Chapter THREE
Britton ran through the line of FBI high fives at work as everyone wished her luck. She was leaving the office early to get ready for her new job as a dealer in the high roller room. Tonight she could possibly see Jagger. What would she do? She toyed with all the possibilities. Would she ignore him? Would she pretend not to recognize him? Would she not recognize him? How much might he have changed in ten years? Would he come up to her first? She was so nervous.
She undressed and turned on the shower. As she was about to step into the tub, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She had no idea where this night would lead, and needed to do a quick assessment. Her body had definitely changed since he had last seen her. Her hips were wider and her chest had filled out. She was a woman. Britton placed her hand on her stomach, imagining that it wasn’t her own. She yearned for the touch of another, and now she could admit it.
After Jagger, there had been a few men she had used to try and rid her memory of him, but with no success. After awhile, she gave up. She didn’t want a companion. She wanted to be alone, but the last few days, things have felt different. She imagined David’s hand on hers. She felt that spark shoot through her body. Her hand traveled up, between her rising breasts, and landed on the top of her chest, cupping the base of her neck. She wasn’t able to touch herself. It scared her. This scared her. All of a sudden, her mood completely changed. She found herself fearing him again. She needed to gain control. She couldn’t walk into that room and show this weakness. She needed to be strong, stronger than him. She needed to be stronger than Jagger.
The time to leave her house was rapidly approaching as she opened her closet door. Which dress would she wear? Which would make him want to tell her all his dirty little secrets? She slid her clothing to one side and noticed a flash of red, draping from the final hanger. That was the dress he had bought her. She had forgotten she still had it. Why had she held onto it for so long? She knew it could never fit her; her body was completely different than it was in her teenage years. Still the urge to try it on could not be denied.
Britton slipped off her robe and slowly stepped a single leg into the dress. She remembered the feeling of this fabric. It quickly brought back the painful memories of that night. She wanted to take it off. She wished she hadn’t seen the dress. Her breathing hastened, and she threw the dress across the room. Her legs gave out from under her and she fell to the floor. “No!” She screamed at herself. She couldn’t do this. Not today. Today she had to be resilient.
Now she had to wear the dress. It would prove to him that she had moved on; that she had no memories of him haunting her. She confidently stepped in and let the fabric cling to her body. She looked at herself in the mirror. To her surprise, she filled the dress out quite nicely. She let her mahogany splashed hair fall from its clipped confines. She was ready.
Britton pulled up to Halanu Star Casino, her home for the past year and a half. She had a few minutes to spare, so she grabbed the file she had spent the last year and a half memorizing.
Jagger Stromm
Twenty-eight years old
President of the outlaw motorcycle club, Harbingers of Sorrow
Suspected of drug trafficking and possible money laundering
Spends evenings at the Halunu Star Casino, high roller’s room
That was all she needed to read. She was ready. Britton stepped out of her car and confidently made her way to the employee entrance of the high roller’s room. She couldn’t have imagined the beauty and elegance of this place. She had seen pictures, but they didn’t come close to the grandeur she was witnessing before her eyes. This is where she would spend the remainder of her time undercover. She shook at the thought that, in a few hours, she might come face to face with the man who left her to die on the side of the road.
She was stationed at the blackjack table. She loved blackjack. Growing up, her siblings and her would play by flashlight when they were supposed to be sleeping. They would place obscenely high fake bets, fantasizing that they were a wealthy family of royalty, having nothing to do but hang out in all the fancy hotels in Vegas, and winning a ton of money.
She briefly thought about her siblings. They didn’t know she had been back for three years. When she left so long ago, she knew she was abandoning them. She had to make a decision, a choice: them or her. She chose herself, and it’s a choice she'd struggled with every day. That’s why she couldn’t reach out to them now that she was back. Britton also knew if she found them, it would mean that they didn’t make it out—knowing for sure that they were still stuck in the hell they grew up in would be too much. She wanted better for them, and for her sanity she had to believe that they all left Nevada.
Time slowly ticked by, though the high-roller room was more exciting and filled with the tension of serious money at stake; she was waiting for one specific person to enter. Just as she began to think she'd wasted her dress, her head started to spin as the scent of his cologne filled the room. She searched the faces, trying to find him, but she couldn’t. That scent took her back ten years. She was straddling him. She was biting his neck. It was the same scent. It had to be him. Then, the crowd of guests seemed to part as he walked toward her.