Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance (11 page)

“Well, I’m here now, and I can kick you out anytime.” I don’t want to be harsh, but I’m not sure that she’s in her right mind at this moment. She could turn dangerous.

“Well, that’s funny,” she fires back. “There is someone I could send back to Russia in an hour. It only takes a phone call.”

A snarky reply comes to my lips before I could help it: “As funny as...” I start, but then I change my mind. I now see Veronica Redd as the wretched girl she really is. I’ve been in her place not long ago. What I utter next are not my words, but Gogol’s. I read Gogol as a teenager and I still remember the best lines as one remembers the touches of a loving hand.
The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

“There’s not much difference between funny and sad,” I say in the end. Yes, I paraphrased a bit. Maybe simplified the meaning. You can sue me.

Veronica snorts. “You will be sad, I promise you,” she says.

“I know about your secret,” I tell her quietly. “You should have told him about Rhonda. Why keep it to yourself?”

She says nothing at first. A tear escapes the prison of her pretty eye, running down her smooth cheek and reaching the corner of her perfect mouth. Pretty, smooth, perfect, and so broken, and so sad.

“Because it would have broken him. Ace is not as tough as he seems. He’s vulnerable. He must be protected.”

I try to be firm and soft at the same time. I don’t know if I can. I pity her, but I want to defend what I have with Ace, too.

“I think you give him too little credit.”

She breaks down now. Tears run down her face as she leans against the wall. “Why did he have to fire me?”

“Because he couldn’t trust you. You kept the secret from him for years. What were you thinking?”

She keeps sobbing, her arms lying at her sides, as if she’d been drained of all her energy.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I love him. That’s what I was thinking. I didn’t want him to get hurt because I love him.”

21. ESCAPE TO ROULETTENBERG

VAN

Three weeks later

“OK, this is the big one,” Ace says, stepping into the pool completely naked and holding two beers. I grab one and look at him appreciatively. His body is so perfect that I have a hard time concentrating in what he is telling me.

“The big one?”

He comes to me, half floating and half waddling on the bottom. When he reaches me, he plants a kiss in my lips. The water is a little cold, and I welcome his warmth.

“Monte Carlo,” he says. “We’ve set up a private room there, for some international players. It’s the first time we do it. Little Vegas meets Monaco. Do you like it? It will be fun.”

“I bet,” I say, and then I laugh when I realize that I’ve made an involuntary pun. “I mean I don’t. I won’t play for you this time. But it will be pretty cool. Who came up with the idea?”

“Pip did. Actually, it was your friend, Vassily Zhurov, when he lamented that he wouldn’t feel the same thrill in Monte Carlo as he felt in Frisco when he almost lost everything but ended up winning half a billion. So Pip thought we could take Little Vegas to Monte Carlo so he would be happy.”

“Huh, that was smart,” I whisper in his ear, and take a small bite, then chug some beer. “I hope you’ll pluck him whole.”

“Do you think I should play against him?” Ace asks, cupping my breast in his hand. His cock strikes my navel underwater like a torpedo.

“Most definitely,” I answer, articulating the words with my lips barely a quarter inch from his. I leave the beer bottle on the border of the pool, lean against the wall, let my elbows rest on the rugged tiles, and push myself up. He comes closer so that I can lower myself on his hard dick. When I do, my flesh welcomes his with a quiver.

“You’ll need a name,” Ace says, pushing himself upwards gently, almost tenderly. His member fills me and brings a warmth to my whole body that puts goose pimples all over my skin, in a delightful contrast with the relatively cold water. My nipples harden and my lips feel the hunger of his mouth.

“A name?
Oooh.
”

“For a passport,” he says. “So that you can fly.”

“Oh, that.” I put my arms around him, letting his prodigious body sustain my weight, lessened by the water. I close my eyes to concentrate on the pleasure. I am trying to think and feel at the same time, and it’s kind of hard. Speaking of hard... I feel him so stiff and strong inside me... but I need to think of a name. A name. A name,
oh for fuck’s sake!

“OK. You’ll be Polina,” he says when I start panting instead of providing a name. “Any preference for the lastname?”

Polina, like the female character in Dostoevsky’s
The Gambler
. How appropriate. Vanina in Monte Carlo like Polina in Roulettenberg, the fictional gambling paradise where the novel takes place. I think about it for a few seconds. Polina Alexandrovna, like in the book? Polina Chekhov? Polina Tolstoy? Polina Turguenev? Polina Karamazov? No, those are silly choices. Any immigration officer with two ounces of brain would see through it, like that idiot who had a fake ID printed under the name
MacLovin
in that juvenile American movie. It’s difficult to come up with a good idea when you’re being pounded on so sweetly.

“Uh... oh... a l-lastname... l-let me th-th-think,” I sigh, wobbling my head around as he thrusts a bit faster.

Then it comes to me:
Polina Igrok
. Not many people know that
Igrok
is the novel’s original title in Russian, and among those who know, a lastname simply meaning
gambler
wouldn’t be likely to raise suspicions. The full name has a nice ring to it, and so I decide that I’ll be Polina Igrok during my trip.

“Well...?”

“Well? Aaah!”

“Have you thought of a lastname?” Ace asks, smiling wickedly as he covers me with kisses and redoubles his underwater attack.

“Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! Igrok! IGROK!” I exclaim, clawing at his mighty back as a series of spasms make my body shake and tremble. My lips close around his chin, his nose, his mouth, his eye, in a frantic attempt to cover him whole, to swallow him just like my legs and the kraken in between are swallowing him down below.

Then comes what the French call the little death, and then the release, the languor, the happiness, and the beer warming on the tiles.

22. WRITTEN IN THE CARDS

VAN

Exactly the same as two years ago, but in reverse: the United States becoming smaller and smaller, then turning into a carnival of light as the plane rises, drilling into the frozen air of the night, and points its nose at Europe. Something is different this time, though. I’m not alone. Ace Hart rests in his seat beside me, holding my hand between his. He fell asleep as soon as we took off. I don’t know how he does it.

I’ve never been to Monaco, just as I’ve never been almost anywhere else. But I’m not thinking about wonderful beaches or high hills or luxurious hotels or boats or roulette tables. I’m thinking about healing.

It’s curious, the way healing works. You never forget the person and you never forget the pain or the fury, but you see it all in an irrevocably different light, in a way it can’t cause you any harm anymore.

I had been driven to a deep pit of sorrow and despair when Theo Lambert got rid of me. But now, I don’t miss him the tiniest bit. I’ll never forget him, but I have forgiven him already.
So this is how it works: you let go of your old love when a new love comes.
But no love ever really leaves you if it was true. It becomes part of you, enriching your life. When you look at the dried up tears, you notice that the stain has become a shape that is part of your own shape. That’s when the healing comes.

And you get hurt again and you become wary, and every time you fall, it hurts a bit more. When I thought Ace Hart was just like Theo, I fell into a still deeper pit. I bypassed the tears and the desire of revenge, and became a woman who lost her soul, like a zombie roaming the streets half alive and half dead.

I brought my old copy of
Anna Karenina
in my handbag. I turn the pages slowly, feeling the intensity of the words as my fingers pass blindly over the worn, crinkled pages I know so well. I find the quote almost before I look for it.

I think ... if there are as many minds as there are men, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

But if your heart changes and grows, the love changes and grows as well. The remnants of my old loves have become part of something greater and more intense, I realize. I now love Ace in a way I couldn’t have hoped to love before.

What if I fail again? What if it ends in a week, a month, a year?

I’m afraid of the mere idea. You may know the feeling I have right now:
This is the one.
This is the man I want to spend my life with. A terrible, dark man, hard as iron on the outside, with a loving, tender core that you must find yourself, with time and work.

I squeeze his hand so hard that I fear I’ll wake him up.

23. MONTE CARLO BLUES

ACE

Monte Carlo is just as magnificent and luxurious as in a James Bond movie. I don’t feel like James Bond, though. As I gently graze Van’s back, exposed through an opening in her exquisitely fine dress, I catch sight of Zhurov, who’s betting at the roulette while he waits for our private room to open.

“Have you spoken to them?” I ask Harlan.

“The casino? Everything’s in order,” he says. “Zhurov is alone, if you were wondering.”

“Oh, I like that.” I kiss Van in the cheek as I point out at the Russian jerk discreetly. “Want to try your luck?”

“Why not?” she says, and walks towards the roulette table with a feline gait that makes my blood boil in desire.

“Harlan, I hope you’re looking elsewhere.”

“Of course, boss,” he chuckles, turning his head as quick as lightning.

“Good. What about Manhattan? I wouldn’t like Zhurov to be here while his guys are there making a mess of things.”

We don’t make eye contact, instead looking around at the big hall as we speak, registering everything, taking note of any potential signs of trouble.

“Pip says everything’s quiet. Jack is outside anyway, looking.”

“What about Tara?”

“Still nothing from her. Stays awake all night every night. She’ll find it.”

“Have you fucked her already?”

Harlan looks at me and blushes instantly. He is about to say something but seems to decide otherwise and turns his head again. The white collar of his shirt contrasts sharply with the deep red in his neck and above.

“Well?”

“N-no, of course not.”

“Not for lack of trying, I guess,” I tell him with a wink, pat him on the back, and go meet Van at the table. She’s put everything on red, and she’s just won. Zhurov made a complicated bet instead, putting money on the zero, eleven, and four other black numbers, so he lost everything.

I wave at him, and when we make visual contact, I make a playful gesture.
Don’t lose all your money here; we need to play poker later.

* * *

VAN

The weight of half a dozen chips in my hand is satisfying. Most of them have right edges, each one worth twenty-five grand. The sound they make when they rub into each other is almost sensual. I started making stupidly safe bets, never risking much but never winning much either; but after half an hour or so, I got audacious, and the ball paid me well.

That must be why there is a wide smile on my face when I stand up to leave the table. Zhurov is serious, having lost a bit of money —around six hundred grand if my estimate is correct, just a drop in the sea for him, but a net loss anyway.

“I hope you’re luckier at the game,” I tell him, unable to adopt a serious expression. “Or rather not.”

Zhurov nods silently. He’s been hitting on me here, too, for the first few minutes. As the ball kept rolling and hitting all the wrong numbers, he became quieter, until he stopped talking altogether.

Where is Ace?

Harlan is standing near the entrance of the private room. There are already some people inside. Some of them are the casino’s men; the others must be players. Zhurov walks into the room, too. I glance at my watch and realize that the game is about to start.

I look at Harlan and raise my eyebrows. He points to a corner of the hall where Ace is speaking to someone on his cellphone. He seems irritated, maybe even alarmed. I get closer and get a few bits of the conversation.

“Tara?” he says. “What happened to her?” And after a few seconds: “They weren’t supposed to get to her. You should have never taken her to Chicago.” A new pause, and then: “It’s all the same. If anything happens to Tara, I’ll rip your balls off. Do you get it?”

He hangs up angrily. I see Harlan still standing indecisively beside the door of the designated room, waiting for Ace. All the other players are already inside. But Ace doesn’t move.

“What’s it?” I ask him, putting my hand on his arm.

It takes him a few seconds to answer. Then:

“I have to go.”

“OK, I’ll wait for you here. Is it serious?”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “I have to go... back to the States.”

“What? Why? The game is about to begin.”

“I know. I’ve stated my bet already. I’ll lose a billion if we desert.”

I don’t get what he means at first. But when he starts walking briskly toward the room, I suddenly realize it.

“No, no, no,
no
,” I say, walking behind him. I try to catch him but he’s too fast. “Ace, I’m going with you.”

“Of course not,” he denies. “You’ll stay with Harlan.” We are now inside the room, and everyone is staring at us, including Zhurov, who’s already sitting at the table with a glass of vodka. “There’s a change in the table,” Ace announces out loud. “Vanina Vokhtazin plays for Ace Hart.”

His words are still echoing inside the room when he walks out. He’s kissed me briefly before his exit, but it’s been all so fast that I feel the touch of his lips when he’s already gone.

Vassily Zhurov smiles.

24. TAMING THE BEAST

VAN

We fly back to the States with Harlan. First we take an helicopter to the Nice airport, then a plane to Paris, then the long flight home. He drives me from LaGuardia to Tribeca and leaves me at Ace’s. The whole trip is a test for Harlan’s nerves, because I’m furious and exultant at the same time, and surely unbearable.