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Maybe she was right on one level, but when the sunlight caught the darkening bruise on her cheekbone, the slow burn flared into something more insistent. Capturing her stubborn chin between my thumb and forefinger, I tugged her head back towards me.
‘You made it my business,’ I said, ‘when you came to my casino.’ And kissed me with an artless fervour I cannot forget.
My gaze strayed to her lips, the memory of her taste, so sweet and passionate, making hunger fire through me.
Her pupils dilated and a flush flamed over her pale skin, highlighting the bruise on her cheekbone. She tugged her chin out of my grasp, but not before I’d seen the flash of heat and panic.
It is pointless to deny it, bella, we will have to feed the hunger eventually, if we want this torture to stop.
But the sprinkle of freckles on her nose that made her look so young, and the purpling bruise that made her look so fragile, made it clear now wasn’t the time to pursue the overwhelming physical attraction we shared.
Protecting her from Carsoni and his goons and accounting for her debt to me would have to be handled first.
‘I told you, I’ll pay you back,’ she said, but I could hear the quiver of uncertainty.
‘How much do you owe Carsoni?’ I asked again.
Defiance sparkled in her emerald eyes. I found it strangely pleasing. ‘That’s none of your...’
‘Stop...’ I pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her protest ‘...being so stubborn. And let me help. You don’t want to sell your home, or you would have done it long before it came to this,’ I added, letting my thumb skim under the livid bruise blossoming on her cheekbone.
‘Why would you even want to help me?’ she asked. ‘I tried to rob you.’
Shame flickered across her face, and suddenly I knew there was more to the story of that fake bank draft than she was telling me. Had she even known the draft was fake? I wondered. If she had, why would she have stayed at the table so long—when our accounts department could discover the fraud at any time? She was an intelligent woman, however desperate she was. I didn’t believe she would have put herself in that situation knowingly.
‘How much do you owe Carsoni?’ I demanded for the third time, letting my impatience show.
She huffed out a breath but I could see the fight leave her as her shoulders slumped. ‘It was only two million to start with, but it’s over five million now,’ she said, the resignation making me want to do a lot more than just strangle Carsoni. The bastardo deserved to be hung, drawn and quartered.
‘We got a loan on the property to start with, but we could never pay off enough of it. And the debt just kept getting bigger and bigger.’
I forced myself not to react. But fury tightened around my chest as the desire to eviscerate Carsoni increased.
‘How was the debt incurred?’ I asked, because I was convinced now that it wasn’t her debt to repay.
She stared at me directly. ‘Actually it was incurred in The Inferno.’
‘How so?’ I asked.
She sighed, resignation clear in her voice when she began to talk.
‘My brother-in-law Jason and my sister Jude went on holiday to Monaco a year ago. They visited The Inferno. Jude still says she doesn’t know what happened to Jason that night. He was winning at first, but then the losses started to pile up. And he wouldn’t leave. Eventually he’d lost all their savings. They came back here devastated. I was angry with him, for losing everything and I told him so.’ I could hear the tinge of guilt in her voice, and it annoyed me. Why was she taking responsibility for this idiota? But I didn’t interrupt. The mention of The Inferno’s involvement had unsettled me.
We made every effort to spot problem or addicted gamblers and ban them. I prided myself on running an operation where people only parted with money they could afford to lose. It seemed we would need to tighten our regulations.
‘I still do not understand how your brother-in-law became indebted to Carsoni. The Inferno does not accept loans secured in his name.’
‘All I know,’ she continued, her voice dull and lifeless, ‘is that a week later Jason got a loan from Carsoni and returned to Monaco. I suppose he didn’t lose that money at The Inferno.’ Her shoulders bowed as if she were carrying a ten-ton boulder on her back, probably because that is exactly what she had been doing for over a year. ‘I guess he wanted to win the money back. We haven’t seen or heard from him since. Carsoni turned up a week after Jason disappeared with the credit agreement Jason had signed in Jude’s name.’
So the debt was her brother-in-law’s and by extension her sister’s... And yet she’d had no hesitation in taking it on.
Every one of my assumptions about her had been incorrect. She wasn’t spoilt, lazy or a coward. Why that should make my hunger for her more acute wasn’t something I wanted to think about—because it also made it more problematic.
The desire to throttle Carsoni and Edie’s idiot brother-in-law was much easier to explain. I despised men who preyed on women.
‘You should have told me all this when you arrived at The Inferno,’ I said, frustrated at the thought that she had come to the casino, and participated in the game, primarily to win back money which had been lost, in the first instance, at my roulette table.
I had no reason to feel guilty. I ran a business—if people chose to play, they had to deal with the consequences. But the qualification wasn’t doing a damn thing for the pang spreading across my breastbone and tightening around my ribs like a vice.
