Page 87 of Double Down

“Exactly. And no more night managers guessing what you comped. Explicit instructions. If anyone ‘guesses’ again, we send them to Storm.”

We brainstorm for nearly an hour—his marketing and operations; my insider knowledge of who spends and where.

By the end, he has a short list of tweaks that might actually save it: pre-auth every card for full stay and incidentals; staff chaperone the first hour of big suites—not to babysit, but to “ensure satisfaction” while logging faces; mandatory ID checks and a log for all guests; partner with a reputable caterer so outside food and drink create a paper trail.

The more we talk, the more the iron bands around his shoulders loosen.

At some point, his hand settles on my knee. It’s a small thing, but possessive—like he’s reminding me who I belong to. “You’re good at this.”

“I’m good at a lot of things.” I grin. For the first time this morning, he almost smiles. “Getting you out of your head is one of my specialties.”

“Yeah,” he says, voice dropping, “and you’re going to show me every other gift tonight. No interruptions. No bullshit. Just you and me, and?—”

The front door slams.

Atticus strides in like one of the four horsemen—eyes hard, sharp, bloodshot. The air changes as soon as he steps over the threshold a fine crackle before lightning hits. He takes in me on the couch beside Maverick, Mav’s hand still on my knee, and something in his expression slides from pissed to enraged.

“Phoenix,” he says, low enough to raise goosebumps. “With me. Now.”

Maverick’s jaw tightens. His hand stays on me a beat too long, then lifts, allowing me to choose.

I stand. I don’t know what to do. I’m caught between them—the one who needs me, and the one who won’t accept a refusal.

I don’t choose. I just walk out of the room.

I refuse to choose between them.

21

Conrad

Three more overdoses.Three more dead college kids, and three more sets of parents who are wasting no time shopping for ambulance chasers to calculate the worth of their dead child.

We’re fucked.

That’s the jist of the text that lights up my phone before my first sip of coffee. No names. No details. Just a number, a disaster in progress, and my lawyer’s less than tactful assessment of the situation. I got the remaining earful after I called him.

You mean to tell me you thought it would be a good idea to host a party bundle for the university? You four—after you were expelled from the same university and it was only through some very creative legal maneuvering and a good deal of your daddies’ money that you managed to stay out of jail? In what fucking world does this make sense?

I know the rest before I make it to the office. Cops are stomping through the resort like they own the place, grilling staff who don’t deserve it and who are already terrified Storm is coming after them. They’re sniffing for an easy scapegoat to slap cuffson, and honestly, it’s hard to blame them when I have a steady stream of corpses leaving my hotel.

Worse, we still have no idea where the drugs are coming from, or who is in our systems deleting CCTV footage. Or trying to kidnap our fucking staff after drugging them.

I can’t decide which is more obnoxious—the police thinking they can harass my staff and get away with it, or the fact that I still don’t have the supply line nailed down. Both are a testament to how wholly I’m failing.

My entire world has fallen into chaos because I can’t stop thinking about the one girl who has fucked everything up so goddamn much.

I want to get rid of her, but I can’t. She’s my favorite addiction.

Someone’s working hard to build a drug kingdom on the back of my resort, and every day they get away with it makes me look more like I don’t know how to run my own empire.

I shove open the door to my father’s office and feel the air shift in my chest.

This office is mine now. It has been for weeks, ever since he left. But it still smells faintly of his cologne and old bourbon. The wood-paneled walls, the heavy desk, the floor-to-ceiling shelves—everything about it screamshisspace. Even stripped of his things, it remembershim.

My father.

Now more than ever, it feels like I’m trying to fill a space, an expectation that’s simply too big for me. Like I was made to fill my father’s shoes, but they don’t fucking fit.