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CHAPTER ONE

NIC FALCONE STEPPED through the service door into the casino, glancing around with a deeply satisfied sweep Yes, this had been a good idea, acquiring and restoring this fading hacienda-style hotel deep in the western desert, yet still within reach of both Las Vegas and the West Coast Another prestigious lobal Falcone chain of luxury hotels More glittering proof of just how far he’d come in his thirty-odd years—fro one of the richest men in Italy

The fatherless slum kid who’d started his first job at barely sixteen in the basement—literally—of the fabled Viscari Roh as that dilettante playboy Vito Viscari, who’d had a legendary hotel chain handed to him on a plate by his family

Nic’s expression shadowed as he reed hard work he’d worked his way up through the ranks at the Viscari Roma, every promotion striven for, until he had finally been in line for the big ement that he had known he was totally qualified for

But Vito’s uncle, the chairman of the company, had instead preferred that his inexperienced nephew—fresh out of university, with none of the hard-earned, hands-on track record that Nic had under his belt—should get a taste of his future inheritance

Nic had been passed over—and from that moment he’d known that from now on he would work only for himself The seeds of the Falcone hotel chain had been sown Falcone would be the rival that would outsoar Viscari once and for all

And through a level of hard work that had absorbed his whole life Nic had succeeded—fantastically So much so that last year he had been able to swoop, like his nae of an internal power struggle within the divided Viscari family and snap up an entire half of the Viscari portfolio of hotels in a blatantly hostile acquisition

It had proved, though, to be a triuain Nic had felt the pa his, Vito’sNic’s own investors, who’d funded his acquisition, to sell the hotels back to her so she could hand them over to her son-in-law, Vito

Yet again Vito had prospered without lifting a finger for himself—thanks to help from his family

But the determination that had lifted Nic froain, and in the rip on the Viscari portfolio he had reacted by lining up a string of potential new Falcone properties, including this, the newly opened Falcone Nevada, with its oh-so-lucrative on-site casino

His keen eyes swept the crowded gaood few of the ga of the hotel, where a gathering of astrophysics acade the cluster of young hopefuls now quitting the bar area to head to the ga a hand to theht