"Well, I'm putting it on... looking for a job," my uncle said, throwing a fifty in the center of the table as we all stood back and watched the whole thing play out like a fucking reality show.
She moved forward, looked around, moved further into the room, looked around some more. Her arm was snagged as she passed a table by a high roller from the city who curled her young body into his side and held up dice to her face. And while most women in that situation would have played along, even just to diffuse a situation that didn't need to have a big deal made of it, her little body stiffened and she shoved his chest and wrenched away from him, saying something to the man who had the good sense to shrink away from her with a head shake. With that, she turned back to the room, body even more tense than it had already been.
Then, she spotted what she was after.
You could tell the second her eyes found what they were searching for. Her shoulders relaxed. Her eyes closed. She exhaled hard. Then she wiggled her shoulders a second and stormed across the room, moving in toward a blackjack table and slipping an arm around a man in middle age with deep brown hair and a smiling face.
Mack.
Everyone knew Mack.
Everyone who crossed paths with him, loved him.
He was actually a good gambler a fair amount of the time.
He just never knew when to quit, unfortunately.
Uncle John loved him for that.
When he lost, he lost big.
And we won huge.
"Told you," the guy declared. "Working girl," he said, jumping up and reaching for the pot.
"Not so fast," I said, shaking my head as I watched the screen. Prudence leaned up, resting her chin on Mack's shoulder as she spoke in his ear. At whatever words she said, Mack's smile faltered a little as his arm slid around her waist and he nodded at her. He reached for the still-abundant pile of chips he had, slipping them into a bag, then letting Prudence lead him away from the tables and out the front doors.
"Oh, fuck off. That was so a working girl!" he objected when my hand slammed down on his as he tried to take the pot again.
"That was Mack's daughter," I countered and I felt my uncle's gaze fall on me.
"How do you know that?"
I turned back to the screen, catching the outside camera where Mack was shuffled toward a old white beat-up sedan, incidentally it was the same fucking car that she had parked in my driveway, then shuffle Mack inside.
I reached for the pile, shuffled the bills together then went into my pocket and threw double the amount into the pot and put it on a shelf. "Give it a week. If she's not back fetching him from the table and dragging his sorry ass home before he gambles away their rent by the end of the month, that's all yours."
Needless to say, he didn't get his money.Prue didn't lie to Aaron.
She'd never gambled in her life.
Because she had spent her entire life trying to get her father to stop.
And I had been there to watch the struggle either from behind the eyes in the skies or on the catwalk over the floor or sometimes even when standing just a couple of feet away.
Prudence had proved herself nothing if not determined. If Mack was at Mandy's, you were sure to see her storming in at some point during the night. Eventually, the boys at the front stopped scanning her, knowing she was a drop-in to drag out Mack and therefore no threat to either security or our bottom line. The older she got, the better she started filling out those black dresses she wore, the less she bothered with the makeup that she knew she didn't need for the errand. Some nights, I'd swear she rolled out of bed and into a dress and dragged herself down to the boardwalk to fetch her father. She'd roll up with puffy eyes and messy hair, grab her dad, then, presumably, fell right back into bed.
So, yeah, over the years, I had noticed her.
It simply worked out that Mack pulled some seriously fucked shit that got him, and therefore Prue, into my house. And it wasn't something as simple as him owing me loaned money. Oh, no. See, when Mack fucked up, like everything else in his life, he did it huge.
"What's with the fucking outfit, By?" Aaron asked as the echo of Prue's heels moved down the hall toward the laundry room.
I raked a hand down my face. Fuck if I knew. "Why are you asking?"
"Just curious. She hates your fucking guts."
"Been quizzing my employees?"
"Let's not bullshit each other. Prudence? Prudence Marlow? Mack's daughter? In your house? We both know she's not a fucking employee. She's more like an obsession. A decade-long one at that. "