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“Make it very dirty,” Jasmine added.
“Yes, ma’am,” the manager said, hurrying out of the inner sanctum into the kitchenette without asking what the other players might like.
Christos sat to the left of the dealer. The other players took seats around Jasmine, Jon on her right, between her and Christos, Klaus on her left, Angelo beside him and then Nikolai.
The dealer pushed stacks of chips toward each player.
Jasmine had expected to front the money for her buy-in when she’d arrived. Apparently, Dmytro had done it for her. She fought the urge to gulp when she realized the stack of chips was a combination of one hundred, two hundred and five hundred euro denominations. There had to be around five thousand euros in her stack alone. Each player had an equal stack, totaling thirty thousand euros.
Her pulse kicked up. She glanced across the room to where Ace stood with his back against a wall, far enough away he couldn’t read cards but close enough he could step in if someone threatened her. Just his being there helped calm her. Their gazes met for a moment. Then she focused on the game and the people, willing the dealer to deal and set this plan in motion.
For the next hour, the dealer dealt, and the players played. Jasmine lost the first three hands, noting the barely concealed smile on Christos’s face. The dealer had given her good cards, as Dmytro had promised, setting her up to win.
But she couldn’t make it look that easy.
She won the next hand with a flush, beating Christos’s three-of-a-kind and Klaus’s two pair, taking back some of the chips she’d lost.
Klaus won the next hand, depleting her stack of chips to a mere one thousand euros.
Jasmine glanced down at her watch. While they’d played, the afternoon had waned into evening. Darkness was always good cover to escape a bad situation. The later, the better, preferably after people retired for the night. In the next hour, she needed to wrap up the poker game, claim her victory and demand that Christos pay up, even if it meant taking her to his family’s estate to get the cash.
Was she being ridiculous thinking they could push this young, entitled boy into taking her to his father’s stronghold and raiding his father’s stash of very liquid assets to repay her marker?
For a moment, Jasmine doubted their plan, doubted the ability to maneuver their way into Athanasios Demopoulos’s compound and his room full of artwork and ancient artifacts.
What other choice did she have? What alternative?
She had to retrieve the copper scroll. Eli’s life depended on it. She couldn’t stop until her son was safe and out of the hands of his kidnappers. Her arms...no... her heart ached to hold her small son. To tell him everything would be all right. To read him a story as his eyes drifted lower and he slept in her arms, knowing he was safe and loved.
Her heart pinched hard in her chest, and her gut knotted. Eli had never been away from his home in Tel Aviv. He’d never spent time with strangers. He’d had Maria, the housekeeper, and his mother to hold him and tell him all would be well.
Until now. For the past few nights, he hadn’t had his mother or Maria to reassure him. To let him know he was loved, and someone would always be there for him.
How was he? Did he fall asleep crying every night? Had they hurt him?
Her gut clenched at the thought of anyone hurting a three-year-old.
Jasmine’s jaw clenched, and her resolve hardened. Damn it. She’d get through this challenge, find her son and make a new life for them. She’d take Eli away from people who would use a boy to get his mother to commit a crime. She’d take him somewhere he could be content to run and play with no worries about being snatched, abused and separated from the people who love him.
As the dealer dealt the next round, Jasmine focused on winning. It was time she took control of the situation and Christos Demopoulos. The sooner she got that scroll, the sooner she could negotiate a trade to get her son back.
The dealer dealt the hand.
Jasmine collected her cards, hope souring as she stared down at the hand dealt to her.
Chapter 7
From his position on the other side of the room from Jasmine, Ace could do nothing to affect the outcome of the poker game. He had to wait and hope Jasmine and the dealer orchestrated a win that would ensure her invitation to the Demopoulos compound.
Even then, Ace wasn’t sure they’d get in. If they did manage to get past the gate guards, would they eventually get the hell out of there with the scroll and their lives?
If they were shot and killed in the process, who would save Eli? Ace and Jasmine were the boy’s only hope.
Ace had heard horror stories about the people murdered by warring crime families in Italy and Greece. They were brutal, shooting each other in the streets and taking out innocent women and children in the process.
Of course, there were mass shootings in the US all the time. Only, this time, Jasmine was setting herself up as a target in a very dangerous game that had nothing to do with cards.
The game dragged on at a glacial pace.
