Seven Nights of Sin - Lacey Alexander [6]
“How about this?” Kelly suggested. “How about we don’t think of it as lying? Instead, we’ll think of it as…ambition. Going after the brass ring. Getting something you really want. Because as mild-mannered as you are, my dear Brenna, I can see it in your eyes already. You want this job—bad.”
God help her, she did. She loved music. She’d come to love it even more since landing at Blue Night. To help determine what people listened to, and to have the power to give musicians a real shot at stardom, at making their dreams come true—it would be amazing. And already she could taste the thrill—and the fulfillment—it would bring her. “I just wish I didn’t feel so guilty about how I’m going to get it.”
Again, Kelly shrugged. “Look at it this way. Where better to do something wrong than Sin City?”
THE FIRST NIGHT
“Sin is geographical.”
—Bertrand Russell
One
Brenna arrived in Las Vegas with a new wardrobe, a new hair color, and a new attitude. Not about sex with Damon Andros, but about the job. She’d talked herself into believing Kelly was right—that this was just the way business was done in the entertainment industry. It wasn’t an ethics issue—it was simply how the game was played. Damon Andros would surely view it that way if the situation were reversed.
Damon had flown from Los Angeles to Vegas on the same day that Brenna made the five-hour drive across the Mojave Desert. Good old Jenkins—happy to make her lie, and just as happy not to offer her a plane ticket, explaining that they were still an indie label, after all, and money didn’t grow on trees. “Once you’re in the A&R seat, though,” he’d promised her, “the red carpet will be rolled out for you.”
God knew this wasn’t where she expected to find herself at the age of thirty—starting a whole new career, and crossing a desert to do it. But maybe a big, new, high-profile job would somehow give her back the sense of security her divorce had stolen.
She’d tried to concentrate on that as she’d prayed her car wouldn’t overheat in the hot May temperatures, and as she’d driven, she’d actually spotted more than one mirage—tricks played by the sun, convincing her she saw a large, smooth body of water, only to discover as she grew nearer that it was simply more flat, brown land.
So it was a relief, even if a bit overwhelming, to finally hit the Vegas Strip. She’d never been to Sin City before, but a drive up the ten-lane street revealed it to be all she had imagined. Even during the daytime hours, millions of lights flickered and danced to either side of the famous boulevard. She passed enormous fountains, roller coasters that sped by high above her car, and even whole buildings that changed colors at will. She spied the Brooklyn Bridge, an Egyptian pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, the Roman Coliseum, and an erupting volcano—and thought it was as if the whole world had collided here, reshaping itself into pure spectacle.
Pulling in at the Venetian, where side-by-side rooms had been reserved for her and Damon, she followed a winding lane to the front doors. She was astounded by the scope of the place even before driving up under the awning that covered at least a dozen lanes of one-way traffic: a busy but efficient menagerie of cars and luggage carts and suitcases manned by guys dressed in the stripes and neck sashes of Italian gondoliers.
One of them rushed to open her car door. “Welcome to the Venetian. Checking in?”
“Yes.”
She was checking in to the Venetian. And checking in to Las Vegas—the place where people came to sin.
And already, as she strolled through the doors into the ornately huge lobby complete with frescoes on the arched ceiling high above, a change somehow began to come over her. It started slowly, yet it was easy to recognize, and…shockingly easy to embrace.
It wasn’t about the new clothes. Or the new hair. And she wasn’t even certain it was about the job she’d come here to steal.
Because it seemed to grow from within her, echoing outward from her very core.
She