Paris Hold'em

Chapter 1: Daycares and Dealings

The rising New Orleans sun was brutal, but it was nothing compared to the heat soaking into my skin, thick as molasses and just as hard to shake.

I leaned back against the rust-bucket Ford pickup Pops left me, the metal baking right through my jeans. From here, parked crooked along a side street where the wrought-iron balconies sagged like tired eyelids, I could see the Leveau Royale.

Through my binoculars, the casino looked all gold trim and ego, glittering under the Quarter's neon leftovers from the night before. Velvet ropes framed the entrance like the ribs of some gilded beast waiting to swallow the next hopeful fool.

I was about five seconds from storming it myself.

What didn't help was my little brother Carter fidgeting beside me. In the last five minutes, he had cleaned his glasses at least three times.

"I told you," I said, not lowering the binoculars. "This is a solo mission."

"You also didn't mention," he muttered, "that said mission involved crossing state lines and possibly felony trespassing."

"What you don't know won't kill you."

"That's... not how that saying works."

I finally dropped the binoculars and glanced at him.

"Bree," he asked quietly, "are you really sure this is where he is?"

"Of course."

"The wire transfer came from a shell company registered to an office in there," I gestured to the casino.

He scanned through Tommy's last text, where he said he was trying to 'make things right.'

"I'm sure he's in there, Carter. And he's way in over his head."

Tommy's our friend, as close as blood, I'd say. But frankly, our bloodline would've known better than to land in a mess like this. He's a nice guy, most of the time, but he has a real bad habit of thinking his charm could outrun his debts.

Back home, charm gets you free pie at the diner. It surely doesn't get you into high-roller poker rooms run by men who treat money like oxygen. Tommy always played like the universe owed him a second chance. Out here, the universe carried a knife.

This time, he'd barreled his way into some guy named Jean-Luc Marchand. A Frenchman with a taste for port, property, and now, apparently, high-stakes poker championships that drew oil heirs and washed-up actors, people with Patek Philippe watches that were as hushed as their demands.

I'd heard Marchand's name in backroom games and cattle auctions in East Texas, always followed by a nervous glance over the shoulder.

"There's a service entrance around the back," I said, finally pushing off the truck.

"See that cameraman on the loading dock? He takes a smoke break every few hours or so. That's our window, you hear me, Carter?"

He swallowed hard but fell in step beside me.

My nose scrunched at the pungent mix of garbage and designer perfume clinging to the dark alley.

The security cameras were unattended, as predicted.
But the metal door was wide open.

"Isn't this a little too easy?" I murmured, holding my hand out to stop him.

They've got a bouncer up at the grand entrance treating fake IDs like war crimes. No one forgets the back door.

This wasn't luck.

"Or Tommy left it open for us," Carter whispered back, ever the optimist. I rolled my eyes.