2. Chapter 2
C lara
The brunch this morning has been uncomfortable, but this? I stare about the packed ballroom in my father’s casino, filled with his business associates and the Morales family. I had been promised to Miguel, who will take my hand tomorrow morning, binding me to him for the rest of my life.
This is terrifying. It’s as if my father is searching for the worst of the worst to foist me off on. Does he hate me this much?
I don’t want to marry. I especially don’t want to marry Miguel, who sidles up to me while our fathers are talking and, in the guise of courtship, smiles as he hands me a flower plucked from the arrangement on the table.
“You fucked up my life,” he said softly, almost lovingly. “I’m going to fuck your ass on our wedding night, and the last thing I’ll be is gentle.”
He winks, smiling, charming as a snake, pretty on the outside, deadly on the inside. As if I want this. As if I asked for it. As if I’m not every bit a pawn as he is.
My legs are shaking so badly, I can’t sit there anymore.
“I need to be excused,” I stammer as I stand to run to the bathroom. My father clamps his hand on my wrist, and the look he gives me promises such terrible things.
“You may not leave. Sit down. Talk to your future husband.”
The urge to snatch my arm out of his grip and leave is every bit as strong as my certainty a beating will be waiting when we get home tonight. He might not even wait for this horror of a dinner to end first.
I sit back down.
Miguel smiles at me, but his eyes don’t match his mouth. He’s not happy. He’s angry and blames me.
I’d rather die . I’d rather die than marry him .
My life is full of monsters, always has been. All this marriage does is exchange the tormenter I know for a new one.
Unless I do something to stop this.
But what? What can I do? I have no resources, no friends.
My father’s home is my prison, with guards at the front door and the elevator.
I can’t leave without his permission. Nor can anyone visit me without his approval.
It’s been like this for the six years since I turned fourteen—six years since I was relegated to my room in disgrace for allowing James, my best friend since middle school, to kiss me on the cheek.
My first kiss. I still remember how my belly had warmed, and my toes curled.
I’d practically melted into the touch of his lips, so soft against my skin.
A kiss that had been given for no other reason than because it was my birthday, and he’d brought me a gift.
A necklace, cheap because James wasn’t rich.
He wasn’t from a family like mine. He was normal.
And I’d liked him.
Then my father walked in, and James had been, at his order, beaten, kicked, and stomped on my bedroom floor while I screamed, unable to stop it. When my father decided enough, James was driven to the hospital, so his broken ribs and jaw could be treated.
I haven’t seen James since. I understand he’s in college now and dating someone else. My father delights in giving me updates.
“Talk to your fiancé,” my father says dangerously, startling me from my thoughts.
“Aw, she’s just nervous,” Miguel counters smoothly. “Women always are when they meet the man of their dreams. Isn’t that right, Clara?”
He winks at me again, but the amusement dancing in the black of his eyes hasn’t warmed a bit.
“Let’s dance,” he says, belatedly gesturing to my father.
“With your permission, sir, of course.” He says it in a way that suggests he never asks for anyone’s permission beyond his own father, and is only asking now as a courtesy.
A monster in training, he’s already moving to take my hand as my father waves us away.
“Go, go. Dance the night away.”
I can’t stay with Miguel. I can feel it in every crawling inch of me as he pulls me out onto the dance floor, bringing me in close for the slow waltz.
Escape would take more courage than I have.
I can feel the eyes of everyone in that room, smiling, laughing, complimenting my father and Morales on my beauty.
What do I want more, to leave or to cry?
I can’t even tell, but I’m watched so closely, I know leaving is impossible.
There’s a man at every exit, either my father’s men or Morales’.
“I won’t give up my side bitch,” Miguel informs me. Wrapping his arm around my waist, the heat of his hand comes to rest warmly on the small of my back.
“I can’t dance,” I warn.
He snorts. “The pampered princess of a casino king? I’m sure there’s nothing you can’t do.
” He isn’t laughing so hard when I trip on his foot.
“All this and clumsy, too,” he says but slows his step and even stops being such an asshole in the way he handles me.
The way he talks to me only gets worse, though, a tiny taste of what I could expect for the rest of my life.
The next time I step on his toes, he yanks his foot out from under mine and shoves me back. Shaking his head once, he laughs, and the look he gives me would scare me to pieces if only I wasn’t already at that point.
“I take you home tomorrow,” he reminds me. “You should be thinking right now about what’s going to happen to you after the wedding.”
Everyone close enough to hear what he’s saying looks away from us, pretending they didn’t. Something inside me snaps. I know he’s going to hurt me. If I can’t stop it, I might as well earn it.
“Have it with one of your side bitches,” I snap back. “I won’t be there.”
Miguel laughs, a low rolling chuckle that sends prickling fingers of dread straight up my spine.
He points at me and in a voice too soft to carry back to either of our fathers, says, “You remember this tomorrow. When you’re screaming in the bedsheets, begging me to stop, remember what put you there. ”
He would have walked away, but a sudden commotion at the door stops him.
A bouquet of flowers so huge, it takes two men to carry it through the door is being delivered, a giant heart with roses and white carnations on a stand, decorated with ribbons and bows and a giant white sash that reads, To my beloved bride-to-be.
The heart is taller and wider than I am and probably costs more than a Vegas mortgage payment.
I was sick to my stomach just looking at it.
“Thank you,” I dully told Miguel.
Looking from it to me, he says, “I didn’t send that.” He looks past me to his father, who stands, seeming every bit as confused as we are.
The senior Morales frowns at my father. “What is this?”
For the first time, my father visibly startles. “You didn’t send this?”
“No, I didn’t send anything.”
My father is going to blame this on me. I’ve never had a day go from bad to worse quite this fast. Knowing I have questions to answer and not knowing how even to begin, I approach the bouquet.
“Is there a card?”
If not Miguel, I have no idea who would send this. James. a part of me dares to hope, but he’d made no effort to contact me, not since my father had him so badly beaten.
My father’s men are already dismissing the couriers, who aren’t from the florist. Both are dressed in the familiar uniform jackets required of male casino workers.
“It was left at the front desk,” one offers helpfully.
A bodyguard searches among the flowers until he finds the card. “Here.”
I take it from him, looking back at the table where I meet my father’s questioning stare. Opening the envelope, I withdraw a card.
I keep what is mine .
I don’t realize I’d read that part out loud until my father bellows at his men.
“Did you check that fucking thing for bombs?”
All the guests, including Miguel, leap away from me and the flowers. The silence in the room is palpable, but I don’t see anything that could be a bomb, just flowers. Hundreds of dark roses. Hundreds and hundreds of bright white carnations.
Turning the card over in my hand, I see a message written on the back, every bit as cryptic and slightly more alarming than the first.
“Breathe deep, Princess.”
Yanking the card out of my hands, the bodyguard looks at both sides of the card.
“Who’s it from?” my father demands.
“It doesn’t say,” the man answers.
Every door into the ballroom suddenly slams shut.
I can hear the scrape of metal rods sliding through the door handles, and apparently, so can the well-wishing guests, who remember there might be a bomb in the flowers.
Startled and shouting, they run for the doors, but none of them open, not even the one right in front of me.
Two of my father’s men try to force it open, but when the door only rattles in the frame, they take turns hammering their shoulders into it.
“What the fuck?” my father yells. “Get those doors open. Call hotel security!”
I’m startled by the sudden hiss of air behind me. There’s smoke pouring out of the massive heart-shaped bouquet. It isn’t just this set of flowers either. Every arrangement on the tables was emitting a medicinal-smelling smoke.
It stings my nose and the back of my throat when I gasp, jumping back. I clap my hand over my mouth and nose, but it’s too late. My head is already light and swimmy.
“What the fuc—” My father collapses by the table, and I’m not far behind him, dropping first to my knees, then onto my face.
My vision blurs, but not before I see our guests and bodyguards crumpling to the floor like marionette dolls with their strings cut.
The room fills with smoke, and whatever knockout agent is spewing from all these flowers.
Breathe deep, Princess.
Too drowsy to be scared, my eyes roll back in my head, and I lose consciousness.
* * *
Viktor
I check my watch, my gas mask in my hand, and all the hotel personnel who let me get this far, already well compensated for their efforts.
With any luck, they’ll do the smart thing—quit, walk out the door ahead of me, and run for their lives.
Alviero will suspect everyone—the guilty and innocent alike—for helping me orchestrate this.
He won’t wait for proof. He’s the type to just lash out.
“In ten,” I tell my men, adjusting the headset over my ears and the mic by my mouth. “Ten… nine…”
God, I’ve missed this. Upon my father’s death, my role in the family business changed.
Instead of doing the fun stuff—the exciting, get your hands dirty, get in it jobs—I’ve been sitting behind a desk.
Once this job is done, it’s back behind the desk I’ll go, but with a wife at my side.
Still, there’s no stopping the tiny thrill from racing under my skin, heating the blood in my veins, and giving my heart a little extra kick.
“Three… two… one,” I count down. “Masks on.”
My men are expected to operate like a well-oiled machine. They did what I did when I told them to do it. I don’t bother looking around to make sure as I slip my mask over my head. Adjusting it around my face, I grab the crowbar I’d hooked between the handles of the double doors and open the door.
The room is dead silent, and the knockout gas potently thick.
A cloud of it hovers in the air, although the flowers have stopped spraying it.
Alviero is on the floor by the table. The urge to pull my gun and just shoot him in the head is so tempting, putting an end to the hassle he’ll cause once he comes to, but I don’t.
It’s not part of the plan and certainly unnecessary.
What is necessary is getting out of his casino.
He’s made a mistake, and before I’m done, he’ll realize it.
I’m going to break him for what he’s done.
Searching through the guests on the floor, I finally find Clara lying face down next to the heart bouquet I sent her. Her long hair fans across her face and shoulders, a halo of stark black against the whiteness of her shirt. The white knee-length sundress could double as a wedding dress.
The intel said she wasn’t marrying until tomorrow morning. Was I too late?
Did it even matter? She’s what I came for and all I intend to take from this party tonight.
Grabbing her arm, I hoist her off the floor.
Mikhail helps me heave her safely and securely over my shoulder.
She doesn’t weigh a lot, but she’s dead weight draped over my back.
One wrong move on my part could send her sliding off to the floor.
Pulling her left arm over my other shoulder, I hold on tightly to keep her from falling.
All the doors are left barred, and our faces remain covered until we hit the gambling floor.
Using the service halls, we make our way quickly to the rear exits.
I have three taxis waiting to take us away from the cameras before my twenty-minute window closes and the scrambling device in my pocket stops obstructing their ability to record our escape.
Mikhail and I ease Clara into the back of one cab, and as soon as I’m in beside her, he closes the door before running to another cab.
She’s a limp doll, her head lolling against the back of the seat while her limbs sprawl where they fell.
Her hand is tucked between our thighs, one finger twitching.
She’ll be coming to soon. The knockout agent doesn’t have a long lifespan once the gas dissipated. In here, where the air was fresh, she’d be waking before I get her home. That’s a problem, but one I’m ready for.
From inside my jacket, I pull out the backup plan I prepared. Swiveling sideways to face her, I push her short dress sleeve up to bare her shoulder and uncap the syringe with my teeth.
Her head lolls, and she opens her midnight black eyes long enough to look at me.
“Good evening,” I greet her.
She looks adorable, struggling to bring me into focus.
“Nuh,” she mumbles.
I don’t take offense. As much gas as she’s breathed in, she has to be seeing at least three of me. I doubt her befuddled brain is capable of making sense of anything, not even the needle as I swab her shoulder.
She cries when I stick her, depress the plunger, and pull the needle out. I doubt she felt so much as a pinch, and the sedative I’ve given her is already having an effect. Her eyes roll back in her head again, and her body grows limp as she slides sideways until her head hits my shoulder.
Her breathing relaxes, soft and shallow, but not too shallow. Her pupils are dilated. She’s out, with tears still clinging to her lashes.
Wrapping my arm around my prize, I hold her as she sleeps. She’s a comfortable armful, leaning against me, her hand on my thigh and her cheek pressed to my chest.
I’ve won again. Now all that’s left to do is get her home. The rest of my plan will set itself in motion as soon as Alviero wakes up.