Ace Of Spades_A Dark Erotic Romance

by Natalie Bennett

  I didn’t stay to watch them submerge him in The Stew. I turned and left when the oil began to boil, I reached the steel door just as his scream cut off and he was dunked inside.

  I told them to repeat the process until his skin melted down to nothing but cords of tendons and muscle, and then let the bastard burn in the remnants of himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shit hit the fan inside my head.

  I stood beneath the shower with my head my eyes closed, feeling reality hit me like a tidal wave.

  When cool air swept over my back, I remained how I was. He stepped up behind me and slid his arms around my waist, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  He didn’t tell me to stop or call me weak; he stood there unmoving and let me silently cry it all out.

  “Remember the first clue I gave you and what it meant,” he said softly.

  “Eva’s cell-phone with the joker card,” I whispered. The phone represented her; the card told how she was the most expendable person in our round of roulette. She was the true pawn, always meant to be a sacrifice.

  “The second,” he continued, massaging the back of my neck.

  “The birth certificate at my parents’––our–– estate,” I mused. That explained not only my family’s incestuous bloodline but also where the estranged triplet was I’d never known about, currently taking my mother’s place in a casket.

  “King of hearts,” I said before he could say anything. The card had been with the box of ashes, which were a strategically placed move that I fell for; even knowing Mateo didn’t operate that way.

  The surveillance showed the beginning stages of my family’s decimation.

  She used my father, her own brother, to get ahead in life. The fact my grandmother was in on it sickened me. Why he ever went along with it left me stumped.

  My father risked everything to keep me and my sister safe. He did what he could to keep us away from this world. Eva fell for the lure of Vice City, and I chased after her.

  It was all so fucked up.

  “You’re going to be okay––we’re going to be okay,” Mateo finally spoke again.

  “I know, I know. I’m just really…pissed.”

  “That’s why you’re crying?” he sounded miffed.

  I let out a sullen laugh and turned in his arms, placing my hands on his chest. “I’m sad too, but I’m a hundred times angrier.”

  “We can do whatever you need to do.” He smoothed his hands up and down my back, and I could tell he meant that.

  Opening my mouth to reply, he placed the pad of his thumb on my lips.

  “Don’t answer right away, not when your emotions are this high.”

  “What did she hope to gain from all this?” I asked when he dropped his hand.

  “What everyone wants. Money, power, glory. I assume she wanted to use Eva to get it, use her to blend with my family, but she couldn’t control your sister, no one could.

  “Your father was a hundred yards ahead of her. He came to me with everything. I took it with the intention of tearing his legacy apart. He saw that coming too. I got a box the night Alex hurt you, with a letter that told me everything.”

  My heart painfully throbbed in my chest.

  The man was screwed up and had a mountain of issues of his own, but he was always a family man through and through. I would never hate my father for the decisions he made. I just hated how they all rolled into my life like a wrecking ball, breaking down every damn wall as I stood by and watched.

  There was one good thing that came from all of this, my addiction to Mateo fucking Remington. He was turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. His darkness was my happy place.

  “So why did you help me?” I asked after a minute, tracing imaginary lines on his pecs.

  “Every family has secrets,” he began, twirling a strand of my dark hair around his finger. “My father has––had––an illegitimate child. She was young, carefree, and happy. A little too care-free. She got pregnant at seventeen by a man like me.”

  He shook his head, his eyes gaining a distant look as if he were reliving her memory.

  As soon he mentioned the pregnancy I knew where Camilla, came into the picture.

  “My father flipped shit. She may have been illegitimate, but she was family, our baby sister. We loved her. He dragged her into this world against my mother’s advice, and the rumor mill spread like wildfire.”

  “She was deemed my barely legal mistress,” he laughed but there was no joy in it.

  “What happened to her?” I asked softly.

  He looked down at me and blinked. “A power hungry bitch got rid of her to clear the way for herself.”

  I nearly choked on my spit.

  “My mother killed your sister?”

  “No, amada, your mother never gets her hands dirty. She had someone else do it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ was really fucking meaningless.

  I didn’t need to ask why she did it. The Remmingtons were at the top of the pinnacle with no signs of falling off.

  She wanted to be a part of it.

  If there was one thing I knew, it was about power. Power is not given. You have to take it People fought over power for centuries. Countries went to war for it. Men killed one another in the streets for it. Even animals would fight tooth and nail for it.

  “You know, I’ve been told countless times that I’m just like her?”

  “There’s a little bit of both your parents’ inside you, but you’re far from being just like her,” he immediately responded, turning me around. His large hands cupped my face and he ran the pad of his thumb over my cheek. “You’re already so much more than she will ever be.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? I hurt for his sister and the life that was viciously stolen from not just her, but her baby. I was angry that my sister was turned into a victim, and that our father had been alone in the end.

  Yet, at the same time my heart swelled with pure adoration for the man in front of me.

  His face, his body, his voice, his cock––that was perfection. His cunning brain, the power he exhumed ruthlessly, and the sweet parts of himself he reserved just for me, were everything. He was a Brazilian god with a heavy dose of asshole and a gorgeous smile.

  I tried to find form one sentence that could convey any of these feelings, but my word bank continued to come up empty. Cupping the back of his neck, I pulled his mouth to mine, pouring all I could into a kiss.

  He tried to maneuver me back into the wall, but I pushed away and took advantage of my small window of opportunity.

  I dropped my knees to the slick tile, grabbed the base of his cock, and forced myself to choke on it. I took him deep, pulled all the way out, and then repeated the process with a satisfied moan.

  “Fuck,” he hissed, knotting a fist in my hair.

  The harder he pulled the more vigorously I sucked. It didn’t take long for him to take over and fuck my throat. I used every inch of my tongue, used one hand to work his shaft, and the other to roll his balls.

  I could barely see my eyes were blurring so badly. My runny nose was taken care of by the water raining down around us, thankfully.

  “So good, amada,” he praised, drilling in and out of my mouth.

  He didn’t stop until his come was coating my taste buds and he had to force me to quit milking him for every extra little drop.

  I smiled up at him, certain I looked like a disaster, but not really giving a damn.

  He helped me stand, pushing my hair away from my face. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me in the way only he ever could.

  Stepping into him, I pressed my ear against his solid chest, right above where his heart beat. We stayed like that until the water ran cold, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My mother wanted me dead.

  That was my first thought bright and early in the morning.

  I wasn
’t sure why, seeing as the last time I saw her I’d been a little girl with unicorn barrettes in my hair. Then again, how much did logistics really matter? My mother wanted me twelve feet under, the reason wasn’t all that important.

  I thought back to the day before and what I’d done.

  My uncle––Samuel––was gone.

  There wasn’t a point trying to be sad and I didn’t regret what I’d done. In my humble opinion, he deserved nothing less.

  As for grams, well, she wasn’t a main priority, more like an afterthought.

  Propping my chin in my hand, I looked around the bedroom wondering what to do next. I glanced at the nightstand to check the time, and saw my box of ashes was missing.

  “Goddamn him.” I shoved the comforter off with my legs and hopped out of bed. Snagging my robe off the footstool, I made my way into the hall smoothing down my hair as I went.

  Mateo had slipped away a few hours ago, so I wasn’t sure if he was even home. I decided to check the office first. He practically lived in there.

  The doors were open and I heard the shuffling of papers before I reached the room, letting me know he was inside.

  “What did you do with my sister?” I asked him, walking right in.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he mused, looking away from the file folder spread out on his desk.

  Making my way to one of the winged back chairs across from him, I took note of a pretty area rug that hadn’t been here before.

  As I sat down, the wall behind him caught my attention. Hanging in a row were three framed customized cards. From left to right was the deep blue queen of diamonds, almost burgundy king of hearts, and an emerald green ace of spades.

  “Your sister’s in the living room on the mantle,” he said.

  I stared at the cards for another few seconds and then settled my gaze back on him.

  “On the mantle?”

  “I moved her from the box to an urn.”

  I blinked, finding that gesture unexpected, but oddly thoughtful.

  “Why did you hate her?” I finally asked him.

  “I didn’t. Hate is too strong of a word. I didn’t know her good enough to hate her. Let’s just say I was on to your mother a long time ago. When she told Eve to seduce me, I’d already found you.” He leaned back, rubbing his chin.

  “You two were cut from a very different cloth. You got the best parts of your father and she got the worst traits of your mother. You weren’t just like her, anjo, but Eve was. Her true fault was never standing up to the woman trying to hurt you until it was too late.”

  Until it was too late…., “The money and the book,” I said to myself.

  “I believe she was trying to give you a chance. It wasn’t much but it was enough to get away from all this and hold a bargaining chip. You can…dump or bury her in a special place whenever you’re ready,” he added.

  Strumming my fingers on the leather arm of the chair, I hadn’t considered doing anything like that. Letting out a small laugh, I shook my head and smiled at him. “Knowing Eve she’s exactly where she’d want to be.”

  He nodded his head in understanding.

  “Well, why you’re here, these are yours.” Pulling open his middle drawer he took out a sleek black box, pill bottle, and a slip of paper.

  He laid them out in order. The black box was slid across to me first, an image of a red I-phone was on the front, the prescription bottle was next, and then the paper.

  There was a sum written on it, the same number that had been on the promissory note. With furrowed brows, I looked to Mateo for an explanation.

  “The money I said your family was indebted of, wasn’t too me, it was always to you. Your father left you everything he could save from your mother.”

  “I’ve been running it through the real estate and casino so she would never know where it really was. I wanted you to know you have money. Not mine, yours.”

  Damn, I blinked feeling my eyes burn a bit. It took me a beat to will the onslaught of tears away. Taking a small breath, I folded the piece of paper in half and placed it on top of my new phone.

  This wasn’t the time to be getting emotional. Instead, I focused on what I knew needed to be done next. “What do we do about my mother? She’s never going to stop. We both know that.”

  He steeled his fingers’ beneath his chin and slightly smirked. I knew right then he knew exactly how to handle her. Did I get the full detailed plan?

  Of course not, nothing with Mateo would ever be that simple.

  “Why don’t you invite your friends for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Um…okay,” I replied, unsure what they had to do with any of this. I was pretty used to his sporadic subject switches, though.

  “We’ll discuss it then. In the meantime I have a few calls of my own to make so why don’t you get yourself something to eat, and I’ll find you in a bit.”

  With lack of anything else to do, I nodded and gathered my things off his desk. I was half-way out of the room when he spoke again.

  “What would you do to stop her?”

  Pausing, I thought about it just as I’d been doing since I found out she was Ace, only to come back to the same resolution. My father, my sister, Mateo, Camilla, I refused to let everything we’d been put through because of one person all be for nothing.

  My father didn’t leave me everything just so I could turn around and allow an evil bitch to take it from me. And that’s exactly what she would try to do.

  I had everything she wanted. I had the man, the money, and the empire. If she couldn’t have it, then neither could I. That’s how she operated. I would put her in the ground before I ever let her take any of it.

  This was my life; I was over my family––no––I was over her, fucking it up.

  My father gambled his cards with the devil, and I was going to make sure he won.

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do,” I finally replied, walking out of the room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He was not someone you wanted to fall in love with.

  Lust, yes, but not love. Whoever found themselves confused between the two needed to run like hell, get as far away as they could and beg some other divine entity to save their asses from the pretty devil dressed in a three piece suit

  I’d done the opposite and ran towards him.

  He could have been skinning someone right then, making more stew, or flooding a neighborhood with bud and blow, I didn’t care.

  I was stretched out on a plush lounger by the nicest pool I’d ever seen, in a little black bikini with the sun beaming down on my shades.

  I’d sent a group text to Melody and Peyton, and after fifty-four responses back and forth it was confirmed they would be at dinner tomorrow night.

  I double checked the living room and found he’d been telling the truth. A royal blue urn, which could have passed as a vase, with pretty gold trim was sitting on the mantle.

  I trailed my fingers along the rim before gently lifting it up. After sitting with it a minute or so I unscrewed the lid and saw the ashes were safely inside.

  Reaching around, I unclasped her necklace and placed the jagged heart inside the urn. We’d always worn them, never took them off.

  Even in the end, when I couldn’t recognize her anymore, she was still one half of me and that wasn’t going to change because she was gone.

  Swallowing down a bubble of sadness, I put the top back on, ensuring it was secure before placing the urn back on the mantle.

  I took my holy meds and programmed my phone whilst eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes, settling in by the pool when I was done, which is where Mateo found me.

  He didn’t say anything when he approached, so I never actually saw him until his hand touched the side of my face.

  I slightly jumped, lifting my glasses to the top of my head. “Don’t sneak up on me. And…” I trailed off and sniffed, “Why do you smell like lighter fluid?”

  “I had a thing.”

  “You had a t
hing?” I eyed him suspiciously, belatedly noticing his suit jacket was gone.

  “I thought you were going to be making phone calls. What happened to that?”

  He rolled his neck and turned around, beginning to unbutton his shirt.

  “Are you hot?” he asked, tossing the shirt to the side and starting on his slacks.

  “Yes I’m hot; it’s like a hundred degrees.”

  “Me too.” He pulled his pants down, exposing his fantastic, but extremely naked ass, and the kicked off his shoes and socks.

  “What are you doing?” I started to laugh, stopping short when he turned back around and practically hit me in the face with his cock.

  “My face is up here, amada,” he laughed, sporting his signature cocky smirk. “Let’s cool off.” He reached down and tossed my phone onto the opposite lounger, scooping me into his arms before I could make an escape.

  “Put me down,” I laughed, wriggling against him.

  “I hope you can swim,” he said before launching me into the pool.

  The cool water enveloped my body as I went under. I pushed my hair out of my face and swam back to the top, breaking through the surface with a glare.

  “What if I couldn’t swim?”

  “Then you’d drown, obviously,” he shrugged, diving in before I could respond.

  “Fucking asshole,” I muttered, scooting away from where he’d splashed, feeling a hand on my ass. Smacking it away with a laugh, I turned in a circle, coming face to face with him as he surfaced.

  “Do you always swim nude?” I asked, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  “I haven’t used this pool in a year, but no, I usually swim with my brother and I don’t think he’d appreciate the competition.”

  “Oh, my god, you’re such a man,” I grinned.

  He returned my smile, hooking my legs around his waist.

  We floated to the side of the pool and he turned so my back was against the mosaic wall.

  He looked down at me and I melted. Mateo looked at me the way all women yearned to be looked at. Maybe he wasn’t a morally righteous man, but this guy was perfect in my eyes.