Her Dirty Mafia (Men at Work #7) - Mika Lane Page 0,1

get away from a creep boyfriend, who’d found me here anyway. Or that I should have just stayed in my shitty small town because what was the point in running away if what you’re running away from just follows you?

I smiled brightly. “I wanted something new. A fresh start.”

Now I was a cliché.

And naturally, he looked at me like I was full of shit. But he was polite enough to cover it. “Yes. I can relate. Sometimes you just need… a new point of view.”

We were connecting. Cool.

The interview, such as it was, continued like that—vague questions from him and vague answers from me—until he’d wrapped things up by telling me I had the job.

I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t even know what the job was. But a job was a job, and I needed one. Badly.

He knew nothing about my employment history. Didn’t seem to care. Which was a good thing. If he had, he’d never have hired me.

That’s how it goes when you have a police record.

Yup, I had a police record.

I’d stolen from my previous employer, a hardware store owned by the family I’d grown up next door to.

We’d been neighbors and friends. Until I stole from them.

Len had needed a seventy-dollar drill to fix the front steps of the house my sister and I had inherited from our aunt. Naturally, we didn’t have seventy extra dollars for it. But Len had a solution. Just bring one home.

Take it. Nothing will happen.

Um, yeah. Thanks.

I felt like shit stealing from some of the nicest people I’d ever known and even as I stuffed it into my backpack, I vowed to find a way to pay them back. It was a terrible thing I did, but I told myself it was really just a loan against future paychecks.

I might even bring it back when we were done with it.

I made my move at closing time. There were no cameras or other security in the back of the store. I thought I was in the clear. But as luck would have it, I got just outside the door when the manager and his son grabbed me and pulled me back inside. They not only fired my ass, but they also called the police.

Our steps never got fixed.

But mister good-looking behind his big, Las Vegas desk didn’t seem to give a crap about what I may or may not have done that day. Or any other day of my life. Thank god.

The shame of stealing from was overwhelming, and I can guess the owners didn’t feel too great about the way I’d betrayed them. They’d given me an opportunity that I’d thrown back in their faces.

A week later, when they’d dropped the charges, I bought a bus ticket to Vegas. I got a ride to the station while Len was out of the house and called my sister, who was off at college.

I didn’t need a boyfriend who sat around the house and asked me to steal shit he couldn’t afford.

But that wasn’t the end of my dumb mistakes.

I’d told a girlfriend where I’d landed in Vegas. Len followed me by a few days, having driven his old Toyota.

He told me he had plans. He was going to make it big, playing poker.

He played a lot with his buddies and among them, he was usually the winner.

But a small town poker player does not a Vegas winner make. He borrowed against his credit card for the cash to get started.

And lost it just as fast.

2

ANNABEL “BEL” SIMMONS

When I’d arrived in Vegas and was directed to one of the cheaper motels in town—I didn’t opt for absolute cheapest because who the hell knew what kind of people a place like that attracted?—I met a nice woman working the front desk.

“Where you from?” she’d asked, handing me my room key.

“West Virginia.”

“Oh, wow. Clear across the country. Welcome to Las Vegas. I’m Kate.” She extended her hand.

She was a big woman, tall and beefy. Long blonde hair fell down her back in a skinny braid, which kept falling forward over her shoulder as she bent to gather things for me—an entry card to the breakfast room, some paper brochures on Vegas helicopter rides, and a key to the swimming pool out front.

“It’s just you, right? You’re alone?” she asked, looking past me.

I followed her gaze out the lobby doors and into the parking lot filled with beat-up vehicles. I didn’t see anybody. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll be the only one in the