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Warmwhiskey,highstakes, and the occasional kiss from Lady Luck are the hallmarks of a Raphael Visconti party, and tonight is no different. Despite the rumors and the fan-fare that surround any event I tack my name onto, it’s this simple Holy Trinity that has amassed me a fortune within the nightlife industry. Everything else is just fluff and elaborate marketing.
It’s the first trial night. The crowd is tight-knit, the atmosphere is electric and care-free. Drinks flow and laughter floats. You’d never know the Viscontis were on the brink of a civil war, or that less than an hour ago, I made the decision to liquidate my majority stakeholder shares in Miller & Young, the logistics company that has been my third largest source of income for the last five years.
But I suppose us Viscontis have always had a talent of burying our problems underneath velvet tables while we piss away our ill-gotten gains with ridiculous bets over the top of them.
Talking of ridiculous bets. Across the table, Benny and Gabe are playing Vegas Rummy. When we were kids, they’d play it under the back pew of our father’s church during Sunday service, but now, the stakes are a little higher than a couple dollars and a pack of Big Red gum, and, well, Gabe is a lot less forgiving.
If Gabe loses, Benny gets his Harley. If Benny loses, Gabe gets to break three of Benny’s fingers.
Of his choosing.
Usually, I’d be head-over-ass invested in such a show, probably throwing a few bricks of my own into the ring for pure entertainment value. But not tonight. Because tonight, a certain copper-haired brat with sticky fingers and an attitude problem keeps stealing my attention.
Penelope Price.
She’s working behind the bar and it’s safe to say it’s the first one she’s ever been behind, regardless of what her resume says. She’s been on shift for just over an hour and already three crystal tumblers have met their demise on my mahogany floors. Three. Each time I hear a smash, another spark of annoyance zaps down my spine, and it gets a little harder to maintain a gentlemanly composure.
She wasn’t buying it, anyway.
Every time I glance in her direction, she meets my scowl with one of her own and I remember yet anotherthing I dislike about her.
I dislike the massive dick she scrawled on my mirror; dislike that I laughed aloud when I saw it. That obnoxious lipstick print she left on a tissue in my bathroom, too.
But what irks me more than anything is how she looks in her uniform, and worse, how every red-blooded male on board—with the exception of my pussy-whipped older brother, of course—is clearly thinking the same thing.
Never in my life have I seen these men get up and go to the bar to order a drink, like commoners at a local pub. These are men that don’t even need to look up when the whiskey in their glass dips below a certain level, because another will just magically appear on a silver serving tray. But right now, there are two Viscontis and three of my former business associates forming a lineat the bar, waiting like simps for Penelope to serve them.
I’d chalk it up to her being fresh meat on the Coast, but as my gaze, once again, slides reluctantly to her, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand the appeal.
Earlier on the terrace, I overheard one of my men comment that she looks like Jessica Rabbit, and while I don’t pay him to perv on my girls, he’s right. She’s got these big, blue eyes that seem to fool everyone but me. Pale skin that flushes crimson at the slightest insult. Freckles on a button nose that merge into a single mass every time she scrunches it.
And that body—don’t even get me started. It’s like she’s jumped right out of a 1950’s pin-up poster. On every other girl circulating the room, the uniform looks like a smart black dress. So why does it make her look like a stripper role-playing a slutty cocktail waitress at a bachelor party?
But it’s not just her looks, it’s the way she uses them to her advantage. Like right now, for instance. She’s resting her palms against the bar and gazing up at Marco with a smirk on her lips, like there’s a million dirty thoughts racing behind that innocent gaze. Of course, my idiot second-cousin is lapping it up, no doubt convinced he’s getting into her panties tonight. But I know the truth—she’s not interested in what’s under his suit, she’s interested in what’s in his wallet.
How do I know? Because when she slid up next to me at the bar last Thursday night and peeled off that fur coat like she couldn’t wait to show me every inch of her body, I almost fell for her act too.
Not almost—I did. Gave her my beloved watch, didn’t I?
It makes sense, I suppose. Made men are attracted to trouble and this girl epitomizes it.
I slip the poker chip from my pocket and flick it between my thumb and forefinger, as if it’ll save me from the claws of irritation digging under my skin. I don’t get irritated—I pay people to get irritated for me. But something about the way my newest member of staff is gazing at my dumb-ass cousin rubs me the wrong way.
Despite Nico asking so nicely for a favor, I hadn’t planned on giving her a job. Nothing about a loud-mouthed girl in a stolen dress screams employable, but while I was on damage control duty at the hospital, she’d rolled into my room with a nasty gash on her head and my lungs had tightened.
She’d been there, at the port, and suddenly, the word coincidence had lost its calming edge. Every ounce of logic that has gotten me this far in life tells me the whole doom card thing is bullshit. Even if it isn’t, there’s no chance in hell Little-Miss-Hot-Mess-Express is it. But logic only stretches so far, so, under the pretense of changing my mind about my favor to Nico, I’d offered her a job. It was purely a selfish decision. I’m a busy man, and I need to squash this paranoia that this five-foot-nothing redhead is going to lead to my downfall. I need confirmation that the loss of my watch and the port explosion really werejust coincidences. Despite knowing I was being ridiculous, I couldn’t help but get her to draw a card from my deck.
Bullshit or not, if she’d drawn the Queen of Hearts I’d have put a bullet between her eyes. But she didn’t. She drew the Ace of Spades, of all things. The luckiest card in the deck. I was part relieved and part pissed off that I’d only fueled her egotistical belief that she was lucky.
With a sideways glare at the four-leaf clover around her neck, I roll my shoulders back and take a sip of whiskey. Yeah, she’s not my doom card. If she was, my world would be going up in flames right now. Sure, I’m down fifteen G’s tonight because I’ve lost every hand I’ve picked up, and after that shit-show meeting in the boardroom, I’m cutting ties with one of my most lucrative investments, but these things happen.
“Shit.”
A dark hiss shoots across the table from Benny’s lips and I smirk into my whiskey glass. Gabe’s just thrown down a Joker, and now, Benny’s staring at the back of his inked hands, as if he’s weighing what fingers he could cope without for two-to-eight weeks. Clearly unable to decide, he shakes his head and scoops up the fanned cards.
“Best of three.”
“It’ll cost you,” Gabe retorts. He’s feigning boredom, but I know he’s itching to snap a couple of Benny’s bones.
