Page 37 of Forbidden Empire (Sinful Gods #1)

Twenty

A IDON

The overhead lights caught only half their faces, leaving the rest to darkness. The air felt dense enough to choke on. These men, rivals, not friends, sat too close in my private room, the same room where I'd made men beg, where the carpet still held secrets no cleaner could remove.

Rhea's downfall required this unholy alliance, this fragile scaffold of mutual need.

My eyes never stopped moving.

I cataloged every micro-expression, every shift in posture, waiting for the mask to slip. We shared a common enemy in Rhea, each nursing wounds too personal to name aloud, but that didn't make us brothers.

It made us wolves circling the same carcass.

Thalassios Adrias claimed the seat nearest to mine, his gaze slicing through the shadows between us.

The Atlantis Casino stood as his crowning achievement, a temple where the elite came to worship at the altar of chance.

Within those walls of his creation, velvet drapes absorbed whispered confessions while gold fixtures reflected the hollow eyes of those who'd lost everything.

Through perpetual clouds of cigar smoke, the wealthy, the famous, and those with blue blood in their veins all bent to the same primal urges.

Thal hadn't just gambled, he breathed it, inherited it, craved it like a man possessed.

When his father built that first casino in Atlantic City, little Thal had stumbled his first steps across that floor, chips clicking and cards whispering all around him.

His father's approving nod that day might as well have been a blood oath.

The man raised him on hushed lessons between hands, molding him into something with edges that could cut, a mind that calculated odds before most kids learned multiplication, a face no one could read even when he was bleeding inside.

Thal cut through the casino world like a shark through still waters—deliberate, patient, lethal.

His mind calculated odds faster than dealers could shuffle, his face betrayed nothing while others sweated their tells.

In penthouses where champagne flowed and million-dollar bets were placed with casual nods, he moved with the easy confidence of someone born to the rhythm of chips clicking against felt.

The air of belonging clung to him like expensive cologne.

Once he'd conquered dealing, he flipped the script.

He was the one raking in chips while others watched their stacks dwindle. Night after night, he'd rise from tables surrounded by hollow-eyed men who couldn't figure out how he'd gutted them.

The whispers started before he could legally drink, wonder boy, card savant, as he dismantled veterans who'd been playing since before his birth.

By twenty-five, his name alone made players fold. He'd shattered his father's achievements, turned legends into footnotes, and collected fortunes with casual indifference.

Then came his father's slow-motion collapse, bad debts, desperate deals, and dangerous associations. The day they found the old man in the trunk of a car with broken fingers and a bullet hole, Thal built walls around himself that no one would ever scale again.

He’d already pocketed a small fortune when he bolted from the East Coast, drawn west by the promise of neon on the Las Vegas strip.

Vegas swallowed him whole. Here, at last, he could shake off the heavy weight of his father’s broken legacy, carve out something of his own.

He slipped right in among those who mattered, the men and women who truly ran the city, and he did it with the same sharp instincts and fast-talking charm his father had drilled into him, only now he was the one holding the cards.

It didn’t take long. He hustled, he gambled, he won.

Soon enough, he had the capital he needed, and with it, his first casino: The Atlantis.

The whiskey bottle emptied between us that night, glass by glass, as Thal unraveled his past like a deck of cards while we sketched plans to dismantle the new real estate hotshot.

Three years back now. Some New York developer who'd strutted down the Strip signing checks with a flourish, thinking Las Vegas would spread her legs for anyone with deep enough pockets.

In Vegas, a fat wallet isn't a skeleton key. I've watched men worth millions stand outside velvet ropes, desperate eyes darting for someone, anyone, who might recognize them.

Meanwhile, guys with empty pockets but the right handshake glide past security without breaking stride.

Cash was vapor here.

It materializes in stacks on felt tables, disappears into cocktail waitress tips, and reappears in jackpot sirens.

We all participated in the charade, pretending those green rectangles mattered, when they were just paper totems in our collective hallucination.

The developer never understood this particular mirage.

Trust was our currency, more valuable than the chips that changed hands across felt tables.

When I called Thal at three in the morning, he answered. When Zeno needed someone silenced, I made it happen without question. We traded favors like breaths, held each other's darkest moments in closed fists. Vegas ran on this invisible ledger of who owed what to whom.

The tourists never understood this.

They flooded our casinos in their polyester shirts and flip-flops, wallets fat with cash they thought mattered.

We let them believe their money bought them status.

They remained outsiders, temporary amusements who'd be gone by Monday.

Our inner circle had no vacancy sign. No application process.

Over decades, we'd drawn the lines tighter around ourselves until power concentrated in just a few hands.

And tonight, those hands were all clasped around whiskey glasses in my private room.

Thal occupied the leather armchair to my left, while Zeno claimed the one beside him, bringing a thundercloud into my office with every breath.

For twenty minutes, he'd hammered me with questions about his half-sister.

"Where's Esme hiding?" and "What the fuck did you do to her?"

Each one deflected with practiced indifference.

I'd sooner walk barefoot through hellfire than position myself between blood relatives with unfinished business.

Zeno's reflection glared back from the polished tabletop.

Shoulders bunched beneath his tailored jacket, jaw muscles working like he was grinding glass between his teeth.

His fingers curled into bloodless fists against the armrests, trembling with barely contained violence.

Ares maintained his post at my right flank, eyes constantly scanning, cataloging, assessing, my human security system with a trigger finger.

Four crystal snifters sat untouched between us, amber liquid catching the low light, condensation sliding down expensive glass like nervous sweat.

Thal's fingers drummed a silent rhythm on the armrest. Zeno's jaw twitched. I caught myself holding my breath.

The air between us felt charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. We watched each other's hands, tracked each subtle shift in posture, listened for the slightest change in breathing. Three predators sharing the same cage.

We carried matching bullet scars, different locations, same caliber.

Had pulled each other from burning buildings and wiped blood off marble floors together. Our truce was written in scar tissue, not paper.

Zeno still wouldn't drink anything I poured him. Thal kept his back to the wall whenever we met.

I never sat without a clear path to the door. And here we were, because our empires had grown so entangled that cutting one free would collapse them all.

Vegas had forced our hands together, fingers interlaced but palms never quite touching. This meeting wasn't about friendship. It was survival, ugly, necessary, and inevitable.

The blueprints of Rhea's compound lay spread across the table between us, each hallway and exit point marked in red.

Three kings of Las Vegas, leaning over the same map like generals plotting an invasion. I held nothing back, every detail, every weakness I'd discovered.

Not out of loyalty. Not out of friendship. In our world, information was currency, and I was investing. They'd do the same if Rhea had targeted me first.

I jabbed at the blueprint, my fingertip leaving a sweaty print on Rhea's compound perimeter.

"Divided, we're dead men. Simple math." The whiskey burned in my throat as I swallowed.

"She's holed up near Blue Diamond for now, but Rhea never stays put.

Always three steps ahead, always watching us scramble.

" I dragged my finger across each entry point marked with crimson X's.

"Guards at every door, every window, every goddamn air duct.

You try going in alone?" I locked eyes with each man around the table.

"They'll mail pieces of you back to Vegas for weeks. "

Thal sank deeper into his leather chair, face carved from stone. "We approach this strategically.”

I nearly laughed. Fucking obvious. I bit my tongue, but Zeno had no such restraint.

"Strategy?" Zeno's fist crashed onto the table, rattling the whiskey glasses. "I want her bleeding out at my feet."

Each word escaped through clenched teeth, something feral lurking behind his eyes, something that had tasted blood before and wanted more.

My molars ground together as heat crawled up my neck. These peacocking bastards would get us all killed with their dick-measuring.

"Both," I sliced through their bullshit. "We move smart, we move lethal. One shot, clean execution. Rhea disappears, and everything she built?" I spread my hands. "Becomes ours for the taking."

Zeno's shoulder rolled in a dismissive shrug while Thal lifted his whiskey to his lips, sipping with calculated slowness, eyes narrowed to slits.

The silence stretched taut between us. When I caught Ares's gaze, I recognized the readiness in his posture, the slight forward lean, the hand positioned inches from his holster.

His eyes flicked between the other two men, assessing threats, but I felt no concern. These men might fantasize about putting bullets in me, but they wouldn't.