“Huh.” I settled a hand on my hip. “And to think Neri was so impressed with my poker abilities.”
If Theo had the capability of expression, this would’ve been the moment. “That fact doesn’t concern you?”
“As you can see, I had it covered.”
“And how were you going to get off this yacht?”
“There are two lifeboats, one on either side, out of the eye of the captain, who is likely still driving this mansion thinking there’s nary a problem.”
“I don’t know what’s more concerning, the fact that you used ‘nary’ in a sentence, or that you’ve studied the blueprints of this boat. What if there was a storm? Or Neri decided not to take you to his ship?”
“Stay one step ahead at all times, that’s what you taught me.”
The ding on my phone let me know the transfer was complete. I unhooked and shoved Neri’s phone back in his blazer pocket.
“He’ll look for you. Track you down.”
“Neri won’t find me. At least while he wants me. Then, when I reappear, he’ll be on to other matters and won’t care about the girl who escaped his clutches by drugging him and stealing one of his blow-up rafts. Not exactly something he’ll want to advertise.”
“You don’t think so? He can kill you without giving anybody a reason.”
“He doesn’t want me dead.”
“I just informed you he was going to auction you off as a sex slave to the highest bidder.”
“Probably what he told most of his big honcho friends. In reality, he covets respect. He wants to recruit me to play in games, take cuts—or most—of my winnings. I sense he was taking me to Mexico so he could strong-arm me into opening an account and making a deal.”
Theo paused, likely realizing his scare tactics weren’t working. “Would you have agreed to it?”
I pondered. “I didn’t think it would come to that point. And it hasn’t. So.” I dropped my cell into my clutch and snapped it shut. “I guess this is the end of the line for us.”
Theo stared me down like his glare alone could stop me in my tracks. “I’ve underestimated you.”
“Chase me all you want, Sax. Attempt to run me down, do all of those things that you’ve now deemed necessary to come out of hiding. But I’m not the girl you knew anymore.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re not.”
I wondered if he’d really let me go.
Scarlet Rhodes and Theo Saxon were no longer. And my end game had to occur whether or not Theo wanted it to. Whether or not he’d be … hurt.
Theo had been keeping to the shadows, creeping along edges of light like he was always apt to do. That part of him hadn’t evolved. Even now, he stood near the bar, away from the halogen lamps, Henry’s supine toes nearly touching Theo’s shoes. The rebel in him hadn’t changed, either—while we all took off our shoes before entering the interior of the Hatari, Theo stayed in his.
There was a metaphor in that, I was sure.
“But neither am I the same man.”
Theo stepped forward, the recessed lights above the bar gliding across his features, highlighting them. Spotlighting his face to the extent that I gasped.
“Oh my … Theo.”
The words escaped me, the pain behind them leaking first, before I could bury it beneath my hardened shell.
A scar, beginning at the top of his right eyebrow and cutting across the bridge of his nose before ending in the middle of his left cheek. It was thin—as thin as an expensive black-market blade—and light pink, almost white. A few years old.
Theo always had a darkness in him, one I’d recklessly tried to unearth when I was young and stupid. But now, it was forbidden to me. I couldn’t ask him how he’d gotten the lurid evidence of the badness in his life, because I no longer had the right.
“When?” I asked once I’d schooled my features.
“I’d rather not explain while standing in front of a knocked-out weapons lord and his sidekick.”
There wouldn’t be any other time, I wanted to say. But it didn’t matter. Theo had his plans, I had mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I didn’t know why.
I showed him my back, this new image of Theo etching into permanence, the long-term of him never receding from my mind even after the time that stood between us. But despite the mark, Theo wasn’t made grotesque. Children wouldn’t scream at the sight of him. Even flawed, he was much too beautiful. If anything, his presence was more commanding, his angles sharpened, the eerie history of his scar casting an additional allure. A mark of Cain, a warrior for the devil.
I’d dream of him tonight, of softening his sins with my lips.
“So am I, Scarlet.”
I paused at his voice, and that was my mistake.
Someone crept into my blind spot, and my shock followed too late after the prick in my neck.
The floor wobbled, my knees unable to keep the balance. I was caught, my face flopping into the hard lines of the man who steadied me.
Neri? One of his henchmen I didn’t count? But I’d studied everything … I made sure there was an out before stepping into the Asten Martin…
Though hazy, I forced my gaze up, and grimaced.
“When I wake up,” I forced out to say to Kai, “I’m throwing you overboard.”
Or maybe I garbled it. The crease between his brows could’ve been because he didn’t understand, or maybe that he understood too well.
“You’re safe,” he promised me.
There was no safety in this game. Every person was out for themselves, every tic a sign of a plan, malevolent smiles hidden behind the fan of cards. Every gamble took on the chance of ruin.
Which was why I made no friends. I’d even kept Kai at a distance, though I couldn’t help my growing affection for him. We’d worked closely for a long time, and I’d thought I’d caught every clue to his feelings, in the way he moved his brows or chewed on the inside of his cheek, the scent of his fear and the sound of his laugh.
But I’d forgotten. There was a time when I was his student.
Two years later, despite his vow to become a civil servant, his sworn oath into the FBI, Kai decided to cash in on duplicity instead.
Goddamn him for fucking me over first.
8 Ace Of Spades
I woke up with no tongue.
There couldn’t be one, since the entirety of my mouth felt like it’d been stuccoed together.
“She’s waking up.”
There it was, the Betrayer’s voice.
Kai put his hands on me, but I shoved them aside, eyes still closed. “Go away.”
“There’s not many places to go around here, hun,” Kai said. Despite my continued thwacks against his arms, he helped me upright.
I blinked, slowly at first. The stucco had traveled from my mouth to my eyelids. Everything was grit.
“Here.” Kai held a bottle of water in my eyeline, which I accepted and shoved to my mouth before I registered it as a suspicious act of kindness.
Choking mid-swallow, I spat it out.
“Ah—Christ, Scar!” Kai wiped at his face.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t “accidentally” aim the spray at his face. While he was still wiping with the back of his hand, I shoved the bottle at his chest. “Thanks, but I’m maxed out on drugs today.”
“It’s not … spuh.” He rubbed his mouth, spitting out my detritus. “It’s just water.”
But I wasn’t attuned to Kai anymore. I took in my surroundings, somewhere small and wooden, my palms pressing into a thin, cot-like mattress. A circular hole was to my left, a window of sorts, and there was a sway, unrelated to my cotton-cloud mind, that had my body gently swinging.
Damn. I was still on a boat.
Chuckling came from my right, and I noted the crossed suit-legs of the person in the chair, the rest of his form hidden from view, but I didn’t need to see the rest of this man to know.
The last scene I remember was facing Theo on the Hatari, the man of
my dreams who crept his seduction into my nightmares, the way I’d been forced to remember him for so long. He wasn’t one for photos or social media. There was nothing I could look to in reminder during times of deep loneliness. All I had was memories, snippets, flashback pain. To have Theo close by again caused the worst kind of love, the pull of him nearly driving me to forget the nights I only had his ghost for company.
Then, so clearly, reality crashed down, and his scarred face forced the reckoning that his time away may not have been too peachy, either.
I cleared my throat and said to him, “You stalk me, corner me, turn Kai against me, then drug me in order to toss my unconscious body onto another ship. You might as well face me.”
Theo leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. I expected it, but he still took my breath away. Not simply because of his new flaw. He was the same beautiful demon I’d engraved onto my heart. The sheer sight of him smacked me awake in a way that made it seem these past few years without him were just a dream. Scar tissue served only to frame the old wound and create a tangible pain while looking at him.
“There was only one way to get you off Neri’s property safely,” Theo said.
Funny, his lips were moving, but all I heard was blah blah you’re a girl who I had to step in to save blabby blah.
“I had my own exit,” I bit out. Then, glancing at Kai who still stood at my elbow, I yanked the water out of his hand and glugged.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“I haven’t even started with you yet,” I said after swallowing. “Marcus is getting a call as soon as I get my hands on a phone.”
Kai’s eyes formed into slits. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I’m going to tattle to your boyfriend that you’re a terrible person who drugged his best friend and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Theo ignored the two of us, saying instead, “Yes, we both know you were going to Titanic your way out of there and float away on a lifeboat.”
He said it with such a wry tone, like it was a crime caper I’d never succeed in.
Bastard.
“I would’ve gotten away just fine,” I said. “The bad guys were down for the count.”
“And likely waking up pissed off right about now.” Theo straightened. “Tell me, what were you going to do once out on the open ocean with a blow-up raft?”
I clamped down on my lower lip to stop the sneer. Theo caught it anyway, and said, “I’m honestly curious. You’ve thought in quite a lot of detail thus far.”
I sighed, figuring telling him wouldn’t bust anything else up that hadn’t already been busted. “I’d hired a sailboat, gave the captain the coordinates on where to wait for me, and was going to get to land from there.”
“That’s putting a lot of hope in a stranger.”
“Welcome to the modern world,” I said, “Where women get into strange cars alone under the protection of an app, rent rooms owned by unknowns in foreign countries, and hire boats in the middle of the night from a website.”
Theo cocked his head.
“It would’ve been there. The sailboat, I mean,” I said. “There was good money in it for the captain.”
“Tell me, what was this vessel called?”
“Heaven Sent.”
Theo smiled.
“Goddamnit.” I threw myself back against the pillows.
He spread his hands. “Welcome to the Heaven Sent.”
“Is there no moment in this night where you decided not to screw me over?” I asked the ceiling.
“I call it protecting.”
“Why, though?” I turned to look at him. “You had so many chances before. I gave you—”
“I’m aware.”
“And this was the tipping point for you? Right at the second I was getting good, predicting all the right moves, remaining one step ahead, now is the time you decide to throw everything I’ve done, all I’ve crafted, into this damned ocean we’re floating across?”
“You needed to be stopped.”
“Took your fucking time,” I mumbled. Then, like a child, I crossed my arms and stared at the wall.
“And leaving Kai behind in Los Angeles was a part of your strategy, not a mistake,” Theo surmised.
“I couldn’t let him be here, in case it turned—” I stopped myself. Glared at Kai. “I couldn’t have any FBI intervention. I—” I was too close to the end game.
“Yet here you are,” Kai said, breaking his silence. His lips flatlined as he hit me with a stare. “I intervened.”
“Just not in the way you thought,” Theo said.
“No,” I agreed, and ended it at that. I was not about to admit to these men that they’d been one step ahead of me during the entire showcase of this night, even when I thought I’d been so genius-tricky when I discovered Neri had hired a helicopter to fly to his yacht the very night I was to be “commissioned” to him.
“Please don’t think of it as a betrayal,” Kai said near my side. “I only agreed to Theo’s plans to protect you.”
“When did Sax contact you?” I asked without looking at him.
When he didn’t answer, and Theo didn’t elaborate, I persisted. “I’m going to find out anyway, whether it be because I ask incessant questions or crawl out of that circle window and hold my breath underwater until you give in, so you might as well tell me.”
“A few months back,” Kai admitted.
“Uh-huh,” I said, lifting into a sit again. “Could that have been around October?”
Kai chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Right around the time I gained entry into Neri’s games?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” Theo interjected. “I’m here, you’re here, Kai’s here.”
“And you’ve appeared out of thin air with a new proposal,” I said. “That you took to Kai first.”
What I wanted to say was, you chose to contact an FBI agent over your ex-girlfriend. A girl you said you’d choose over all else.
“Yes.” Theo stood. “Go home.”
I gave half a head-shake. “Nope. Next suggestion, please.”
“This is not for you, Scarlet.” He stepped closer, and in automatic defense, I scooted away. I didn’t need to feel his heat, as well as his voice, against my skin. “Look at what it’s done to you already.”
“Made me stronger?”
“No.” He bent down to my level, but I didn’t want him to spot even a glimmer of tears. “The woman I’ve seen in the game rooms, decorated in lace, hidden in couture with a smile of stone, pocketing scores of ceramic chips to the chagrin of many powerful men, this isn’t what I wanted. You were supposed to go back to your old life—”
“How?” I asked, defiant. “How was I supposed to do that when you tore me out of it the instant we met?”
Theo, a man of few words, had run out. He backed off.
“I don’t trust either of you,” I said. “So let’s get this boat to land.”
“Play me for it.”
I cut a glance to Theo, rigid, as usual, in a dimly lit section of the room. For an instant—less than a second—I wondered if he strayed to dark interiors not to increase his predatory effect on people, but because he was … ashamed … of his new face.
Pressure increased in the back of my jaw, and I released my molars. I could not fall victim to wanting to heal him. Not again.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Yeah, excuse you?” Kai asked Theo.
Theo reached into his pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. “You and me. One on one.”
“Besides the fact that you wander around in a suit with a pack of cards in your pocket,” Kai said, “we had a deal. I agree to cooperate with your intervention only so I can get my girl, then get her home.” Kai glanced sideways at me. “I don’t betray the FBI for just anyone.”
“Don’t make me feel guilty for your choices,” I said to Kai, feeling strong enough to stand. I had to do something to equal the playing field. “And as for you, Sax,
that’s a hard no.”
Theo cocked a brow. “You tell me how good you are and your ability to run these games and the men within them just fine, and you don’t want to sit down with me over a simple run of Head’s Up?”
I licked my lips.
“Scarlet,” Kai said. “Don’t you dare say yes.”
“What are the stakes?” I asked.
“I win, you go with Kai onto a plane to New York without so much as an arm-swing or a peep,” Theo said.
“And if I’m the winner?”
“That’s up to you.”
“No. Nuh-uh, you two crazy kamikazes,” Kai said. “You know what she’s gonna say, Sax, why the hell would you—”
“If I win, I stay with you,” I said over Kai’s sputtering.
Theo was too cloaked for me to see his expression, but my imagination interpreted it just fine. A flinch, a flicker of hesitation, before he said, “Deal.”
“What?” Kai screeched. “This is—damn the two of you. Actually, shame on me for thinking I could broker a deal with either one of you and come out clean. This is ridiculous. I’m leaving.”
“Kai,” I said. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Nowhere to go yet,” he retorted, hands on his hips.
I walked over to him, hiding my stumble over the shock of no longer wearing stilettos.
“I need you,” I said to Kai. “We’ve been in this from the beginning.”
“And we’ve spent a grand total of twenty-four months chasing down false leads as well as enduring minor brushes with death. Granted, we traveled the country and made a ton of money—of which you lost all of last night—but I am not continuing this, Scar.” Kai took a deep, cleansing breath. “God, I exhaust even myself just thinking of it.”
I said, low, so only Kai and I could hear. “We’re so close. Now we have Sax. He’s right in front of us. He could lead us to Trace.”
“It’s not worth it anymore,” Kai said. “I want to go back to the city, sleep in my bed instead of a hotel for once, be with Marcus. All the things I’ve been denied since hooking up with your ass.”
“You want to give up, after all this?”
“Scarlet, I’m going to level with you. We’re on a sailboat hired by a known FBI fugitive which we’re chilling on only because we had to escape a luxury yacht owned by a notorious African arm’s dealer, a violent man whom you drugged, only to enter into a one-on-one poker game with the man whose brother tried to kill you. A guy who ripped out your heart and forever changed you as a person.” Kai continued, after a huge inhale, “This has become fucking absurd and I’m out.”
WIN THE GAME Page 5
