Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
They’d been playing for half an hour. After two more dummy hands, which Gino had easily won, he’d decreed she was now ready for their tournament and divided all the chips in the carousel equally between them.
Right from the start, Francesca had known he was playing to win. His play was aggressive, from tripling the stake before any of the table cards had been laid to his relentless use of going all-in, forcing her to fold. His pile of chips was now well over twice the size of hers, but she was unfazed.
“Minimum stake is now sixteen chips,” he informed her as he scooped his latest pile of winnings.
She shrugged. He’d laid out the rules before they started, so there was no point in bitching. Every four hands, the minimum bet increased. Her decreasing pile would now diminish even more rapidly.
Or so he no doubt thought. And maybe those thoughts were right, but Francesca was a quick learner, and was coming to recognise his offensive play as a deliberate intimidation she’d allowed herself to fall for.
There was no way he was being continuously dealt better hands than herself, but his aggression meant she folded without ever seeing what cards he had.
If she was losing, it was because she was letting herself be intimidated.
It was her turn to make the first bet. Between her two cards and the three table cards, she was sitting on an Ace high, which was rubbish, but stuff it – time to match his tactics.
Bold as brass, she pushed twenty chips forward, the first time she’d made her opening move with more than the minimum bet.
His eyebrow rose, but he matched her and turned the fourth table card.
She was still on an Ace high, but she looked long and hard between her cards and the table cards, and pushed forward another twenty.
He matched it and raised it another twenty.
She didn’t hesitate to match it. When the final table card was played, she grinned and took a drink of her bourbon and lemonade. “All-in.”
He looked at the cards in his hand and then looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Take it.”
She grinned. “Thank you!” Her massive bluff made her diminished pile look a little healthier.
Not wanting to push her luck too quickly, she folded early in the next hand, but then, in the following hand, picked up two sevens.
On the table were two aces and a three. Gino bet aggressively, putting forty chips forward.
Instead of folding as she always did, she not only matched him but raised him.
His eyes narrowed again. He matched her raise. She turned the next table card. A seven. This gave her three sevens. Only if Gino had an ace in his hand could he beat her.
This time he bet sixty chips. Her heart now pounding, she matched it, but her nerve failed her in raising it further.
She turned the final card. A six.
He didn’t hesitate. “All-in.”
She stared hard at him, thinking even harder. He needed an ace in his hand to beat her. That was all. If she went all-in and lost, then it was game over. She would lose the bet.
But if she didn’t go for it, he would likely wipe her out soon after.
He raised an eyebrow, daring her to take him on. You can’t beat me, that raised eyebrow said.
She raised her own eyebrow back at him. Oh really? Well, I beat you in getting you to play this tournament in the first place…
“I’ll see you,” she said. And then smiled.
If it was her last smile of the night, then so be it.
It was worth it just to see that twitch beneath his eye, and suddenly she was certain she’d called his bluff.
If she had, he had to pay her the same number of chips as she currently had left.
Add that to their current gambling pot, and she would have enough chips to take him on properly.
He turned his cards over. Two sixes. With the six on the table, that gave him three sixes.
Her smile widening, she turned her two sevens over. Her three sevens beat his three sixes.
The game was on.
Gino couldn’t believe what was happening.
Twenty minutes ago, he’d been only a hand or two away from certain victory.
He’d seen plenty of reversals of fortune in this game over the years, but never had his own fortune reversed so quickly.
His game had gone to pieces, and now Francesca’s pile of chips was twice the size of his own.
This had never happened to him before. He didn’t always win at poker, but the men he played with knew the game inside out and played games as good as his own. It was always tightly fought, but win or lose, he was always in control of his own game.
Focus, he commanded himself.
It was a command he’d made a handful of times in a handful of minutes, since realising victory was slipping from his grasp.
He couldn’t lose. Mustn’t lose. He needed to take back control, not just of his game but of the game. Needed to stop letting Francesca get into his head.
But he’d let her get into his head when he’d accepted the damned bet in the first place.
For the first half hour, she’d been easy to read and anticipate, but then she’d started getting into the rhythm of the game, and now he couldn’t read her at all.
Whatever she was dealt, she turned the cards over and smiled.
When he raised the stakes, she giggled, whether she matched him or not.
But it wasn’t just her body language; it was the way she was playing and the glee she was playing it with.
She’d relaxed, and now she was enjoying herself, and he had no clue whether the hand she’d just raised the stakes to a hundred chips beat his two pairs.
Worse, he couldn’t decide whether it was better to call her bluff or just fold.
In this game, as with all games, he trusted his instinct, but in this game, his instinct had become shot.
He threw his cards on the table. “I fold.”
She grinned and used her arm to sweep the pile of chips to her overflowing pile.
It was her turn to deal.
He looked at his cards, and his chest loosened. A pair of aces. When another ace appeared on the table, his chest loosened that little bit more. By the time the fifth card had been turned over, he was sitting on three aces and a pair of fours. A full house.
Fuck it.
He looked her straight in the eye. “All-in.”
She smiled. “See you.”
His heart beating as hard as it had ever beaten, he turned his cards over.
Her smile became rigid. She drained her drink. And then she turned her pair of fours over.
Gino felt the entirety of his body freeze. He stared at her overturned cards, unable to even blink.
Over the roar of blood pounding in his head, she said, in a voice that sounded as stunned at his frozen body felt, “I do believe four of a kind beats a full house, Mr Vicario.”
She’d won. She could scarcely believe it. Somehow, Francesca had overturned the seemingly insurmountable odds and beaten him, and the longer the silence in the wake of her victory went on, the harder her heart pounded.
Slowly, very slowly, Gino lifted his gaze to hers. Disbelief rang heavily from his eyes.
She swallowed her constricted throat. “Think of the bright side,” she whispered. “You were due a loss. Better you lose to me now than my cousins later.”
There was an almost imperceptible shake of his head before he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
When he looked back at her, there was an intensity in his stare. “You don’t have to claim your winnings.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.” His voice was hoarse. “This is no way for you to…”
“Lose my virginity?” she supplied quietly when it seemed he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
He winced but held her stare. “This isn’t right, Francesca. I understand why you’re angry with your family for arranging that marriage for you, but as a form of punishment, this is going to hurt you more than anyone.”
“No it isn’t, and this has nothing to do with my family. They will never know. No one will know. I will never tell a soul.”
“You will know. Your soul will know. In a decade from now, you will look back on this night and hate yourself for throwing away something so precious on a man like me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I will look back in a decade’s time and smile to remember the night I gave myself to a man who makes my blood zing.”
“Francesca…” He said her name like a tortured sigh before his jaw clenched and his back straightened.
Refilling both their glasses, his stare hardened along with his voice.
“I never answered your question about how many women have slept in my bedroom. Well, there is no answer because there is no way for me to keep count. I couldn’t even tell you all their names.
Maybe not even half their names. The time you’ve been my hostage is the longest I’ve gone without sex in nearly two decades.
Ask anyone about me, and you will hear words like debauched and playboy, terms that are undoubtedly true.
If I’d met you in one of my nightclubs, I would have hit on you.
I wouldn’t have had sex with you there, but if you’d been receptive, I’d have arranged to take you home with me, and if you’d been with a friend and she’d been receptive, I’d have taken her home too. The two of you together.”
Francesca didn’t so much listen to his words as feel them. Each syllable of Gino’s intensely delivered words added to the burn scorching her cheeks and the weight of her heart that felt like it was wobbling rather than beating.