Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)(49)

Eight more days.

He now had two thousand, three hundred volts toward his ten thousand. The only others he could count on were the five hundred volts from the Irons’ collections this week. Everything else, he’d have to earn at the gambling table. Or beg out of Vianca.

Or help Enne find Lourdes and claim his payout.

He was pondering the address Dice had given him the night before when he heard a knock on the door. Levi shoved the napkin in his pocket and rose to answer it.

Enne waited in the hallway. She was dressed in her regular clothes, but her face was flushed—likely from rehearsal, Levi realized. He narrowed his eyes. She’d been nearly as drunk as him last night, but looking at her now, you’d never know it.

“Where’s your hangover?” he asked as she marched past him. “That’s unnatural.”

“I drank water when I got home, like my guidebook suggested.” She inspected him, her lips pursed. “You look terrible.”

“Exactly what kind of guidebook is that, anyway?”

She pulled it out from her purse and examined the back cover. “I don’t know. I bought it in Bellamy.”

“Why do you have it with you now?”

“It has a map.”

“I know where we’re going.”

She tapped him on the forehead with the book. He winced from his headache and swatted her away. “You couldn’t tell which way was up or down last night.”

He grabbed his jacket and hat, feeling sour. “We’ll get mugged walking around with a map. That tourist nonsense is an affront to everything I stand for.”

“What do you stand for? Bravado?”

“Obviously.”

They stepped into the hallway, and while Levi paused to lock the door behind them, an older man walked past. He wasn’t a hotel guest—they didn’t stay in this wing. The only people who lived up here were Vianca’s associates, and Levi recognized this man. He belonged to one of Vianca’s Apothecary families, the ones who brewed the drugs she distributed in the city. They were treated like royalty, both in St. Morse and throughout New Reynes. The man even walked like a king, his head high, his Gershton designer suit freshly pressed, his presence impressively regal. Apothecaries disgusted Levi, who couldn’t help but remember Jac during his bad days.

Enne started walking behind the man toward the elevator, but Levi held her back.

“We don’t ride with him,” he said in a low voice. “St. Morse policy.”

“Is he Vianca’s husband?”

Levi snorted. “Vianca’s husband has been dead for over a decade. That’s just one of her friends.”

“How can the Augustines be a crime Family if there’s just Vianca?”

“There used to be more. Now there’s just Vianca and her son, Harrison. I heard he despises her and lives somewhere across the world.” Levi shrugged. “I figure he’s the only sane one in the tree.”

After the Apothecary disappeared into the elevator, Levi and Enne made their way down the hallway. They waited several extra moments before ringing the bell.

Levi took a deep breath and stared at the emerald green wallpaper; the color always reminded him unpleasantly of Vianca’s aura. Wherever he went within St. Morse, within the place he lived, he felt locked within her cage. She was everywhere he looked.

Every night, he wore her suit, played her games, did her dirty work. He slept in a grand suite on the top floor reserved for her closest friends and associates, on silk sheets in a royal-sized bed. But he was not her prince, not her friend; he was her dog.

And every night he spent trapped in her empire, he dreamed of building empires of his own.

He took a deep breath and tried to turn his thoughts around. Tried to convince himself that Lourdes Alfero would be waiting for them, alive and well, wherever this address was. He wanted that so badly he could feel it like an ache inside his chest. He needed it to be true.

Eight more days.

His desperation unsettled him. He wasn’t the sort of person to seek out addresses drunkenly written on napkins, to abandon all of his logic when faced with a difficult situation. To watch helplessly as his gang crumbled. To be caught within the clutches of a delusional old woman.

The ache he felt wasn’t just from the desperation to survive, but for his second chance—to be the man he was supposed to be.

The elevator opened for them, and they stepped inside. Enne wore a worried expression that matched his own, fiddling with her Mizer coin.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“I’m bracing myself for disappointment,” she said matter-of-factly. In just a matter of days, Levi had come to understand that this was how she spoke when her only other option was breaking down. Her expert poker face showed nothing, but to Levi, it showed everything.

He considered reaching out for her hand—there was little else he could provide as comfort—but then the elevator doors opened. Enne pocketed her coin and strode out in front of him.

Outside, the sun was setting, and Tropps Street was only just beginning to stir. The lights glowed but did not flash. The air smelled of beckoning restaurants and that ever-present eau de piss. Levi looked to Enne, as he usually enjoyed the disgust or discomfort often apparent on her face, but instead, she appeared pensive.

“Where did you get this address?” she asked.