Nothing is going to be the same anymore. We were both watching the people below from the VIP section when suddenly she walked into our lives.
It was as if an all-powerful force suddenly gripped our souls and clenched them until we couldn’t breathe. We looked at each other and we both knew the other was feeling the same thing.
This was the girl we’ve been looking for. This was the girl who was going to be ours.
My father split while my mother was still pregnant with me and I’ve never met the bastard. I didn’t have the easiest childhood. My mother’s head wasn’t screwed on right and by the time I was eight-years-old, they had carted her off for good. She took her life a few years later and by that time, I had been cycled through over a dozen foster homes. Each one seemed to be worse than the last.
Somewhere in there, I met Jack. His parents were even more fucked up than mine and he was in and out of the system too. After living together through a year of hell in one of the foster homes, we became inseparable. We became each other’s family. The brother we always wanted, but never had. No one loved us, but it was okay because we loved each other.
We were fourteen when we decided to slip out of the system and make it on our own. At first, we began to do petty thefts to survive. Wallets, watches, food, shit like that. By sixteen we had moved onto cars. We had stolen four before the cops busted us.
Two years in juvie and we realized we needed to change our way of life. We needed something legit and we needed something with the potential for big money.
We worked our asses off as dishwashers in restaurants, delivering newspapers, busing tables—you name a shitty job and we did it. We saved up every last penny until we had enough for a downpayment on a shitty rundown duplex that we fixed up ourselves and rented out. That was the beginning of our empire and since then we’ve turned it into a portfolio of one point two billion in real estate holdings.
And now we’re about to lose it all over a girl.
“You’re going to kill him!” I say as I wrench Jack’s flexed arm away. He reluctantly lets go of the giant security guard and the big guy falls to the floor, holding his neck and gasping for air.
Jack storms off and paces around the room like a feral animal. His body is tight, his fists are clenched, and he’s cursing under his breath.
The guard looks up at me and I narrow my eyes on him. “Out.”
He gets to his feet and I grab his big arm before he flies out the door. “The next time we tell you to keep a door locked, you keep it locked.”
He nods with a terrified look on his face. I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple of hundred dollar bills. When Jack isn’t looking, I stuff them into the inside pocket of the guard’s jacket and let him go. That should keep him quiet.
We don’t need the hotel giving us trouble for assaulting one of their employees or the cops dragging us down to the station to answer questions. We need all of our focus on finding this girl.
Our girl.
Our entire lives, Jack and I shared everything. What was mine was his and what was his was mine. Always.
When you’ve only ever had one person to love and rely on your entire life, you get an unshakeable bond. We call each other brother, but we’re closer than brothers.
Our bond is too tight to be broken up by women. Getting married and going our separate ways is not for us. We’ve never been like everyone else and we don’t expect anyone to understand, but that’s the way we’ve always wanted it. It’s the way we knew it was meant to be.
One girl for the two of us and when we saw Mila help that old man down that bridge, we knew who it was going to be.
Jack is still pacing around, getting increasingly agitated. If I don’t do something soon, he’s going to bust the place up. I pull out my phone and look for a contact.
“What are we going to do now?” he hisses. “We lost her!”
“We’ll find her,” I promise. I’m speaking to him like I’m completely confident, but my heart is pounding and my palm is leaving streaks of sweat on the phone screen.
I find my contact at the credit card company and call him up. Hopefully, Mila used a card to check in. If she used cash, I don’t know what we’re going to do. Probably kick down every door in Vegas until we find her.
“Wayne,” I bark when he answers. “I need you to run a name. Mila Price.”
* * *
It’s nearly two hours later when we’re in front of Mila’s motel room. If you can call it that.
This place is a real shithole and it’s making my hands clench to think that our beautiful girl is in a disgusting place like this. She only deserves the best, and once we get our hands on her again, she’ll get it for the rest of her life.
I can tell that Jack is thinking the same thing. His face is all pale and sweaty as he looks around. We know the type of no-good lowlives that hang around in places like this. We grew up amongst them and it kills us to think that Mila is anywhere near them.
“I don’t like this,” he growls as a guy in a hoodie walks across the parking lot.
“I don’t like it either, but we can’t come on too strong with this girl. You saw how frightened she was back there. We scared her off.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t just take her and bring her with us. We both know it’s going to be the best for her in the end. She’ll see it soon enough.”
“I know, but fuck, Jack. We don’t live in caves here. There’s such a thing called civilization and prisons. We can’t just take women against their will. Unfortunately, we’re not cavemen.”
I put a hand on his chest to try and calm him. His heart is hammering against my palm. There’s no calming him. There’s no calming me either, but I know I have to be strong for both of them. For Mila and for Jack if this is going to work.
“Let me just talk to her,” I say as I step up to the door.
“Fine,” he mutters. “But if she doesn’t come, I’m doing it my way.”
I take a deep breath and knock on the door. There’s no answer.
The poor little mouse is probably terrified in there.
“It’s us,” I say to her. “Open the door. Everything is going to be okay.”
We both have our ears to the cheap pressed wood and we can hear the soft pitter-patter of her feet approaching. She still doesn’t say a word.
“You’re coming with us!” Jack shouts.
I shake my head as I turn to him with a what-the-fuck look. I know he means well. It’s unsafe here and all he wants is to get her where we can protect her and give her everything she desires, but it’s coming out all wrong. Jack has always been better at communicating with his fists rather than his words.
“We have a nice penthouse suite at the Khan hotel,” I quickly add before she escapes through the back window. “We’d like you to stay with us. You can have your own bed.”
“Like hell she can,” Jack mutters. I punch his arm hard as I give him a fierce warning look.
“Shut the fuck up,” I hiss at him.
“I don’t know what you have planned,” she finally says in a scared little voice. “But I’m not interested in that.”
“Interested in what?” I ask.
She hesitates. “Two guys. At the same… time.”
We both know that she might be saying that now, but once she sees how well we’ll treat her, she won’t ever think that again. She belongs between us and we won’t quit until that’s where she is.
And we both know that deep down she wants it even if she refuses to admit it. We saw how she was staring at our hard cocks with those hungry green eyes. Her sexy lips parted and her skin flushed. We could practically feel the lust and desire radiating off her.
“You can’t stay here,” I tell her. “It’s not safe.”
“I’m not opening the door.”
Jack doesn’t like that and he immediately starts pacing angrily.
I quickly pull out my phone to try another approach. I dial up our accountant. It’s the middle of the night, but he’ll still answer. We’ve made this man enough money that he’ll always answer.
“Hello?”
“Mitch. It’s Jax. I need you to buy a motel. Right now. It doesn’t matter the price.”
“What’s the name?”
“The Sunken Gambler Motel.” I give him the address and he hangs up. A long ten minutes later, he calls back and tells me that it’s ours. He looked up the owner, called him up, offered him five times the value, and wired the money over. It belongs to us now.
I step back up to the door and pound my fist on it.
“Go away!” Mila shouts from the other side.
“We’re kicking you out of the room.”
Jack grins as he listens.
“You can’t do that. I paid for it!”
“This is our motel now. We own it. You’re on our property and we want you out.”
“But I have nowhere to go.”
“Yes, you do.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“If you don’t exit the motel, my brother Jack here will kick the door down and carry you out.”