Prologue
Richard Peters
Underneath the neon, multi-colored lights of the Las Vegas Strip, just to the west of the Stratosphere’s highest point, I headed to a spot visible only by a red door behind some metal grating.
To the outsider, just on the edge of Vegas’ Chinatown, this place looked like an abandoned business, almost like something that had been condemned. To the outsider, this was just another reminder that whatever did not glitter in Las Vegas did not merit their attention. To the outsider, this was just another place that proved anyone who lived in Las Vegas must be crazy.
It’s too bad that they had no idea what they were missing out on.
I drove my Harley over the rising bridge of Sahara Avenue, passing by the Stratosphere, Circus Circus, and a whole host of places that I rarely visited but always enjoyed having as my neighbors—it made it easier for people to spend money. And the more money they spent, the greater The Red Door could become.
I pulled behind the building, put my kickstand down, and removed my helmet. I took a deep breath as I looked around me. Over there was a Jeep that looked abandoned but had the security to protect us if need be; behind me was a member of my motorcycle club taking a puff of his cigarette, as if on break, but in reality keeping an eye out on the area; and then, just inside the metal grating, invisible to a passer-by but visible to anyone who walked up, was our doorman, Walker.
“Boss,” he said as he opened the door.
“Walker,” I said, nodding. “Did everyone on the guest list show up tonight?”
Walker took a quick glance at the list. He already knew the answer, but he was a man who had a keen eye to detail and believed in double- checking everything that he did. It made him a stellar doorman, especially given the value of this place.
“One did not,” he said.
“Ahh, twenty-three is a good crowd,” I said. “Especially on a Sunday night; they know this is the night to watch the girls and have some
good drinks. The rest of the world is resting; this is their chance to relax.” “Indeed, boss.”
I smiled, patted Walker on the shoulder, and stepped inside. I went through the waiting room where Walker would typically explain the rules of The Red Door, brushed aside the curtain, and took a second to scan the room.
The place was small, almost tiny, but that was by design. The women who performed on stage for the burlesque show needed to be close to the audience, but not so close that they gave lap dances; this was a show, not a strip club. There were enough places in Las Vegas that they could get some titties in their face if they wanted to.
The appeal of this place, really, was the privacy it promised, the high-end luxuries, the incredible alcohol, and the chance to network in here. It was not uncommon to run into a Fortune 500 CEO, a professional athlete, a movie star, a social media model, and the son or daughter of a foreign politician at any time. The only rules we had were no photography, no public postings about our place, and a promise to respect the women.
It was the realization of a dream come true: a dream I’d had since I was a just a nineteen-year-old with ambitions to prove to my oldest brother that I could do better than he ever could.
It’s just too bad he’s not alive anymore to see this. I wonder what he’d say if he saw this. I know what I’d tell him.
“Told ya so.”
A couple of our clients, one the CFO of a major bank, the other a high-ranking local politician, saw me and nodded. I nodded back to them as I watched one of our girls, Zoe, finished her routine. There wasn’t anything less than perfection on this stage; we didn’t hire anyone who didn’t have at least a decade of experience, and we evaluated their performance every three months. We held them to very high standards, but we also compensated them very well.
I went to the bartender and waved down the gal working the bar tonight: Katerina.
“Richard,” she said, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Hello, beautiful,” I said, my customary greeting for all of the girls
in the club.
It wasn’t sexual; I had a strict rule against sleeping with club employees. Unfortunately, not all of the officers got that rule, but I wished
they did. The two nights a week—Tuesdays and Wednesdays—that we used the space for ourselves and invited various Vegas girls over for much more debaucherous parties should have satisfied the sexual urges of even the horniest and driven of men.
“Is everyone behaving tonight?”
“Always,” she said, her thick Romanian accent coming through. “Ken has whistled a couple of times, but he has not said anything.”
“As he is bound to do,” I said with a chuckle. “You keep up the good work, OK? I’ll be in the back. Buzz if anything is needed.”
“Will do,” she said with a gentle smile.
I patted the top of the bar, laying a twenty out for her—a sort of impromptu bonus—and went behind a curtain. I punched in the code to the bulletproof door, opened it, and shut it behind me after only taking one step in.
And there, finally, after a day of relaxing, I found myself in the room that The Red Door enabled to exist; or, perhaps it was better said, the room that enabled The Red Door to exist.
The room where the officers of my motorcycle club, the Savage Saints, met, played poker, and otherwise hung out.
I had gotten the name from my older brother, Paul, who founded his own club in some small, podunk town just outside Los Angeles. Paul and I, though, didn’t speak for the last decade of his life; we had never gotten along that well, and I was constantly battling him and his arrogance. He reached out to me a couple of times in that last decade, saying that seeing his daughter, Jane, grow up had softened him, but I had no interest in reuniting with him.
Maybe, in some of my darker moments, I could have said that having the same name as my brother’s club was a sign that I secretly admired him; maybe my constant drive to prove that I was the smarter, more accomplished Peters was actually my way of trying to live up to his standard and earn his approval. But I hadn’t gone to his funeral, and I barely spent any time looking at the invite for Jane’s wedding before throwing it in the trash.
It only sounded harsh because most families were close. It wasn’t harsh to me. I was my own man, and I was tired of living in Paul’s shadow.
There was no better example of this than the Savage Saints. Paul, by all accounts, had started the club as a means of creating brotherhood and a
chance for men to be men. The only problem was that he had taken on too much of a cheapass mentality to that. He and his boys drank shitty beer, shitty liquor, and lived in shitty squalor.
I never wanted that. I wanted the good things in life—the Ace of Spades champagne, the craft beer, the luxurious cocktails, the women that seemed to exist in a different part of society. And so I created my own Savage Saints, almost as a way to prove I could do better.
And what could I say? Here I was, in a club with just four other officers, a dozen members, but all the luxuries and glories a club could offer. I didn’t trust many people, and the more officers I had, the harder it was to keep track of everyone’s loyalties.
I sat at the head of our table, which doubled as a poker table, and looked at the five small, studio-style bedrooms that connected to this room: an easy way to ensure everyone had their own space if they wanted to entertain a lady or just crash for the night. The only two doors that were closed were mine and Tanya “Mama” Reed’s. I figured she was taking a nap or doing something to quell her usually hardened nerves.
There was also my vice president, Dominick “Dom” Browning. I swore I had never met anyone who so actively took on the persona of a charmer and a player. It was one thing to be cocky and think you could sleep with anyone; it was another to wear such a grin at all times. I had no idea how Dom could feel so loose and chill all the time, but he had a remarkable ability to network with some amazingly high-profile people. Dom was largely the best at getting people to pay for a spot on our guest list and for hauling in women on Tuesdays and Wednesdays; and his contributions for the club more than made up for the fact that I sometimes wanted to smack him around for being such a gleeful smartass.
There was my sergeant-in-arms, Brett “Barber” Pierce. Barber’s nickname was literal, in that he cut our hair and had us looking somewhat professional and trim when clients came in. But his nickname also came because he was mean with a knife in combat. Barber had fought in the UFC for a long time before he joined us. Though I wouldn’t call his personality uptight, he definitely wasn’t as loose as Dom—though it was hard to think of anyone else who could match Dom.
My secretary was Joseph “Pork” Young. He was a man who loved to eat—and I mean, I don’t think I ever saw him without food—yet somehow maintained a good figure. He tended to resort to jokes that probably
sounded funny in his head but just wound up making no damn sense. It wasn’t even like he used them in emotional or tough situations; he just liked to go with the lines that he knew and deliver them to us. Like worse than bad dad jokes.
But he was damn good with guns, and I wasn’t about to let someone that skilled get away. The only concern I had was the woman he had a crush on, which was…
“Well, look whose pretty face decided to show up finally!”
Mama. The most tenured member of the club, and a wonderful lady who didn’t have an ounce of softness in her body. It made me love her all the more for it.
While some might have objected to having a woman in a leadership position like this, I had no qualms about it. It was a little weird at first, but there were definite business advantages to be had; Mama was not afraid to use her body, which was damn sexy, to the club’s advantage. The only rule she had was that she never fell in love, and she especially didn’t fall in liking for other club members. She’d call us “babe” or “handsome” or “sweetie,” but it was clear to everyone involved that she was never going to open up an ounce of her hardened soul.
“Yeah, yeah, you say it like I’ve been gone all day,” I said, rising to greet Mama with a kiss on the cheek. “How are you? How are the girls?”
“Same old, same old,” she said. “Had Tatiana come complaining to me about pay. I warned her to stop, but she didn’t, so I had to fire her ass.”
“Damn, no mercy, huh?”
It was nice when someone else acted as the bad cop for our “HR department.”
“Oh please, you know I take care of those girls like they’re my daughters,” she said, which was absolutely true. “I never liked the bitch anyway, though. Too whiny and felt she was too good. Oh, I am having to keep Barber off of their asses. Can you throw him some pussy from the Spearmint so he stops hounding our girls?”
“You think I haven’t tried that?” I said with a laugh. “His heart is set on one of those girls. You know how Barber is. He’s been in love since day one.”
“He’s been in love with the idea of one of those girls since day one,” Mama corrected. “You know how it is.”
I smiled as Mama broke out a lighter to take a puff of her cigarette. For some reason, that image reminded me of one of the earliest memories of running the Savage Saints—Mama and I were like kindred spirits, me having left my family at eighteen to come to Las Vegas, her having been a runaway at just seventeen. We never had sex, but we bonded so hard and so well over our mutual backgrounds and attitudes on life that many people assumed we were shacked up.
In the particular moment in question, Mama and I were both smoking cigarettes around her kitchen table—which was probably the remains of some infant’s plastic table—discussing ideas to get the club up and running. It was Mama’s idea to turn an apparent weakness—a dinky, shitty building—into a strength—make it look weak on the outside, but have it be the pinnacle of privacy and luxury on the inside. I may have called myself the president and Mama may have only been the treasurer, but I owed that woman more than I could ever repay her. She was the person who was set to receive my wealth if I died without family.
“We’ve come a long way since the old days, huh?” I said with a
smirk.
“Yeah, you stopped wearing gym shorts every day,” she said without
breaking into laughter.
“Yeah, yeah. But for real. I just wish my brother was alive to see this. Fucker would be jealous as hell.”
Mama was usually good for a reply that was drier than the city of Las Vegas, but this time, she just strangely smirked at me for a few moments as she gently puffed her cigarette.
“Ya know, someday, you can just enjoy the club and not give a shit what your dead brother thinks.”
Always good for being honest and on point, huh.
“All this talk about beating your brother, meanwhile he’s probably down in hell banging his baby’s momma and laughing about it. Least you’re not stupid enough to get married.”
I chuckled. But… that wasn’t really how I felt. Maybe someday, it would be nice to get married, or at least have kids. Maybe someday, I really could move on from my brother’s memory.
But for how often I got compared to him? For how often I had to live in his shadow? For how much he got talked about and praised?
No, no way. I wasn’t giving up that fight until I was dead.
“For now,” I said.
“You get married, Richard, and I’m gonna knock you upside the head so fast you’ll—”
My phone buzzed. Mama continued on her rant while I checked to see who was calling. Barber? That’s odd. Ignoring Mama as she talked— she never really stopped talking when she got on a rant, and she didn’t mind in the slightest if we talked on the phone instead—I answered.
“Hey.”
“Richard, we got a problem,” he said.
Ah, shit. Just how I like my Sunday nights to go. With news that I’m going to have to work this week.
“A friend of ours from the Wynn is dead,” he said. “And it’s got the markings of a Degenerate Sinners murder.”
* * *
Natasha Sokolov
Opulence by opulence’s standards surrounded me.
My family was hosting numerous business executives and Nevada politicians to celebrate their first year of living in the United States. We had moved here from Russia after my father had made some serious investments in the casinos in the area, the first step in his plan to be the richest man in Nevada. As their only daughter, though I was twenty-six and could have gone anywhere else, I wanted to work with them and help the Sokolov family grow in prosperity and wealth.
In all, it was a great set up. I had a job that I enjoyed, even if it was with family, and I got to spend time with my father and mother. I got to live in a city full of great nightlife and many things to do for the rich, and I had easy access to other cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.
There was just one problem.
My parents kept trying to get me to marry for business or political purposes, and it was driving me goddamn insane.
Every party that we had, my father would have me shake the hand of some man near my age or even a little bit older, all in the idea that once I met them, I would marry in, and suddenly, a house worth a few billion dollars would be worth even more. At worst, I’d marry the son of a
politician or an actual politician, allowing my family to do whatever they wanted in the state of Nevada.
It was just so stultifying and boring, though. I’d been given everything I’d ever wanted in my life, and I was tired of it. I wanted to experience the freedom and the rush of doing something that felt almost inappropriate. I wanted to chase the bad boy; I wanted to do the thing that would make my father or mother gasp. I got to do that a little bit in college, but unfortunately, Harvard wasn’t exactly known as a party school.
Now, though, living in Las Vegas was like dangling the world’s greatest pizza slice in front of a fat kid and telling them they had to eat broccoli. It was wicked and ridiculous. And yet, for all that my parents provided me, I just couldn’t find the time or the desire to break free.
If I did—and I was going to eventually—I was going to have to find a time and a spot where I could act with the utmost subtlety, far away from the lights of the Las Vegas Strip.
Right now, I was having to put on a pretty face and amicable conversation for what I believed was the nephew of the mayor of Las Vegas. Oscar? Honestly, I didn’t bother to commit it to memory. There was another problem with this—most boys who had the kind of upbringing my father wanted weren’t exactly the most civilized of men.
“And so yes, I do plan on becoming president one day,” maybe- Oscar said. “What would you say, Natasha? A woman as beautiful as yourself must surely think that the chance to be the First Lady would be a delight. And I know that accent of yours would draw plenty of coverage.”
“Really?” I said. “Sounds to me like a bunch of attention that would be horrible. You see how coverage is of the First Lady right now? It’s like she can do no right. I think I’m good being away from that lifestyle.”
I expected Oscar to get the hint, especially with that last line, but instead, he seemed even more interested after what I had said.
“Oh, but that just means a woman such as yourself could have the chance to redefine what that lifestyle means,” he said with a smirk.
A woman such as yourself. I’ll choose to believe that’s a compliment, although I’ve heard it the other way quite a bit.
“Uh huh,” I said. “Tell me, Oscar, what do you do besides think about politics?”
“What?” he said.
At least I think I got his name right.
“Besides politics? What else is there to do besides politics?”
Oh, Lord. He’s one of those types. Can’t think outside his box.
“Have you looked out a window recently?” I said, keeping a smile so he wouldn’t feel offended—there was some decorum I had to observe if I wanted to avoid getting in trouble. “There’s a whole world out there.”
“A whole world waiting for a good and just ruler like myself.” I had to turn away so I could cough and roll my eyes.
“That’s adorable,” I said. “Listen, Oscar, you—”
But over his shoulder, I saw my mother coming to me quickly. She had a nervous expression on her face, a look that she usually didn’t get it. Mom was too concerned with how she looked in public to ever allow the outside world to believe she could get nervous; it was source of contention between us.
Which made this all the more troubling.
“Natasha, baby, we need you to come with us,” she said. “Something has happened to Uncle Vladimir.”
I knew this was a terrible, terrible thing to think, especially since I was pretty sure that the “something” wasn’t that Uncle Vlad had gotten his arm broken. But after the initial fear sunk in, I mostly just felt relieved to be leaving Oscar.
What did it say about my life when tragedy was preferable to having yet another doldrum, ho-hum conversation?
