Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance (8 page)

My opponent was waiting at the center table. He looked upset; I was supposed to arrive much earlier, by plane, with the rest of my team. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to know that something had happened yesterday. Nobody seemed to have a clue. Jack Starr remained in New York, gathering whatever info he could find about the thugs.

I nodded at the man who was sitting at the poker table waiting for me. His name was Dmitri Penyov, and was Russian as fuck, too. He gave no signal of recognizing Van, which was a relief for me.

Vanina’s big, dark, beautiful eyes were meandering around the room, absorbing every little detail. If she was a spy, she was too overt.
But of course she’s not a spy. You already know that, moron,
I told myself. And yet, I wondered if the Russian thugs might have been sent to dispatch her after she didn’t do the job she was supposed to do. Get information from me? Kill me? Whatever it could be. I intimately felt that I could trust Van, but that still remained a possibility. Or maybe I was growing old and mistrustful.

I leaned over Van and whispered to her ear.

“Take my place,” I said.

“What?”

“Do you know how to play poker?”

She hesitated. “Well... a little bit... Misha taught me, but—”

“Wonderful,” I said, and pressed three fingers on her spine, gently. Even such a small touch seemed to disarm her, as I felt her body relaxing and she took a step forward.

“Are you sure?” she whispered.

“Come on, I drove for twelve hours. You can do it.” She took another step. “That’s it,” I encouraged her. “Go ahead and screw the guy. Only not literally.” Raising my voice, I announced, “There is a change in the table. Vanina Vokhtazin plays for Ace Hart.”

A collective murmur followed Van as she walked towards the table and sat on the empty chair. Veronica was fuming. If looks could kill, Vanina would have dropped in pieces right there. The blonde sent me an incensed look and hurried into the restroom. I could catch a glimpse of a tear under the white flash of the lamps as she disappeared through the door.

Vanina sat down and played. Badly. Like really badly. She played so badly and she was so aware of it that in the end, her face was almost red.
Adorably
red.

“Assets transferred,” Harlan announced, after checking the computer screen. Van gave me a puzzled look.

“You’ve just lost four million dollars,” I told her. “Or, more accurately,
I
lost all that money. And a racing horse.”

The look on her face was priceless. She stared at me with her eyes wide open and her jaw dropped, her hand still in the air as if she was about to ask for a new card. She had turned from red to white in a snap.

“Really?”

“Really,” I replied. And added jokingly, “I think I should kick you out of here.”

“I can... I can go,” she said, sitting up clumsily and blushing once more. I stopped her with a gentle touch on her shoulder, and made her sit down again.

“You keep playing,” I said. “I have a good feeling about this.” Which was, of course, a lie.

I announced that I was looking for a rematch. Penyov nodded and they were dealt new cards. Van lost again, to the tune of five million. In the end, she was too embarrassed to look around, but she had also a weird fire in her eyes.

I’ve seen that fire before. It’s what happens to some people when they first start gambling and discover the emotional rollercoaster it entails. They may win or they may lose, but during the experience, they feel truly alive.

I had felt the fire myself, many years ago. The man who introduced me to Little Vegas also went by Ace, like the one before him. He hired me as a bouncer for his bar, without telling me what kind of people I’d be bouncing out. He must have seen something in my eyes, because one night, while we waited for the players to arrive, he took a shiny new deck of cards and made me sit at the table with him.

“Look at my eyes,” he said. “Look at my hands. Take a picture in your mind. Watch me move my fingers as I hold my cards. Watch my eyebrows, see if my eyelids flicker. Take note of the cards I put on the table. My hands, do they shake? Do I move them too fast?” We played hand after hand, quickly, without speaking. He won and won and then won again. He won with great cards. He won with shitty cards. I tried to read him but he was always ahead. I never let go of him. In the end, my face was flushed and my armpits were covered in sweat; my heart raced like a horse in its prime. I lost again. But I didn’t let go.

The following day, I got the call. I learnt about the real business behind the bar. Ace told me that I had a future with him if I played my cards well. He wasn’t talking about the poker deck.

I looked at Vanina, saw the fire in her eyes as she left the table and looked around searching for me. One of my own, maybe? I could teach her a few things... in another life. Because we were not meant to be together in this one.

* * *

She was absolutely excited when we stepped out the building, which made it all worse. Part of it was the wine, of course, but mostly, she had become a player: she had discovered the feeling all players feel, the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She had experienced that weird high, a special kind of happiness that comes with putting yourself in danger on purpose. And it had only costed me a mere twenty million dollars. Heck, I’ve lost more when playing myself.

“I will compensate you,” she laughed as we walked along the sidewalk, the fresh midnight air blowing against our faces. “You know I will.” She hugged me and stamped a playful kiss on my lips. “Oh, Ace, it was wonderful. I... Oh, that was your car.”

It was my car, indeed. But she would get in the other one. I stopped beside it and greeted Harlan, who was waiting for us. I opened the door for her.

“Harlan will drive you to the airport. You’ll both fly back to New York,” I explained.

She froze in place and stared at me, all joy wiped out from her face in an instant.

“What?”

I knew my expression was cold and self-assured. I’ve been wearing it for years. At first it was a mask; in time, it became my face.

“It was nice to meet you,” I said. “But I don’t need you anymore.”

“Wh-what?” she repeated, and I think I saw a tear forming in her eye.

Oh, I could hear her thoughts just as if she were speaking out loud.
He fucked and now he’s throwing me away, just like all these assholes do. I’m just like any of his other bitches. I wish I wouldn’t have answered his email. I wish I would’ve never stepped inside that pub. I hate him so much.

How could I explain to her that I wasn’t planning on fucking her and leaving her, but that it was precisely that moment (that magical intimate moment when it became certain to me that I love her) when I knew that I had to protect her at all costs? I couldn’t. She wouldn’t understand. She would try to convince me. But there was no other way.

If I could make sure she was completely out of harm’s way, I could contact her again. But I couldn’t count on it. It was highly dubious. Men like me are poison for girls. They end up with a bullet in their face.

The last words I said to her. Impeccably pronounced, without an ounce of emotion, as she broke down and tears welled in her eyes:

“It’s best if I don’t know where you are. I suggest you move to a different city or go back to Russia. Thanks for everything.”

I kissed her softly on the cheek and walked back to my car. As I drove away, I saw her still standing there on the sidewalk, while Harlan waited patiently for her to get into the other one so that he could drive to the airport.

14. TWO DREAMS

VAN

I dreamt of falling.

I was suspended in the middle of the sky when it all started. Looking right ahead I could see the sun, spreading pink and orange light all across the landscape. Below me there was the desert, and only the desert. The sand was not uniform but striped in all the colors I can think of. Red sand, yellow sand, blue sand, pink sand, white sand, brown sand, green sand, black sand, one strip after the other, from horizon to horizon. I was trying to guess at what height I was floating in the air when suddenly I wasn’t floating anymore. I fell down at such a speed that I think I woke up but kept dreaming anyway.

I hit the ground with full force, causing a cataclysm of sorts. As soon as my feet touched the sand, a multicolored explosion covered my whole field of vision. I had created a sand tornado that kept growing and growing as I entered the ground. Soon I was completely covered in sand and descending to the core of the earth. I could somehow see the sand as I went down, but I also felt it scratching my eyeballs, my lips, getting into my nose and mouth and ears, grazing my clothes and tearing them by sheer pressure, then scratching my nipples and my belly and the slit between my legs too. It was painful, but not too much, since the sand was amazingly fine and almost ethereal.

After a while I realized there were voices whispering in the constant hissing of the sand flowing upwards.
Women’s
voices. They were all fresh and melodious, the voices of women one would picture as young and beautiful. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but there was a threatening tone lying beneath the sweetness of their words. As I kept drilling into the desert, I became aware that all those voices also rotated around me like a tornado, and there was a deep, masculine voice underlying them all, a voice that was not hard for me to recognize.

Right before I woke up, I realized the sand had a subtle smell too. A smell of gunpowder. And now it was all black.

The air in my room was chilly, and the sheet and cover had fallen by the bedside, leaving me exposed. I shivered as I covered myself again.

I knew what the dream meant. I would never truly have him. The words of my favourite poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, ricocheted inside my head as I fell down in the multicolored sand:
However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest.

Ace Hart was a wolf, and his head would always be turned to the forest. Gorgeous women grew all around him like trees in fertile soil. There was no way for me to avoid it. It was in his nature.

I was a creature from a different world. And all I could do was cry.

* * *

ACE

It had been years since I last dreamt of Rhonda. Always nightmares. This time was not the exception.

It was just her face at first, in a close-up, looking at me calmly in the eye. She wasn’t talking or moving, just staring, as if there was nothing to say or do. I don’t remember having ever seen such a peaceful expression in her when she was alive. She was always sparkly, passionate in the good and the bad, often irate. Not in the dream. She looked like a Madonna, full of inner peace and serenity.

Then, the bullet.

The bullet entered the scene from the right, drawing a slow, straight trajectory toward her left eye. She didn’t notice it —no time for that, no time for anything, although for me, the scene was unbearably slow, a split second extended over what felt like a month.

And then suddenly the face was
Van’s
face, exploding in slow motion as the bullet entered her eye and burst into her skull, blood and flesh flying away in all directions. Time caught up to speed as the world became a red mask of death, and I fell backwards, trying to scream, but unable to do so.

My heart raced as I felt my body falling down fast, faster, faster, into a dark hollow full of smoke and torn cards. I dove into a pool of dark viscous water. It was freezing cold, and even with my eyes open I could see nothing. I tried to swim but I felt weak; my body in the dream had barely any muscles, and I was pushed around and down by the current, feeling how the liquid filled my lungs as I tried to breathe.

The water screamed. It screamed with Van’s voice.

That voice was still ringing in my ears,
raping
my ears, when I woke up. It was the voice of danger.

I could never have her. The danger was there, it was black and cold and shrieked in horror everywhere. Being with her meant killing her. It had happened with Rhonda and it would happen with Van.

The air was hot in my room, but I felt a chill biting at my bones.

15. MIRROR, MIRROR

VAN

Present day

I haven’t left the city. Not for now, at least.

I don’t know if I feel safer now or less safe than before. Ace is no longer here to protect me, but was he actually protecting me? I’ve given this idea many twists and turns in the last few days. Or, rather, in my last few sleepless nights.

I know what a rich jerk is capable to do. What if the incident in Brooklyn was all a simulation? What if he hired a few guys to give me a scare, so that I would fall right into his arms as my savior? He didn’t even wait a day to kick me out. He already had what he wanted: one more girl for his never-ending tally.

At times, I feel bad for thinking that way, and I remember how mad he got when Vassily started hitting on me in our meeting. That day I thought he actually felt something for me, something else besides physical attraction —but aren’t these guys incapable of such a thing? Was it not something more like defending his prey from the other predator? Men are assholes, and this is the worst kind of man, the most assholish of them all.

I’m confused. But I’ve never been the kind of woman who lies to herself. It’s not so much that I’m confused as that I’m hurt. Yes, hurt, because I love that asshole. There’s not much to be confused about. He acted just like I thought he would act from the first time I saw him. It’s his nature, the wolf with its head turned to the forest.

And yet... I feel that I’m being unfair. Am I just a stupid girl for feeling that he could be sincerely trying to protect me? Maybe he got scared. Maybe he’s right and keeping away from him is the best way to ensure my safety.

In any case, I have to accept that we won’t be together. And it’s hard. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the touch of his lips on my skin, making it shiver and bristle. I can pretend that he’s in standing right in front of me with his clear, serene eyes. I can dream he’s going to come and rescue me somehow.