Chapter 13 Brooks
Brooks
Fifteen minutes later I’m back in the party, sitting at one of the poker tables and staring at a hand that would win me everything in any poker game in the world.
I slide a chip across the table to match someone else’s bet, then meet the guy’s eye, smirk, and slide another into the pot at the center of the surface.
“Raise,” I say.
I see the shift in his eye when he realizes I’m playing for keeps, and let my smile turn even more suggestive.
I don’t remember the man’s name–it wasn’t important when my father introduced him–but I know how powerful he is.
Dom said his name like he was the head of my father’s fucking cult, or some sort of god, and Dom doesn’t have that much respect for anyone.
Whoever this guy is, he’s important, and that’s the whole point of me being back in the party.
I got halfway up the stairs before I remembered that I was here for more than just gleaning information from Simon leBanc, and that I had the prime opportunity downstairs in my father’s den.
He’d gathered the most powerful men in his sphere and then given me free access to them, and there I was, running up the stairs and planning something for later that night rather than taking advantage of the opportunity I’d been given.
Cue me turning and heading back down the stairs and into the den again, and then straight toward the poker tables.
Because I’ve hung out with a lot of gangsters in my time, and I know that the easiest way to get information from them is to get them when they’re distracted.
Like when they’re playing poker.
And when there’s a lot of money on the line.
The man across from me smiles a dangerous, pointed smile and matches me with one chip, then slides a pile of $100 pieces across the deep green of the table.
“Raise,” he says.
A quick glance tells me he just put $1000 into the pot, and I have to force myself to stay still. That’s a lot of fucking money, and that means he’s either bluffing his ass off or has a hand he thinks can win.
He doesn’t. Nothing will beat my royal flush. But he’s welcome to try.
The rest of the men at the table variously check or fold, none of them calling or raising, and I tip my head at the man across from me, sharing a look with him that laughs at how chickenshit they all are.
None of them brave enough to match us, my look says.
None of them man enough to take you on, his look replies.
I lift one brow and give him a tiny smile, agreeing with him.
When it’s my turn again, I go all in, sliding all of my chips to the center of the table. When I look at him again, his eyes are so hot with lust he can barely contain himself, and I wonder for a moment whether he’s getting hard under the table at the thought of beating me.
I’m betting he gets even more turned on at the thought of me beating him... and him taking it out on me later.
I’ve known men like him.
They like to be beat, so they can blame the woman later, and make her pay.
And holy fuck do I like making men like that pay. I like it even more when I know that those men are part of an international sex trafficking ring that’s buying and selling helpless girls for purposes I’m trying very hard not to think about.
I want to dive over the table and slice this man’s tongue out of his head, then force him to watch as he bleeds to death from the mouth.
Instead, I’m going to play him to within an inch of his life and then make him tell me exactly who he is and what’s going on in this organization.
Death by blade or death by interrogation. At the end of the day, the outcome is the same. The second version just gets me more information.
Everyone else at the table has folded by this time and when his eyes go to the number of chips I just bet, he swears softly.
Which is when I hear the change in language.
I didn’t catch it before because we were only using one word at a time, and he was speaking English.
But the moment he’s stressed by my bet, he reverts to something else, and I’ve been around long enough to recognize the harsh, guttural tones of a Slavic language.
The letters that don’t come together the way they do in Latin languages.
The thick, throaty way his tongue caresses the words.
The way the sound of it runs up and down my spine, making me shiver with some unknown threat.
Russian.
I’d bet my entire life on it.
And if I didn’t already have chills racing across my skin, that would do it.
Because I have eyes on another Russian, still standing with Samantha and smiling his toothy smile.
For some reason, I thought he was the only one in here.
But the man across from me is evidently of the same breed, flying completely under the radar, and that makes me wonder how many fucking Russians are in this room.
I jump from there to wondering how deep my father is with them, and what that could possibly mean.
And then my phone starts buzzing and nearly gives me a heart attack.
I slide it out of my bra and put it in my lap, refusing to look at the message right now, and watch as my new Russian friend calls my best. He doesn’t raise again.
Time to show our hands. Metaphorically speaking.
He lifts one brow in my direction and I give him the smallest of smiles.
“Guests first,” I murmur.
He doesn’t smile back, but flips his hand over on the table. Three aces and two threes.
“Full house,” I say quietly. I turn my eyes to him. “Quite powerful.”
I pause long enough to see him smirk, thinking he’s got me, and then I flip my own cards over.
“Not powerful enough, as it turns out. But maybe next time.”
I watch him look at my cards, confused, and then grow angry, his face all thunderclouds and fury, and know that I was right about him wanting to destroy anyone who beats him. When he looks at me again his eyes are no longer full of lust.
They reflect only murder.
I smile softly at him, though, because he can’t lay a single hand on me, and he must know it.
I am, after all, the Landry heiress.
And I’m not sticking around here any longer, because I just got the text I’ve been waiting for. Only two people have the number to this phone, and them texting me means they’re in position outside my father’s mansion.
It’s time to run a rescue mission.
Pity I won’t be getting any information out of the Russian, but that can’t be helped.
I gather my winnings, drop them at the purser’s with a murmured demand that he put them on my tab, and then head for the door–and from there, the servant’s staircase at the back of the house.
Because I have a date in the basement, with girls who are a whole lot more important than that Russian asshole at the poker table.
***
I fly down the stairs toward the basement, losing my shoes as I go like fucking Cinderella. They’re gorgeous shoes and I hope for a moment that they’re not broken, but I don’t pause. I sure as hell don’t stop.
This mission is going to be easier without the shoes, anyhow. I’ll come back for them after I get those girls to safety.
If I’m still alive.
By the time I get to the basement I’m already working on a plan–which I didn’t bother with until right now–and I think I’ve got a good idea of what we’re going to do.
I sprint down the hallway that hugs one wall of the basement, making for the door at the end of it.
When I get there, I struggle with the lock for a good thirty seconds before I can get the fucking thing open, which is insane when this lock has to be opened and closed at least once a week.
If my father is storing girls down here, they have to get them in somehow, and it’s not through a fucking locked door.
When the lock finally gives way, it does it so quickly that I almost slip, all of my weight going to the side, but I keep my feet–thanks to not having 5-inche heels on–and throw the door open.
My cousin is standing on the other side, dressed in head-to-toe black, including a balaclava pulled up over her face, and behind her, Kate is peeking around her shoulder. Also dressed like a fucking ninja.
I stare at them for a full ten seconds, caught between shock and hysteria, before I finally get my head wrapped around the idea that those are my friends rather than random thieves or Instagram bikers who don’t want to reveal their faces.
I fly through the door and wrap them both in one hug, so happy to see them that for a second, I can’t even manage any words.
When I do, though, I know exactly what I want to say.
“What the fuck are you doing, wearing the most obvious disguises you could find?” I hiss. “You look like you’re dressed up for Halloween!”
“Better than you!” Camille hisses back. “What did you do, pick the brightest, sexiest dress you could find? How the fuck are you going to sneak around in that?”
I pull back quickly and take a look at what I’m wearing. Okay sure, it’s not the most subtle thing in the world–red silk and slinky as fuck–but it was the only thing I was given for tonight. And when it comes to dressing up for my father’s parties, I’m at his mercy.
I don’t bother with any of that, though.
We have more important things to worry about.
“Forget the dress,” Kate hisses. “How many girls are we talking about? You were short on details when we talked.”
I grab their hands and yank them through the door, already wondering if there are cameras above us. On the doorway. In the hall. In the rooms where the girls are being held.
I don’t think there are. I’ve been in their databases and seen their computers and I’ve never seen any surveillance of the girls. Maybe they don’t think the girls will act up enough to cause trouble, or, more likely, they don’t want any video record of what they’re doing.
But Christ, I hope I’m right about there not being video around here.
If there is, we’re going to need to move even more quickly than I thought before.
“I didn’t know numbers until tonight,” I say, moving quickly back down the hallway toward the rooms where I know they hold the girls.