Burning Revenge

The heavy scent of vintage bourbon, Cuban cigar smoke, and expensive French perfume hung thick in the air of the Obsidian Club.

Hidden three stories beneath the neon glare of the Atlantic City boardwalk, the Obsidian was an exclusive subterranean sanctuary for the eastern seaboard's wealthiest gamblers, politicians, and underworld elites. Black velvet banquettes lined walls of polished black basalt, while crystal chandeliers cast dim amber pools of light across high-stakes baccarat and roulette tables.

Elena Cross stood at the edge of the mezzanine balcony, looking down through the haze with the focused, calculating gaze of a sniper selecting her target.

At twenty-five, Elena looked like a classic femme fatale stepped out of a noir film. Her fiery copper-red hair tumbled over one bare shoulder in cascading, glossy waves, framing a face of porcelain elegance and high cheekbones. Her emerald-green eyes were sharp, cold, and luminous under dark eyelashes, and her full lips were painted the shade of crushed crimson cherries. She wore a backless crimson silk slip dress with a thigh-high slit that revealed long, toned legs and four-inch obsidian Louboutin stilettos.

Tucked discreetly into the black lace garter beneath her dress was a miniature encrypted USB drive containing five years of financial forensic audits.

Five years ago, her father, Thomas Cross, had been a brilliant architect who built the premier boutique casino on the boardwalk. But Victor Kane—the ruthless loan shark and waterfront kingpin—had engineered a predatory foreclosure, leveraged Thomas's construction loans, and framed him for corporate embezzlement. Left with sixty million dollars in artificial debt and facing twenty years in federal prison, her father had kissed Elena on the forehead, walked up to the rooftop of his beloved casino, and jumped into the freezing Atlantic surf.