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Ignoring the heat rising in my face, I continue. “Okay, how many questions have I asked you?”
He strums a thick finger against the bar at a rate three times slower than my heartbeat. He cuts a knuckle along the length of his cheekbone before saying with finality, “Twelve.”
I exhale so hard the stray hairs framing my face flutter. “Shit,” I mutter under my breath, scanning the room.
Raphael regards me with quiet glee. He picks up his tumbler, swirls the liquid around with a slow roll of his wrist. “Feeling the heat?”
“Yeah, because you’re a fucking cheat,” I snap back.
The swirling stops. “I’m sorry?”
By the chill threading through his words, I know replying with apology accepted wouldn’t be the smartest decision. “You heard. You’re a cheat.”
He sets the glass down. “Say it again,” he says softly, yet his gaze is anything but soft.
I fight the urge to apologize, even if it’s just to relieve the tension building up under my rib cage, but this only works if I double down. “I said, you’re a cheat. A liar, too.”
His jaw muscle spasms. “A liar.”
“Uh-huh. You told me you haven’t played this game before, but you have, haven’t you?”
“I already told you I haven’t.”
A beat passes. It turns into two. We stare at each other as thick and sticky realization trickles into the small gap between us.
That was my fifth question.
I wonder if he can hear the pulse thumping against my temples, or the ragged edge to my breathing. If he does, the hard planes of his face don’t show it.
I love winning. The feeling of getting one over on a mark is as addictive as any drug. But tonight, my high is snatched away by the feeling of the walls closing in. When I look up, I realize with mounting horror that it’s not the walls but Raphael’s security team forming a slow, moving circle around us.
Oh, shit.
But then Raphael raises his hand. It’s such a subtle move, I wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for the glint of his citrine ring, but it brings his entire team to an immediate stop.
“You tricked me,” he says simply.
“I didn’t. I asked you before we started if you’d played the game before, and you said—”
“No,” he finishes thoughtfully.
His silence screams. My triumph whispers.
I regard his inscrutable expression with caution as he drains his drink and rubs his thumb over his bottom lip. He rests his forearm on the bar.
For the shortest of seconds, I think maybe, just maybe, I might have gotten away with it. But then—
“Dan, pass me the hammer.”
He says it so impassively. Like he’s merely asked for the time, not because he has anywhere to be, but simply for the sake of making conversation.
My blood flash-freezes. “What? Why?”
He ignores me. Dan offers me a look halfway between an apology and an I-told-you-so, then bends behind the bar and comes back with a small hammer, the type that smashes up ice.
Or kneecaps.
I don’t wait to find out.
