Chapter 2
I rummage through my clutch while the blackjack dealer, my twin brother, Adam, false shuffles the decks. He’s so damn good at what he does. But he should be: he was taught by the best. We both were.
The pit boss comes to the table and stands behind Adam, his arms crossed and watching his every move. Makes me so fucking nervous when they do that, but I keep my cool. It’s what I’ve been trained to do.
The pit boss is looking at my chips instead of my cleavage. Dammit. I should have worn the red dress with the plunging neckline. “Lucky night for you, huh?”
I give him my most seductive smile and innocently shrug. “Lady luck, I guess.”
He smirks. “Right. You have lady luck on your side every time you walk through our doors.”
Shit… damn… fuckity fuck. He recognizes me?
He seems confident in his memory of seeing me prior to tonight. To deny being here would be to overplay my hand. It would definitely raise a red flag.
“Not my first time here. Or my first time to win.”
“It certainly isn’t,” he says, one brow lifted.
“Not really sure why I’m back tonight. I lost enough the last time I was here that I should have learned my lesson.” Maybe that’ll throw him off of my scent.
“How much did you lose?”
I roll my eyes upward and shake my head. “So much that I can’t bear to repeat it.”
“Um-hum.”
Adam slightly narrows his eyes. Not enough that many people would even notice. But I notice. And I know what it means: he’s silently telling me to shut my mouth.
And he’s right. Saying too much is how one fucks himself.
I bring my wine glass to my lips and go still when I see a suited man approaching the pit. The guy is easily one of the sexiest men that I’ve ever seen in my life.
He’s every bit of ten years older than me, maybe fifteen, but that doesn’t make him one bit less attractive. Hell, I think that the scattered gray hairs at his temples and in his facial scruff makes him sexy as hell.
I’ve always had a thing for older men.
I straighten my spine and squeeze my arms in, pushing my boobs upward so they’ll spill a little more over the sweetheart neckline of my black dress. I definitely should have worn the red fuck-me dress tonight.
The pit boss leaves his place behind Adam and goes to the man, leaning close to say something into his ear. The two exchange words for a moment and then as quickly as he appeared, Mr. Sexy is gone.
Where the hell did he go?
The pit boss returns to my table and looks at my brother. “Time to rotate.”
Dammit. I wasn’t finished.
My brother places his hands together and then turns them upward, the customary gesture for a departing dealer.
The new dealer takes my brother’s spot, but the pit boss doesn’t take his eyes off me. And that makes me super nervous.
“Mr. Broussard, the owner of the casino, would like to see you.”
He nods, and I turn to find two security guards standing behind me… blocking my escape route from the table. “The owner of the casino? Why in the world would he want to see me?”
“I think you know why he wants to see you.” He passes a towel to the new dealer who takes it and covers my chips. “We’ll keep these safe for you while you’re gone.”
What do I do? I can’t run. Hell, I can’t even look at my brother for a cue.
I’m so fucked.
I stand, and my knees nearly buckle beneath me. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”
“You can use the restroom in Mr. Broussard’s suite.”
Mr. Broussard’s suite?
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
I walk with security to the elevator, but inside all I want to do is cut my losses and make a break for the exit. I’m wearing thousand-dollar Jimmy Choos, but I’m willing to ditch them if it means getting a clean getaway.
What would Dad do?
Dad wouldn’t do anything because Dad wouldn’t get caught.
We rise in the elevator to the top floor and security leads me down a long hallway—a very long hallway in which we don’t meet a soul. No witnesses.
The guard rings a bell and Mr. Sexy from downstairs opens the door.
“Miss Grant. Please… come in.”
Holy shit. Mr. Sexy is the Tristan Broussard, the owner of the casino, and he knows my name? This can’t be good. No way, no how.
I pass through the doorway of his suite and an internal distress signal is alarming. It’s telling me to run because nothing good can come from being alone with this man behind a closed door where no one can hear me scream.
“That’ll be all, gentlemen. Thank you.”
I look at Tristan Broussard’s hand on the door handle. He’s about to close the door, and there’s this moment where I consider shoving him aside and fleeing. Except I know that it would be useless; the two goons who just delivered me to him won’t let me go without a chase.
The door closes, and so does my opportunity to run.
Tristan Broussard and I are alone. He probably believes that I’m frightened and nervous about being behind a closed door with him. He isn’t wrong.
I stand in front of him speechless. I tell myself that it’s so I don’t incriminate myself, but the truth is that I’m scared shitless.
“I believe I’ll have a whiskey. Would you care for one?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
He gestures toward the sofa. “Have a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”
Oh shit.
I sit on the edge of the sofa with my legs turned and pressed together so that he can’t see up my dress. Now I’m actually thankful to not be wearing the short, tight red fuck-me dress.
“I can’t for the life of me imagine why the owner of a casino would have a lot to discuss with me.”
He chuckles. “Really, Miss Grant? You’re going to pretend like you don’t know why I had you brought to me?”
Deny. Deny. Deny. “I have no idea, but I’m dying to find out why.”
A lopsided grin spreads. “You have an exceptional poker face. You don’t exhibit a single physical sign of nervousness or deception. How long did it take you to master that?”
I may not appear nervous, but I’m dying inside.
I giggle to make myself seem younger. More innocent. More believable. “I’m just a girl who came in to play a little bit of blackjack.”
Tristan Broussard turns up his glass and drinks half of the whiskey in it before locking his eyes on mine.
Making me super uncomfortable, which I’m certain is part of his plan.
“Do you really think that I don’t know a card counter when I see one?
A dice slider? A past poster? A dealer who false shuffles every time that a certain blackjack player is at his table? ”
I’m busted, and so is Adam from the sound of it. I don’t think that things can get worse at this point. But I have to stand by rule number one: deny, deny, deny.
“As a casino owner I’d guess that you and your people had better know those things, or you’re going to get ripped off pretty often.”
“I’ve been ripped off by you and your brother… using your father’s skills.”
Oh, this is far worse than I thought.
I shrug. “I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about it, Mr. Broussard.”
“I’m not a fool. I don’t expect you to admit to anything, but you should be aware that I have footage of everything you and your brother have been doing. And you know that I’m not bluffing.”
I’m sure that he does.
Adam and I pushed beyond reasonable limits. We won too much, too quickly. Captured the attention of the wrong people. We didn’t stay below the radar, and now we’ve exposed ourselves. We won’t be able to stay here now. Once exposed, it’s time to move on.
I see now that there’s no point in pretending that I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m caught, and we both know it. To continue my denial will only insult him.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not interested in your brother. But you… I’m very interested in you.”
Tristan Broussard is a gambling man. Maybe we can work out some kind of deal.
“Interested in me how?”
“You’ve taken a hundred thousand dollars from me that you didn’t fairly win. You as good as stole that money from me. And now you have a debt to repay.”
I disagree. I might not have won the money fair and square through the eyes of a casino owner, but I worked for that money. Hard. It took a long time to accumulate that hundred grand. Months.
But the law is on his side. I’m actually lucky that he had me brought up here rather than just turning me over to the authorities.
“I have most of the money, but I’ll need a little time to get the rest.”
Thank God that I didn’t spend all of the money already.
“I don’t want the money back.”
What? What casino owner doesn’t want back the money that he feels was taken from him unfairly? “I don’t understand.”
He smiles. Not a smile of happiness. Not a smile of contentment. It can only be described as deep-rooted satisfaction. A smile like that coming from a man like Tristan Broussard frightens me. Mostly because I suspect that very few things bring him true satisfaction.
“I’ve decided that I’m going to keep you.”
Keep me? There aren’t a lot of ways of misinterpreting what those words could imply, but I hope like fuck that I am misunderstanding his intentions. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve decided that you’re going to be my sub until you’ve repaid your debt.”
“A substitute for what?”
“Not a substitute. A submissive.”
Submissive? Fuck. I only know of one thing that he could mean. This man must be a Dominant. A sexual deviant.
“You’re out of your mind if you think that I’m doing kinky shit with you tonight.”
“Do you really think that you could possibly repay a hundred thousand dollars with one night of kinky shit?” He chuckles. “And I don’t recall giving you a choice.”
“This is the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard of. You don’t get to keep a human being because you decide that it’s what you want.”
“I’d love to hear what you plan to do to stop me.”
Okay. Now I’m starting to get scared. Because if anyone has enough money and power to make something like that happen, it’s Tristan Broussard.
He takes what he wants. That’s what men in his position do.