Chapter 44
Hand after hand is dealt. Cards are clutched tight to chests in a gentle fan, or secreted to the table with only a corner lifted to reveal suit and stature.
I’m a cards on the table guy, not seeing the point of holding in your hand what is never yours to begin with.
Cards were just a representation of value at that time.
You don’t own them; they own you. The similarities between these spades and diamonds and Sabrina Broe.
She’s paid to cater to my whims, pander to my requests and present a meeting between print media and finance if the occasion demands.
Paid by me, for me. The illusion of us being any more was exactly that.
Her care and attention, simply an extension of the deposits landing in her bank account every month.
I don’t have friends; I have staff. I don’t have family; I have foes, and the only value I display now is the woman done up to resemble a dollar whore over my shoulder.
The woman I was planning on taking around the world on a yacht once I extracted myself from Mercer Media with an infinite check of my own.
The same woman who disappeared for two fucking hours today, only to visit Isaac Grenfer in his hotel room.
If it were business, Trystan would accompany her.
If it were business, it wouldn’t be clandestine and lied about.
If it were business, the deal would already be done, and we’d be back on the jet toward New York.
It didn’t matter that her pussy wasn’t dripping or swollen when she returned to me; she could have used her mouth on him, or perhaps his dick is slender and doesn’t fill her the way mine does.
The evidence I need lies in what she wouldn’t tell me.
The evidence I received came in the form of her silent omission.
And for that, she will walk a similar path to those who have wronged me.
As will Zac Grenfer. Smug fucking asshole.
He’s older than me by almost a decade and a half.
Abe made buckets of money from television, but it pales compared to Mercer money.
Why would she put everything on the line for someone like Zac?
His short ebony curls and light brown skin are handsome.
Is it that he doesn’t hail from roots of toxicity and scandal?
It doesn’t matter now; the river cards will turn just like she did.
“Mr. Mercer, a word, please?”
I gaze up into his chocolate eyes, earnest and pleading. Here to gloat? Perhaps, only he doesn’t reek of any arrogance. He’s more insular, more protective.
“No.”
“Mason, please. I—”
“I said, no.”
Trystan rises from his plush chair, buttoning his jacket and following the insistent man into the anteroom foyer.
Through it all, Bri stands statuesque and still, ignoring the raised glasses proffered her way in silent invitation before they meet meagre lips through sinister sips.
And I sat through it all. Impervious. Oblivious. Furious.
“How much, darlin’?”
“Fuck off.” To her credit, only her mouth moved.
“Oh, come on now, don’t be like that. Here I was thinking you might be my good luck charm. Red is your color, darlin’. Mmm, mmmm, mmmm you look good in red. I bet you’ll feel good bouncing on my enormous cock.”
“Enough!”
When Trystan returns, he is a picture of passive obedience.
Christ, if he had any objections, he would’ve voiced them when Bri came out of her bedroom in nothing but tensioned string and scraps of satin.
He remained mute because he knew his place, and he knew his place was with me.
My loyal subject. My soldier. The only one I can count on after all this time.
Inhaling sharply, he touches my left cuff in a gesture for my attention, but not to raise alarm with others.
“I need to tell you something,” he begins, his eyes on the dealer readying the next round.
“Later.” And fuck me if this scotch isn’t going down particularly well tonight.
I have another, and another, and another.
I sink so much scotch down my throat that the burn ebbs into a dull ache.
The amber darkens to a color of mud and muck and all things wretched.
Isaac’s eyes meet mine across the table, flinty and furious.
I lift my glass to him in silent salute, while I lean into my neighbor and whisper words I’ll regret until my dying day.
Words that buck and roil in my stomach when they should be drowned by the acid and simmered into an angry place so deep they can never escape.
But no, I lean in and whisper to him, my breath as potent as his, since he’s been matching me drink for drink.
“I’ve seen you looking at her. She’s yours if you want her.
And in that dress, I bet she’s both naked and dripping underneath those scraps.
Go on, test her out. You know you want to. Sabrina Broe, rhymes with hoe.”
In a flash he’s spinning in his chair, half leaning, half tipping.
His arm stretches toward the twist just above Bri’s navel.
She’s naked underneath. I know because I fucked her deep and raw before she dressed and watched her struggle with different combinations of skimpy underwear before giving up entirely.
Her plaintive eyes begged me to choose another gown or leave her in the room.
Mine flashed back at her pooling ones, daring her to decide and spare me from doing it myself.
The decision that Trystan should have made years ago but never made.
That’s because quitting is for the weak.
Like poverty and obesity, and homosexuality, right, Dad?
Sabrina didn’t quit; she lifted her chin with a defiance I’d underestimated.
How very apt that this steely backbone reveals itself just before we hit a makeshift casino.
Today will go down in the annals of history as a day of revelations.
His lecherous sneer joins Bri’s shriek of protest as he fists the fabric and snaps it clean in two.
Ribbons of scarlet flutter to the floor like tears of blood, leaving her naked and humiliated.
Her tiny, inadequate hands flare to cover herself while her heels struggle for purchase on the carpet.
In the next instant, she’s tumbling backward while he looms over her.
His potent breath comes in rapid pants while she struggles to cover herself and slide backward out of his grasp.
The next actions meld into a cacophony and furious movement.
A dinner jacket is hurriedly removed and thrown over the stricken woman.
An arm at her elbow, aiding her to stand and adjust the jacket around her shoulders to hide her breasts and exposed pussy from view, a hand at the neck of her assailant, thrusting him toward an ornate fireplace, and a balled fist cracking into the side of my face.
Men are shouting; chips clatter as they fall from assembled stacks only to tumble onto the felt below.
Voices raise in pitch and volume, and the whisper of coated cards sliding against each other as men stand from seated positions, erupting in meshed fury.
I did this. I brought down the house of cards so meticulously crafted over months and months of careful attention, just as my mother and father had commandeered that chessboard thirty years ago.
I’m no better than the sum of their vile, shameful actions. I’m worse. So much fucking worse.