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“Give them their winnings. Then escort them out back and break their legs.”
“Yes, sir.” He nods and slips away to do what he’s told. Or rather, he’ll find two of the biggest security guards in the place to do it for him.
I walk to the mezzanine rail and gaze around at the players below. The people who come to my casino are welcome to try their luck, but in the end, the house always wins.
When I turn back to Chiara, I see that she’s upending a shot glass into her mouth, and she swallows and makes a disgusted face. A second empty shot glass is at her elbow.
I stride over, snatch the glass from her hand and sniff it. “Tequila?”
Chiara sticks out her tongue and gags. “It’shorrible. I want another one.”
I was gone for two fucking minutes and she’s doing shots? She raises her hand to signal for the waiter but I push it down.
“You’ve had enough. Drink some water.” I take away her champagne flute and set her water glass in front of her.
“But I want tequila.”
“Why do you want tequila?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. The champagne was making my insides feel warm and bubbly and suddenly I wasn’t thinking so much about…about everything.”
I study her face carefully as I sit down. Her cheeks are thinner than they were on her seventeenth birthday and there are dark smudges beneath her eyes.
I pick up my champagne and take a large gulp. “What have you got to worry about?”
“Everything.”
“Don’t be. I worry about things so you don’t have to.”
“But it’s you who worries me.”
As I gaze at her, I see Ophelia in the curve of her cheek. The long line of her throat. Ophelia loved to talk back to me and tease me. She’s the only one who ever dared.
A soft, feminine voice whispers in my ear.Hasn’t she suffered enough?
Chiara leans her chin on her hand and gazes at me, her big blue eyes slightly unfocused. “You’re really cute, you know that?”
“Yes.”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course you do. All your money and looks, and you have to be a criminal. Why?”
Chiara’s other hand is on the table and I reach out and take it. She must be really drunk because she lets me. I hold her slender wrist in my hand and gaze at the delicate traceries of her veins. “Because people are envious and bloodthirsty and they will always try and take what you have.”
“So you take first?”
Always. If my enemy hasn’t protected what’s theirs, then they don’t deserve what they possess.
“You’re wicked, you know that?”
“And you’re beautiful. For a spoiled princess.”
“Maybe in your world I’m spoiled because I was loved and free and told I could be anything I wanted to be. In my world I’m lucky. Iwaslucky.” Her face falls and I watch despair wash over her. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I just wanted to forget for a while, but I can’t forget her. She loved me. I wasloved. You probably don’t know what that feels like.”
Chiara breathes in sharply, and I realize my hand has tightened viciously on her wrist. “Don’t make assumptions about me if you like your blood inside your veins.”
“Ow. Okay, okay.” She stares at her wrist in my grip. Clearly her inhibitions have been lowered because a moment later she asks, “Do you mean your sister loved you? The one who died?”
I’m so shocked that I loosen my grip. For fuck’s sake. I sent Ginevra around to Chiara to soften her up for me, not spill our family secrets.
