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This was where I was from, and like it or not it was where my heart longed to be. So, unbeknownst to any of my family members, I’d started sending men of my own back here over the last year or so to gather information on potential business interests to acquire if my urge to return came to fruition..I had contacts of my own here as well, one in particular, a young man with sharp ears and eyes who was loyal to a fault and one I’d come to trust more than family.
.
I watched my brother slide a stack of chips to the center of the table. He did it slowly, like he was savoring the sound.
Fuck, I hate him.
Normally, I loved to beat him in cards, but I’d always preferred to do it slowly. A grand here, a hundred and fifty there; death by a thousand cuts.
But tonight, it was time for something bigger. He’d upset Valeria and he was going to pay for it. It was time to bleed him dry.
I let him build up his confidence, losing hands on purpose. Setting up his wins. Whether the other bone-headed dumb shits at the table were doing the same, I couldn’t be sure. Probably.
They were his hired thugs after all, his posse of muscle, every one of them dumber than the next. He called them his friends, but it’s a shitty friend that needs a paycheck.
But even stupid animals hate an asshole. And judging by their glances at one another, they had a good idea of what I was up to and they made no moves to stop me.
Petre stacked his chips up in front of him in organized and irritating little towers. As he ran his finger over the ridges on the chips, his pinkie ring glittered in the firelight. Gold with a fat ruby in the center.
I hated that ring.
It had been my grandfather’s, from whom my brother had clearly inherited the asshole gene. My grandfather had gotten his throat cut in a back alley in Bucharest. We never knew who did it because literally everybody hated him enough to kill him.
Just like my goddamned brother.
While he was up, feeling cocky and invincible, I plied him for information about Valeria. I needed to know more; I needed to know everything.
“Where’d she go?”
My brother raised his eyes to me. For one instant, I could tell he was thinking where did who go?
What a dick.
“How the fuck do I know? Back home or back to her prissy little boarding school,” Petre said, adding more chips to the pile. “Saint…Whatever the hell it’s called.”
Saint Theodora’s was its name.
I’d seen it, but only from a distance. My mother had gone there herself, and ironically, had told me stories about the place this evening. I’d gone to dine with her rather than attend the fake-as-shit engagement celebration meal.
Apparently, the school might look pretty damned prim and proper, but they taught their girls to fence, to fight, to be strong. “To prepare its girls for all that life may bring to their doorstep,” said my mother, with a proud smile.
It was named for Saint Theodora, who’d taken on her father’s oath to protect the local village against attackers who’d besieged their homes, despite the near certainty of defeat. Like her knight father before her, she’d given her life in defense of the weak and vulnerable, barricading everyone inside the church and then riding out to meet the oncoming tide. It’s said that she slew so many, they gave up and retreated, and she was canonized first by the villagers and then by the Pope in honor of her sacrifice.
Fitting.
The idea of Valeria—exquisite, goddess-like Valeria—married to my brother pumped my blood full of rage and jealousy. But I suppressed my anger for now.
I kept my cool. And waited.
Intentionally blowing my admittedly decent hand, I made a show of tossing my cards, like I was fed up with all my ‘bad luck’. My brother fucking loved it, and took my pile of chips over to his side of the table.
Time to go in for the kill.
While the dealer shuffled the deck, I finished off my scotch with a hard swallow. Normally, if I chose to drink, I’d chose whiskey, so leave it to my brother to only ever have scotch when he knew I would be around.
Of course, I could have ordered a servant to go fetch whiskey from my father’s cellar if I’d wanted to. Instead, I flicked my chin at the maid to get her attention.
She knew me well enough to know what I wanted, and she turned quickly to make me a coffee at the sideboard. I hated even the barest alcohol buzz when I was at the table; hated the way it blurred my logic, hated the idea of being the least bit sloppy. If ever there was a time to be on my game, this was it.
