Chapter Twelve
The Scarlet Deck was exactly where the grinning man had said it would be. More than that, it was the very first building I came across, looming out of the darkness as if it really had found me. Either that, or I was becoming increasingly gullible as the night wore on.
I’d thought the building’s exterior black pillars and carved gargoyles were decadent, but they paled into insignificance the moment I stepped inside. Black remained, though an absurd amount of gold overwhelmed it.
Filigree vines shaped like playing cards, hearts, and spades climbed toward monstrous crystal chandeliers, wrapping every column. Instead of candles, each arm held a glass globe filled with softly glowing smoke, as though they had trapped something luminous inside and forced it to burn forever.
Slow violin and piano drifted through the casino from hidden speakers, while lacquered black gaming tables trimmed in crimson velvet stretched beneath the chandeliers. Gleaming roulette wheels and pristine decks of cards offered a silent invitation.
The dealers matched the room’s extravagance, their embroidered coats threaded with gold and their fingers, ears, and throats heavy with jewelry.
Then there were the gamblers. Beautiful, almost to the point of unreality, they wore impeccably tailored coats and velvet gowns, diamonds and sapphires flashing beneath the lights. It felt less like entering a casino than stepping into another century.
Which, unfortunately, only made me painfully aware of what I was wearing. At least in the nightclub, the leather outfit had blended in. Here, among silk and velvet and diamonds, I stuck out like a sore thumb.
The music wasn’t loud enough to drown out the buzz of laughter and excitement as the guests drifted between tables.
I was so intent on learning the lay of the land that I didn’t notice the approaching woman until she was almost on top of me.
People in Wonderland really needed to stop materializing out of nowhere.
“Darling,” she said warmly, her accent somehow sounding vaguely French, Italian, and Russian all at once while also sounding like none of them. “You are new here, yes?”
I was still contemplating whether to answer that question honestly or lie and pretend I came here all the time, when she gave a tinkling laugh.
“Of course you are. The Duchess would have remembered you.”
“The Duchess?”
She placed a manicured hand against my chest, scarlet nails glinting beneath the chandelier light. The dress she wore matched them perfectly, crimson fabric clinging to her curves like liquid silk, and an ample amount of cleavage spilling over the top.
I stared.
Not because breasts suddenly interested me, but because their continuing battle against gravity deserved respect.
“Me,” she said with another musical laugh, one scarlet-tipped finger trailing at a snail’s pace over my breastbone before it dropped to her side. “I’m the Duchess. This is my establishment.”
I guess the red ensemble made sense then, given the place was called The Scarlet Deck.
“If you prefer something less theatrical,” she continued, “you may call me Dahlia. Dahlia Dumont.”
“Lysander.”
“Well, Lysander,” she said, taking hold of my hand and gripping it so tightly that I knew any argument would be fruitless. “You are in luck. I am free to be your guide tonight. I will show you how things work around here and which are the most fun games to play.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I said quickly. “I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.”
“Better than spending time with a handsome man?” She laughed again, apparently delighted by the idea.
“Sadly, no. This place practically runs itself. And what better way to supervise than from the heart of the action? We’ll get you some chips…
my treat, of course, and then you can go wild.
Who knows, you might win a fortune. And I won’t even ask for any of it. ”
Alarm bells rang as soon as the words “my treat” had left her lips. “I have money.”
“You do?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Huh! Well, isn’t that something?”
I pulled the gold coin from my pocket and showed it to her. Something unreadable flickered across her face the moment she saw it, amusement dimming for just a fraction of a second.
“I don’t know what it’s worth,” I admitted.
“A lot,” she said smoothly.
I’d like to say there was some comfort in finding out my sexual performance was at least worth something substantial, but I was struggling to see it that way. I recognized, though, that I’d probably feel a damn sight worse had that not been the case.
Dahlia swept me toward a nearby office before I could ask further questions, where a bored-looking man sitting behind a counter exchanged the coin for an overflowing bucket of chips with all the enthusiasm of someone processing dry cleaning.
I barely managed a thank you before Dahlia hooked an arm through mine and steered me back into the casino proper.
“I’m probably underdressed for this place,” I said apologetically. Instant regret at pointing it out hit when she seized on the opportunity to look me over, her gaze lingering long enough to make me acutely aware of the leather trousers hugging my hip bones.
She smiled. “Don’t be silly. We don’t have a dress code. If we did, you’d never have made it through the door.”
“No? Because it definitely looks like you do.”
Bare shoulders rose in an elegant shrug.
“Looks can be deceiving.” Releasing my arm, she turned to face me with a beaming smile.
It wasn’t quite up to Tom Cheshire’s standards, but it came close.
“Now,” she said brightly, “tell me your vice? Dice? Cards? Or are you brave enough to trust your destiny to the spin of a wheel?”
“Actually, I’m looking for someone.”
“Everyone here is looking for something or someone.”
Before I could elaborate, she steered me toward a card table already occupied by five players.
“Everybody,” Dahlia announced cheerfully, “this is Lysander. It’s his first time here.”
“Hi,” I muttered.
A few murmured greetings followed, though most of the players barely glanced up from their cards, their concentration unnervingly intense.
“Warren White,” I said as the dealer placed two cards in front of me and Dahlia bid two chips on my behalf before I could protest. “That’s who I’m looking for.”
“Blond hair,” she mused, “blue eyes.”
“Yes!” A bubble of excitement rose in my chest. “He was kidnapped.” The man beside me snorted with laughter. I turned on him immediately. “You think kidnapping’s funny?”
Dahlia patted my shoulder soothingly. “Shush now. Let’s not get upset when we don’t need to. Bernard clearly thought you were joking.” Her smile sharpened slightly as she focused on him. “Apologize, Bernard.”
He lifted his gaze to mine, not looking sorry at all. “Sorry.”
“And now,” Dahlia continued pleasantly, “find yourself another table.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes. When Dahlia met his stare without blinking, he gathered his dwindling chips and stood. “Yes, Duchess.”
“There,” Dahlia said brightly once he’d gone. “No more unpleasantness. Go on with your story.”
“He was abducted,” I said. “And it led me here. You said you knew him?”
Instead of answering, Dahlia gestured at my cards. “You should pick one up.”
I did. The Jack of Hearts stared back at me.
“Oh, dear.” Dahlia gave a dramatic sigh. “Bad luck. You’ve lost..”
“Warren?” I prompted.
“Another hand first,” she said. “I’d hate for you to abandon me the moment you get what you want.“
When she put it like that, it sounded rather self-serving. There was no harm in playing along for a few more minutes.
At first, I assumed we were playing blackjack, but the rules shifted constantly.
Numbers changed value between rounds. Certain cards suddenly meant entirely different things depending on arbitrary conditions no one explained.
Every time I reached a point where I thought I had some basic understanding of the game, the logic twisted itself into something new.
And somehow, every variation favored the house.
Whenever I tried to voice my concerns, Dahlia simply smiled sympathetically and told me these things took time to learn.
By the time she dragged me to the dice tables, nearly half my chips were already gone.
The new game made even less sense. The substitution of some numbers for symbols complicated what should have been simple.
The symbols substituted for numbers changed, just like the rules had in the previous game.
There were moments I genuinely thought I was winning, only for someone to explain calmly why I had instead lost. The entire casino felt designed to keep outsiders permanently off balance.
Eventually Dahlia led me over to a wheel that bore more resemblance to a giant ornate clock than the roulette wheel I’d expected. I won back a handful of chips there, though I couldn’t have explained how even at gunpoint.
It didn’t last, and before long the bucket sat empty in my hands. Relief washed over me. No more having to pretend I understood these stupid games.
“Well,” Dahlia said lightly as we stepped away from the table, “you can’t win them all.”
“I guess not.” I waited, hoping she’d finally circle back to Warren now that I’d humored her for long enough.
It didn’t happen. “Warren White?” I prompted pointedly.
She nodded. “Let’s speak privately.” She unlocked a side door and guided me down a corridor into an office that looked considerably more functional than the one in the nightclub.
Papers covered the desk in organized stacks, while a bank of surveillance monitors displayed live footage from the casino floor.
No one sat watching them, which led me to believe that would probably have been Dahlia’s role had she not spent time with me instead.
I automatically did a quick scan of the room for cameras.
If there were any, they were better hidden than in the nightclub.
“I think,” Dahlia said thoughtfully once the door closed behind us, “I may have confused the man you’re looking for with someone else. After all, how would it make sense for me to know a kidnapped man from the mainland?”
“Because nothing here makes sense.”
Her lips twitched. “Everything here makes sense,” she corrected softly. “You simply haven’t learned how things work yet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with Wayne.”
“Warren,” I corrected. “His name is Warren.”
“Of course… Warren.”
Something about the way she said it told me she knew full well who he was, but she wouldn’t admit that no matter how hard I poked and prodded at her.
“I should go,” I said. “I need to keep looking.”
“You need to settle your debt first.”
She said it so casually that I thought I’d misheard her. “My what? I paid for the chips.”
“Oh, darling.” There was a pitying look in Dahlia’s eyes. “You paid for half of them,” she explained gently, as though speaking to a child. “We loaned the rest to you. You didn’t win, so now you need to pay them back.”
I stared at her.
“You could have mentioned that.”
“I could have,” she agreed with a careless shrug. “But it slipped my mind.”
Rage bubbled up so fast it almost made me dizzy. “How was I supposed to win? The games made no fucking sense.”
“They make perfect sense to everyone else.”
“Right. So I’m just stupid. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Of course not. It just wasn’t your day today.”
“And how am I supposed to repay this debt?” The question tasted bitter because I already knew the answer.
I’d learned Wonderland’s preferred currency in the nightclub just a couple of hours ago.
Learned it. Digested it. And vowed not to get caught out like that again. Only to fall for yet another trick.
Dahlia stepped closer, fingers smoothing over the leather stretched across my chest. Her scarlet nails hooked briefly beneath the edge of my vest, exposing the tattoo beneath before she let the fabric fall back into place.
“With you?” I asked. I didn’t even know if I could get it up for a woman.
My experiences with the opposite sex comprised a few teenage fumbles before I realized hard pecs did a lot more for me than breasts.
I’d never looked back—boys turning into men as I aged along with them.
Maybe that was the idea. A debt I could never repay because I couldn’t get hard enough to see the job through. An excuse to keep me here forever.
Dahlia patted the leather the same way you might pat a dog. “No,” she murmured. “Not with me.” Relief and dread tangled unpleasantly together in my gut. “You have an admirer.”
I blinked at her. “An admirer?” The word sounded absurd under the circumstances. “Who?”
Rather than answer, Dahlia guided me toward a door at the back of her office. “Go through here. He’ll be waiting.”
“He? Who’s he?”
But she simply smiled and nudged me over the threshold into a narrow corridor with stairs descending into darkness at the end. The door slammed shut behind me before I could ask another question. At least nobody had handcuffed me. And I could still see.
No sooner had I thought that than the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed everything so completely it felt physical, thick enough to choke on. I spun immediately, fumbling for the handle behind me, but the door refused to budge no matter how hard I rattled it.
Locked.
“Bitch,” I muttered.
No answer came back.
Only silence.
It left me with no other direction to go but forward, deeper into the blackness.