutter has always failed to realize or had the temperament for is that the first rule of gambling is that you have to wait patiently for your turn of the cards.

I choose to purposely ignore the question or rather his badgering. I’m counting cards, and it’s not something that I do everyday, so for it to work I can’t have any distractions.

“I’m talking to you,” he whispers again.

I cut my eyes to the side. My signal for him to shut the fuck up, or he’s going to pay for it later. I’ll never be too old to give my younger brother a good old-fashioned ass whipping.

As I use two fingers to tap the table for another card from the dealer, I notice several women brazenly ogling me, but I only really see one who’s worth a second look. A strikingly beautiful woman, with red lips, long legs, jet-black hair, and wearing a modest black jumpsuit at a nearby roulette table.

As she reaches across the table to strategically place her chips down before the ball drops, every man at the table is staring at her ass, and when she places her final chip down, her eyes flick up and catch mine. If this was a couple of months ago, she would have served as motivation to wrap my night up quickly, and get to the better part of the evening.

Funny how things change.

I decide that I’ve played my last losing hand when I get a text. It’s Jade, and for a moment I look away from the game to see what she wants. We haven’t talked much since I issued my thirty-day challenge. We’ve just been keeping things strictly professional, because she hasn’t accepted the job at the club yet, and I haven’t forced the issue. Time is slowly running out for her though. If I have to be, I can be very persuasive.

Jade: Where are you?

Me: Busy.

Jade: Are you coming to the club?

Me: Probably not. Why? You want to see me?

Cutter whispers in my ear again.

“Pay attention.”

I cut my eyes towards him a second time, but again I don’t say anything to my brother. I never like to react to someone speaking to me in the middle of a hand. Not only is it a distraction, but it allows other players an insider look into my mood. A definite no-no when you’re playing cards, even though this is basically an amateur table.

I text Jade again since she hasn’t responded to my last message, and because I’m wondering if these texts are her ass backwards way of agreeing to my proposal.

Me: Do you need something?

Jade: No, never mind, I’m good.

I’m no idiot. I know Jade. I’ve been inside of Jade. She doesn’t text for no reason, but if she doesn’t want to tell you something, then she won’t. She’s stubborn like that. So I decide to get back to what I’m supposed to be doing, before Cutter fucks it all up with his impatient interruptions.

I can sense that Ronald is starting to feel pretty confident about the rising stack of chips in front of him. His last few winning hands have lulled him into a false sense of security, because now he’s trying to beat the house using a betting progression strategy. A fatal blackjack mistake.

Based on the time we’ve sat here, the number of players at the table, and the number of cards that I’ve counted, there’s a high probability that Ronald’s hand is good, but that I’ll have the winning hand.

So I bet high.

I bet everything I’ve got on the table.

That’s Cutter’s cue to walk away and head to the bar, because that’s where our devastated loser will probably be headed after he’s lost this hand. I’ve done the intel, and he has a thing for taking shots of expensive vodka after he’s finished playing cards.

The dealer flips over Ronald’s final card. He’s a bust with a total of twenty-four.

Then she turns over my final card.

“Twenty-one wins.”

Okay, so sometimes these scenarios play out exactly like I plan, and sometimes we have to go off script. I won the hand and several thousand dollars, and Ronald lost his entire pot, but the jackass didn’t head straight to the bar like my intel suggested he would. He made a call instead that sent him straight out of the casino and over to the valet to call for a cab.

“What now, Sherlock?” Cutter asks sarcastically.

“Obviously we need to grab him before he gets in a car.”

“Obviously. So who’s going to do it? You or me?”

“Me. You get the car and bring it around here. And get my boots out of the trunk. I need to get out of these shoes. Dress up time is over.”

I approach the valet stand and ask them to fetch a fictitious Jaguar. When one of the guys returns to say that he can’t find it, I act as if I am going to cause a serious scene which gains the attention of the manager.

“I’ll search for it myself, sir. My apologies for the wait.”

I nod in acknowledgement of his efforts, especially because this leaves the desk unmanned for a while. Best time to confront Ronald. Just in case I have to hurt him to get him into the car, I don’t want any do-gooders calling the cops.

“Finished for the night?” I ask casually.

He glares at me for a moment. Remembering that I’m the guy who wiped him out at the blackjack table.

“You won a lot of my money, so yeah, I’m finished.”

“I know a way you can get it back.”

The look on his face questions my motives, but as I was counting on, he’s too desperate to walk away.

“I’m listening …”

Turns out Ronald wasn’t that interested in listening at all, in fact he got a little indignant after I made my offer, as if I offended him. So now I’m spending the rest of my night in the middle of a freezing, abandoned, concrete building that smells like motor oil, piss, and mold.

Crushing this asshole’s head under my boot.

My glock pressed against his temple.

My brother is trying to reason with him, while I hold him helpless on the ground. His words are a sheer waste of time in my opinion. I’ve always told Cutter that there’s no point in reasoning with someone who lacks basic intelligence and this guy is dumber than dirt.

All the dumbass had to do was take the three grand I offered him to walk away from testifying, also widely recognized as snitching, at an upcoming case for one of our clients. A very simple transaction. An easy yes. But simpletons like to make things difficult sometimes, and this guy was no different.

Instead of taking the money and walking away, he actually tried to stab me with a pocketknife that was stashed inside of his jacket. As if that would have ever worked. I’ve had fourteen-year-old punks come at me that were smarter and faster than this dummy.

“This is real stupid, homeboy.” My brother bends over to say to the pissant. “You should’ve just taken the money, and you definitely shouldn’t have tried to shank him. Now look at what you’ve done.”

I guess I should give Ronald a little credit. He doesn’t budge. He doesn’t plea for his life. He doesn’t once speak up to say that he’s changed his mind about testifying. He just quietly grimaces while I dig the heel of my boot into the side of his face. Actually his tough guy act is pissing me off. I had no intentions of beating his ass and getting blood on my favorite suit tonight, but now he’s making me think otherwise.

A text buzzes my phone to life. It’s Jade again. Two messages on the same night from Jade is not standard fare. I stare at her text a little longer than I normally would. Trying to assess the hidden meaning behind her innocuous message this time and the inquisitive one from earlier. In fact, my eyes are actually glazing over my phone screen, in an attempt to decipher the subtext of her brief message, call me when you’re done, when I hear the two deadly clicks near the back of my head.

Shit.

Two clicks means that there are at least two motherfuckers who followed me and Cutter into the warehouse, and they are holding at least two guns on us right now.