He turned to his desk and pressed a button. Two guards appeared at his door.
“Please escort Miss Miller out of the casino,” he said coldly. “Her employment here is done.”
The color drained from her face, leaving her pale beneath her tan. “What?”
“A severance check will be waiting for you at the casino office downstairs. You’ll find I’ve been more generous than you deserve.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“For every minute you argue with me I’ll instruct Margaret to subtract a thousand dollars from your check.”
She sucked in her breath. “Fine!” She turned on her designer heel and stalked out, grabbing her shopping bag just outside the door. She stopped and glared at him.
“It’s not my fault she left, you know. She was having your kid and you still wouldn’t marry her. Pathetic.” She shook the lingerie bag at him. “And now you’ll never see me in this!”
He should have gotten rid of her a long time ago, he mused, his ears still ringing with the noise of the slammed door. It took him a moment to realize he was hearing the phone. Shaking his head, he picked up the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going to like this, boss,” Cooper said.
“What’s wrong?” Nikos’s heart gave a weird thump. “Michael?”
“The baby’s fine. With his nanny. But Anna took off. I didn’t stop her, since she didn’t take the boy. I had her followed, like you said. She took the Maserati.”
Nikos nearly choked on his bourbon. Anna had snuck out? Leaving their son behind? When it was almost dusk? Driving his favorite car?
That was her idea of going under the radar?
“Where did she go?”
“That’s the part you’re not going to like.” Coop paused. “She walked into Victor Sinistyn’s club ten minutes ago.”
“And you waited ten minutes to tell me?” he said tersely.
“Wait, boss. You don’t want to go there alone—I’m getting some of the guys—”
“I can do this alone!”
Nikos slammed down the phone and headed for the door. He went straight to his private garage and jumped on his Ducati motorcycle. Swerving through the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, he headed downtown.
Fremont Street was gritty, for all of its brilliant lights. This was where the hardcore gamblers came to play, far from the lavish themed hotels and the families with cameras and strollers. This was the original Las Vegas, and its hard-edged glamor showed its tarnish like an aging showgirl.
Victor Sinistyn had turned his failed casino concept into a dance club. Outside of Girls Girls Girls there was a long line of lithe, scantily-clad twenty-somethings, waiting to drink and dance.
Nikos leapt off his motorcycle, tossing his keys to a valet. The bouncer recognized Nikos as he strode arrogantly forward, bypassing the line.
“No bodyguards tonight, Mr. Stavrakis?”
“Where’s your boss?” Not waiting for an answer, Nikos pushed past him.
Inside the club, colored lights were pulsing through the darkness to the beat of the music. The place was a cavern, a rebuilt warehouse with an enormous high ceiling, and it shook with the rhythm of the dancing crowd. The air was steamy, hot, redolent of sex and skin.
And then he saw her, wearing a tiny halter top and low-slung jeans that made her look virtually naked.
Dancing with Victor Sinistyn.
The man smiled down at Anna as they danced, running his hands possessively down her bare skin. She gave him a strained smile as she stepped back from him, swaying her body, moving down to her knees before she rose again. She leaned back, arms over her head, and her full breasts strained the fabric, nearly popped out of her flesh-colored top. But apparently Sinistyn wasn’t satisfied with just looking.
Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her bare belly against him and ground his body against hers, nuzzling her neck. Anna didn’t struggle, but Nikos had a glimpse of her pale face. She looked as if she were gasping for air. Why was Anna allowing him to manhandle her?
He saw the Russian’s hands move toward her breasts. With a savage growl, Nikos started to push roughly through the crowd. All he could think was that if Sinistyn kept touching her he’d kill the man in his own club.
CHAPTER FOUR
“THERE, WE’VE HAD our dance.” Anna panted, drawing away. “Please can we talk now?”
“The music’s not over yet,” Victor said, pulling her back close.
That was what she was afraid of—that this music would never end. Her skin crawled where he’d touched her. “But I need to ask you something important, Victor. A life-and-death favor.”
“Then you should be trying to please me now,” Victor replied, flashing his teeth in a grin as he moved his body against hers. He was handsome, Anna thought, amid the heat and the lights and the pounding rhythm of the dance music. She could see why her sister had had a crush on him since girlhood. Too bad he had such an ugly soul.
Aware that she was playing with fire, Anna wanted to run from him, far away from this dance floor.
But where would she go?
Besides, though he might have hurt business rivals in the past, he would never hurt her, she tried to reassure herself. She’d known Victor since she was eighteen years old, when he’d gone into business with her father and had personally asked Anna to become his secretary. True, she’d spent five years fending him off, but now she had no other choice but to ask for his help. If she didn’t want to be completely at Nikos’s mercy she needed a favor from the only man who could fight him and win.
“Victor—”
“Call me Vitya, like you used to.”
That was Natalie’s nickname for him, not hers. “Victor, please, if we could only—”
A hand suddenly gripped her wrist, pulling her away.
“Get away from her, Sinistyn,” Nikos said.
“Stavrakis.” Narrowing his eyes, Victor wrapped his arm around Anna’s waist, pulling her back so hard he almost yanked her off her feet. “You’ve got some nerve to come into my club and start throwing orders. Get out before I throw you out.”
“You? You’ll throw me out? Or do you mean one of your goons will do it for you?” Nikos drawled lazily, in a tone that belied the threat in his posture. “We both know you wouldn’t have the guts to do it yourself.”
Victor smiled at him, showing sharp teeth. He looked over the dance floor. Anna noticed his bodyguards hovering close by. Apparently, this gave Victor courage. “I don’t see Cooper with you tonight. It was a mistake to leave your guard dogs at home, you Greek—”
Anna physically came between them, pushing them apart. She felt sick. She’d thought Nikos would wait for his bodyguards, giving her at least thirty minutes to privately conclude her business with Victor. Having him come so quickly, and alone, had shot her plan apart.
“Please, let me go,” she said to Victor. “I need to talk to Nikos anyway. I—I’ll talk to you more later.”
For a moment Victor looked as if he were going to pummel the smirk off Nikos’s face anyway. Then he shrugged and said shortly, “As you wish, loobemaya. Go. Until later.”
He walked off the dance floor. Nikos looked as if he meant to deliver some rejoinder, but Anna grabbed his hands, forced his attention back to her. “What are you doing here?”
Nikos’s anger came back to focus on her. “The question, madam, is what are you doing here? Dancing with him? Dressed like that?”
“I can dress as I please—”
He interrupted her. “You will never see Victor Sinistyn again, do you understand?”
“No, I don’t. You’re not my husband. You’re nothing—”
With a growl, he dragged her off the floor, through the crowds and out of the club. She struggled, unable to escape his iron grip.
Outside, the cooling desert air felt fresh against her overheated skin. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her fears as he retrieved his motorcycle from the valet.
This was going to work. It had to work. She’d use the threat of Victor to force Nikos to give her joint custody of her son. And set her free.
Tossing a tip to the valet, Nikos threw a muscular leg over the motorcycle’s seat. For a moment Anna’s gaze lingered on his body, on the way his snug black T-shirt accentuated the muscles of his chest and his flat belly, on the tight curve of his backside in the dark designer jeans.
“Get on,” he ordered, his eyes like ice.
Carefully, Anna climbed up behind him on the motorcycle. She gave a little squeak as he revved the engine and roared down the street without a word of warning.
She held him close, her body pressed against his back. Her tight suede halter top thrust her breasts upward, and they felt exquisitely sensitive, the nipples hardening as they brushed against the muscles of his back. She tightened her grip on his waist, her dark hair flying in the wind.