Old Money Roulette: Complete Trilogy

by Natalie Bennett

  “This sounds familiar, but you’re not doing this alone. Besides, we’re already involved.”

  “You have us to help you figure this shit out, so use us,” Melody said.

  I couldn’t refute them, and that was partially my fault. I kept involving them indirectly time and time again. If the situation was reversed, I would be the same way; I wouldn’t let either of them deal with this monster of a clusterfuck on their own.

  “You guys are right.” I sighed.

  “Why would Eva want the book?” Melody asked, moving us away from the champagne table.

  “Dinero and power,” I shrugged.

  “Money and power,” Peyton translated, nodding his head in agreement.

  “People say money isn’t everything, but it is. Money makes the world go round, especially this one.”

  “It may not buy happiness, but I’d rather be miserable on a yacht surrounded by the best bubbly known to man than miserable in an outdated living room with a shitty box TV and a lukewarm beer,” Peyton said.

  “Touché,” I acknowledged, lifting my flute to my lips.

  We continued to make our way around the room to keep the conversation just between the three of us.

  There was a slight commotion due to someone yelling indecipherably that drew the attention of more than a few people in the back corner. I took in the man causing the issue, and my face blazed when I realized it was my uncle.

  Whatever he was saying had people diverting their gaze in either embarrassment or to stifle laughter.

  “Is that Samuel?” Melody asked, a frown of concern on her pretty face.

  “He’s a drunken mess,” I mumbled. Mateo, Elias, and Sergio quickly intercepted him with another man I didn’t know tagging along. They made their way out of the room together, disappearing through a solid door.

  I was one half relieved, one half concerned.

  “What do you know about the game of Old Money?” I asked to distract myself.

  “I’ve heard of it. Everyone around here has. Typically, likes its namesake, the old money families initiate the way the game’s going to go,” Melody explained.

  “So it’s…rigged?”

  “Of course it’s rigged. You think these assholes know the concept of playing fair? It’s not all that surprising you’ve been pulled into it, considering this,” Peyton intoned, lifting up my hand to examine the ring.

  A low whistle sounded from behind us, and a guy with flawless mocha skin stepped into our huddle, bringing a redhead with him.

  “That’s some rock,” he mused in a thick accent.

  “I know, right?” I falsely smiled.

  “I’m Tony. This is Raine.” He

  nodded his head at the woman beside him, making it clear that he had no intention of exiting a conversation he wasn’t invited to join.

  “You knew my sister,” I said to Raine with more than a little hostility. Her name had come up often as one of Eva’s powder buddies. I didn’t think there’d be too many other redheads with sky blue eyes in Vice City.

  “I know what you’re thinking—I’m just another coke whore. But she was one of my closest friends.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” I stepped forward, just to be eased back again by Peyton.

  “It should. Your sister made a lot of enemies and betrayed many peoples’ trust. I can see you’re nothing like her, but you share her face, and that in itself is enough.”

  “What is that? A threat?” Melody laughed.

  “No.” Raine shook her head. “I don’t want to be at odds with you; in fact, I’d like to help you. I was close to Eva…think what that could mean,” she pointed out before excusing herself.

  “That went well,” Tony joked, lightening the mood. “She’s right, though. I knew Eva too.”

  “In which way?”

  He laughed off my implication. “Not like that—not for lack of trying on my end. I wasn’t high enough on the totem pole.”

  It was impossible not to pick up on his insult. I decided against telling him it was more likely his penis wasn’t up to her standards, keeping him around in hopes he’d let something slip.

  The way his dark eyes kept devouring me and his flirtatious manner had me sharing looks with Peyton and Melody more than a few times. Maybe he thought if he couldn’t have one twin, he’d try the other.

  Feeling a familiar bristling sensation on my nape, I glanced around the room, taking only seconds to find the source of my sudden distraction.

  I had his full attention. He was paying no mind to the men talking around him. I hadn’t seen him slip back in the room, and my uncle was nowhere in sight.

  He broke away from his conversation without so much as a goodbye, striding towards me with fluid movements. The look in his eyes had me downing the rest of my third drink.

  “Excuse her.” Without giving them a chance to reply, he led me away, stopping when we were partially isolated.

  He slipped one hand possessively around my waist, pulling me into him. Unsure what to do with my hands, I placed them on the lapels of his tuxedo.

  “I saw the way that boy was flirting with you…looking disrespectfully at what belongs to me. I want to warn you for future reference that I’m not very good at sharing, even if it’s your attention.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and peered up at him through lowered lashes.

  “But I didn’t flirt with him. He came over and started talking to me. Just to clarify, that means I did nothing wrong.”

  “I wasn’t telling you that to warn you specifically, I was telling you that so you’ll know exactly how much of my attention you hold and what happens when someone tries to steal yours.”

  I was confused by his words, but before I could think about it too hard or ask about my uncle, he placed his mouth on mine, tracing my lower lip with his tongue. “I’ve wanted to fill every fuckable hole you have all night.” As if to prove his point, he pressed even tighter against me, pulling my apex to align with his.

  Feeling how hard he was through his slacks, my body shuddered. “Thinking of all the things I want to do to you is torture.”

  He reached up and thumbed my chin, parting my mouth so he could slip his tongue inside, slowly caressing mine.

  My rigidity fell away and I melted into him, kissing him back with a growing fervor. I intertwined my arms around his neck, forgetting where we were.

  He knotted a hand in my hair and kissed me with a possessive hunger, staking his claim and reiterating his promise to own every part of me. The burn and ache intensified between my legs, making me release a small groan.

  Keeping his hand on the back of my neck, he pulled away and looked down at me with a sensuous smile on his gorgeous face. I swallowed again, shifting uncomfortably from the wetness between my legs.

  “Come with me.” The look in his eyes and his seductive words had all sense of logic failing me.

  We were in his car heading back home within minutes.

  He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other two fingers deep inside my pussy, pumping and stroking as he sat beside me, utterly stoic.

  I gripped the door handle so tightly the pigmentation in my knuckles had turned white, biting my lip to keep quiet.

  My dress was up around my waist, my underwear somewhere down on the floor. He brought me to the edge repeatedly and then eased off the entire drive.

  He parked the Wraith and got out. Coming around to my side, he ushered me inside the house. That was when I spotted the blood on the collar of his shirt.

  The second we crossed the threshold, I attempted to ask him about my uncle, but found myself pressed against the door with one my legs hooked over his forearms, causing it to slam shut. He had his cock out and inside me without further preamble.

  Even with me being as wet as I was, his rough intrusion burned. My walls worked to adjust around him as he fucked me with a punishing brutality. I gripped the doorknob with one hand and balled up part of his tux with the other.
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  “You feel so good,” he soughed. “Tight. Perfect.” Digging his fingers into my ass, he thrust harder with every word. I was forced to rise up on my tip-toes to alleviate the pressure. He filled me to capacity, the head of him hitting something inside me I wasn’t aware existed. “Your pussy is so wet, so greedy for my cock,” he rasped.

  I felt like I’d been deprived of a necessary narcotic. My ecstatic moans and whimpers couldn’t be controlled; they carried throughout the empty house and echoed back ten times louder. Perspiration began to gather on our flesh.

  A small ball of panic formed in my stomach as an all-consuming heat slithered down my spine and gathered in my core.

  “Mateo,” I cried out, overwhelmed by the feeling washing over my body, making my muscles taught, and then boneless.

  He hooked my other leg around his waist and fucked me harder, stopping only when his cock swelled and he came inside me with a quiet grunt. We stayed pressed together in silence, our heavy breaths dancing between us in the air we fought over.

  “Meu,” he murmured in my ear, before sealing his mouth over mine and kissing me tenderly.

  His tongue was laced with a bittersweet poison. Being with him was like diving into a pool of drugs.

  I was on the verge of an overdose, but I didn’t want to be saved.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sergio and Elias met me at three in the morning.

  The black Tahoe they’d arrived in was parked caddy-corner from the lake, its high-beams illuminating the dark water.

  “Tell me why you’re here with us and not home with that pretty little woman you plan to make a blushing bride?” Elias asked as I approached.

  “My Elena has been well taken care of, fucked, fed, and is now sleeping on a set of Porthault Jours de Paris sheets.”

  I didn’t add that throwing her down and fucking her was all I wanted to do twenty-four seven. I was a man of self discipline and iron clad control. It only unraveled when I buried my cock deep inside her and wrapped my hands around her throat.

  This was me exercising restraint.

  As she said, we were more than just sex, and I knew we had an extremely rocky path ahead of us. Sooner rather than later, she would know everything. I wasn’t entirely sure what route to take in terms of that information coming to light.

  Being with me meant being consumed by me. I was unapologetically possesive, at times cruel, controlling, and my ability to be empathetic was majorly skewed. I wasn’t going to change who I was—not for anyone.

  But fuck if I wasn’t trying to be understanding of this woman’s plight.

  It wasn’t a personal goal to hurt Elena, but I was going to. It was inevitable. Feelings were often casualties caught in the crossfire of war. All I knew for certain was that if I had to break her to keep her safe, I would do it.

  I was going to enjoy it.

  There was something inside me that thrived on chaos.

  The human mind was an incredible thing, but everyone had a breaking point. I needed to take Elena beyond it. I needed her to understand what Old Money really was.

  I’d rigged the game, twisted things for a specific outcome, and now had to wait to see the ending. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to idly sit by and let anyone fuck up all the progress I’d made.

  Hence why I was in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

  Normally, I didn’t do grunt work. I had a plethora of people to do it for me, but this was personal.

  Sergio was already lifting the gate on the Tahoe to reveal Tony. His hands were tied behind his back. His face was black and blue.

  I carelessly ripped the duct tape from his lips, taking bits of baby hair with it. He winced but kept his pain silent.

  “I just talked to her,” he rasped as I pulled him out of the truck.

  “You did more than talk. You looked at her like she was on your grocery list. Touched her with your filthy hands. We both know it would be a matter of events before you let something about Eva slip.”

  I flipped him onto his stomach and placed my shiny shoe on his back.

  “You know—”

  “Knife,” I directed at Sergio. I heard a splash, followed by another, in the large lake behind us.

  “What are you going to do to me?” he asked, his voice shaking.

  Elias removed a rope from the hatch and busied himself tying it around Tony’s midsection, tightening to the point the man grunted and coughed.

  “I’m going to give you the opportunity to get away. You once told me you were on a swim team. Make it across the lake, and you’re free to go.” I cut through the tape around his wrists, and then his legs.

  I grabbed one arm while Elias grabbed the other. Leaving a bit of rope to drag, we began hauling him towards the body of murky water.

  I knew Baz and Boss were somewhere lurking underneath, and my boys were hungry. I’d purposely withheld having any bodies dumped here for the past two weeks. Tony was the perfect size to placate them.

  He frantically glanced around, stumbling once or twice as the blood started recirculating in his legs.

  “What’s in there? Is it piranhas?”

  It wasn’t, but that was an excellent idea. I knew piranhas were too small to eat an entire human, and even in a swarm it would take a while for them to tear someone to bits. But I imagined being sliced by hundreds of little fish teeth would be like falling into a bathtub of razor wire. I logged it as something to discuss with Diablo.

  “What’s the rope for?”

  “So you don’t drown,” Elias answered.

  We reached the lake’s edge and there was still no obvious sign of my apex predators. They were simply blending in with their environment.

  “Wait I can give you information, I know—”

  “I don’t want, nor do I need, information, Tony.”

  “Good luck,” Elias followed up, shoving him head first into the water.

  He landed with a splash, arms flailing.

  Sergio stood to the side, holding his cellphone up to record.

  The first thing Tony tried to do was swim right back out. I pulled my gun from my waistband and aimed it at his head.

  “No, no, no. You go that way.” I flicked the muzzle towards the opposite bank.

  His stricken face paled, and he whirled around, swimming away. When he reached the center of the lake, I bent and grabbed the excess rope I’d had beneath my shoe.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled when he realized he couldn’t swim any further.

  “You looked like you needed a break.”

  He must have sensed something was drawing closer to him because he frantically began trying to undo the rope around his stomach.

  And, just like that, he was being dragged beneath the water.

  His cry of equal parts shock, pain, and fear reverberated in the secluded space. Sergio moved a little closer to get a better view.

  A minute later, I saw one of the gators’ white underbellies as it went into a death roll.

  Its powerful jaws were clamped on Tony’s leg. In the midst of its massive scaly body flipping in the water, you could hear bone snapping from the pressure.

  The man didn’t have time to scream before he was back underwater. When I saw the second gator move in to assist his brother, I knew Tony wouldn’t be resurfacing. They’d hold him under until he drowned.

  Seeing as the bodies I usually dumped out here were already softened up and easy to tear into, they’d horde his beneath a log or rock until it began to rot and his flesh tenderized.

  They truly were some of the most magnificent predators, and one of my most cherished gifts from my ma.

  If I ever admitted to Elena that she had all four chambers of my dark heart in the palm of her hand, and then she broke it, this was exactly where she would end up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I watched the video four times, unable to handle more than that.

  I tossed my phone on the bed, and went to shower. Coming at Mateo with my emotions runni
ng high was never a good idea, so I blocked out all the bullshit and prepared for the day, dressing in a simple, black Dolce & Gabanna corset dress before continuing to the dining room where I knew Mateo would be.

  “Good morning,” I greeted harshly as I entered.

  He continued with his texting, standing just as I reached one of the large dining chairs.

  “You seem upset,” he noted, moving from his position at the head of table.

  “You fed a man to a fucking alligator! You did something to my uncle and, come to think of it, probably my grams. You haven’t given me any answers. I thought we were playing a game. I don’t—”

  He cupped my face in his hands. “Do you know why I killed him, Ley? I did it for you. Everything I do is for you. I don’t feel bad, and I’m not sorry.” He pressed his soft lips on mine, coaxing them apart with his tongue. He tasted like espresso and a hint of whiskey. The kiss was hard, impassioned and bordering on erotic.

  I wasn’t aware we had been moving until my back hit the edge of the table.

  He broke the kiss and lifted me up, sitting me down on the hard surface.

  “I would do anything for you, Ley.”

  “Would you? What about the game, then? Because I still have way more questions than answers,” I said, pulling away.

  “Anjo, we’ve been playing the game since the day we met. Give me what I need, and I’ll give you everything you ask for.”

  “I don’t—”

  “All I’ve been able to think about since I woke up is your perfect cunt and the way it feels clenching around my cock.”

  In one fluid movement, he had my dress around my waist and my underwear dangling by my ankle. He slipped down my body until his face was between my legs. Gripping the back of my thighs, he spread them wide and bent them upward so they nearly rested on my chest.

  He dragged his warm, wet tongue up my slit before slowly pushing it inside my tender pussy. I bit down hard on my lower lip to stifle my moan, knowing he had morning staff lingering in the house.

  “Amada, your pussy tastes sweeter than honey,” he breathed, proceeding to devour me with his mouth, paying close attention to my clit in between fucking me with his tongue.