Player: Stone Cold MC

by Carmen Faye

  I took a deep breath and looked at the dealer again. He shuffled the cards like a pro, fingers moving so fast it was impossible to tell what he was doing. He could be shifting them in a particular way for all I knew.

  The second hand was dealt, and Antonio bet first, pushing in more chips than I was comfortable with. I did the same and then checked my hand. A jack and a king—a bit better this time. I had a bit of hope. I was a good poker player, after all, and I could read a situation. That was in my favor, at least, even though I felt like I was in the minority.

  The first card was flipped. A jack. I sat with a double already. Perfect. I raised my bet, Antonio called, and the second card was flipped. A nine. Not exactly what I needed, but it wasn’t a reason to pull out.

  The last three cards happened in much the same way, with something that would work but nothing that I could relax about. So far, I just had the double and maybe the king would count in my favor as a kicker, but I wasn’t sure.

  I put my cards down and hoped Antonio had worse. I could really do with a win right about now.

  Antonio showed his cards. He had triple queens with two on the deck and one in his hand with an Ace kicker. Fuck.

  He scraped more of my chips toward him. That was about equivalent to my car, I thought.

  Three more rounds where I lost every time and I was about ready to scream. It kept going like that all the time. Cards that I couldn’t use, or cards that were good but just not enough to pull a win for me. It felt like the universe was against me.

  Antonio got up. “I think I need to stretch my legs for a bit,” he said. “I’ll be back. Sam, you take a break, too.”

  The old man nodded and got up. He walked bending forward as if he was carrying a heavy load on his back, and his steps were half the size of mine. John stayed behind after the other two left the room, and I was alone with him again.

  “You must get tired of being the one to always stay behind, huh?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

  “You get paid well for doing someone else’s dirty work?”

  He nodded. He didn’t respond to my comment about his job being dirty work. Maybe he just didn’t care what I said about it. Maybe he didn’t see it as dirty work. Either way my bait didn’t work, and he was as calm and steady as ever. I didn’t know what I’d planned by riling him up; it wasn’t as if running would do me any good. Johnny-boy could reach me in one big step, and I doubted that the table would be an obstacle despite the fact that it was between us.

  “How long have you been working for Antonio?” I asked.

  “A couple of years.”

  Non-committal answers. Great. I couldn’t even make normal conversation.

  “You don’t get to leave, not even to pee?”

  “I don’t need to pee,” he said. It sounded funny coming from a grown man, but his seriousness cancelled out any joking atmosphere. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this man, not even to a normal conversation.

  I looked at the dwindling stack of chips in front of me. It was pitiful seeing all my belongings reduced to a tiny pile of wooden rounds like that. It made me feel like what I had to lose wasn’t that much anyway. It was a lot to me, obviously, and I really didn’t want to lose any of it, but it was pretty pathetic, looking at it like that.

  My whole life was like that. I had made a big deal out of it, and I protected what I’d built and what I’d gained fiercely, but at the end of it, it was pathetic. I was a gambler. An addict. And my life was, let’s face it, the result of a condition that I didn’t wish on anyone. Cass was right telling me that I needed help. But how could I accept help from her?

  She’d also been through the same as me. She’d also dealt with Mom. And when Mom had died, she’d looked after me, which meant that technically she’d had it worse. After everything, she was fine, with a stable, honest life, morals and values, a man that loved her to death and pledged his loyalty to her daily, and a child that adored her.

  How had it happened that I’d never gotten around to that? Maybe being a failure was genetic and I’d pulled the short straw from the gene pool.

  Whatever. Wallowing in self-pity just made my situation now seem that much worse, and I couldn’t afford to sink into that black hole while I was caught in a room with a man who wanted everything from me, including my womanhood.

  I took a deep breath and pushed all the anger and resentment and pity that I felt to the back of my mind. That was for later, if I survived all of this. If I walked out of here alive, I would think about the bad things again. Until then, I was going to keep my chin up and think about how I was going to get out.

  If I lost all of this, Antonio was going to claim me as his winnings, and that wasn’t going to work for me. I couldn’t fight John, but I doubted the bodyguard was going to flank Antonio while he did the dirty, so I would be alone with him then.

  Antonio wasn’t poorly built. His suit sat on him as if he had the frame to wear it with pride, but he was no John. If I went along with it long enough, I could get him to a point where his guard was down, and then I could hurt him. Or kill him.

  The intensity of my thoughts scared me. How far had I spiraled? How had it gone from gambling and cheating at it to sex and murder? But I didn’t want Antonio to touch me, and it wouldn’t be consensual…none of it. That meant that if I did get caught, at least I would have a foot to stand on with any judge.

  The door opened, derailing my train of thought, and Antonio came in followed by his creepy dealer.

  “Are you ready for round two?” Antonio asked me. He smiled at me again in a way that made me feel dirty before he sat down.

  “Bring it on,” I said, sounding a lot more confident than I felt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  We all took our places again. Or at least, they did. I was still in my place. I would have loved to stretch my legs. I would have loved to go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. Maybe they thought I would have tried to escape if they’d given me that chance, and they would have been right. I would have tried exactly that.

  John stood behind Antonio again, ready to take a bullet for him. The creepy old dealer sat on his seat, shuffling his cards with fingers that were nimbler than mine would ever be. I took a deep breath and got ready for the next round. I was having more and more doubts about the legitimacy of this game.

  The cards were dealt, and I was starting to really crave a drink. Something strong and able to make me forget about the horrible situation I’d gotten myself in. For that matter, to help me forget about the horrible state my life was in.

  “Can I have something to drink?” I asked. Antonio looked up at me as if I was being irritating.

  “Just to concentrate better.” That wasn’t exactly realistic, but he seemed to think about it. He nodded at John after a moment.

  “What do you want?” John asked.

  “Gin and Tonic,” I said. It wasn’t exactly my first choice, but it was quick to get and easy to remember—just in case John didn’t have a lot going on upstairs. John nodded and left the room. Antonio looked smug again. Maybe he thought that the alcohol would impair my concentration—which was more than possible—but I didn’t really care. The fact was that I didn’t really think I was going to win anyway.

  John returned with my drink in a tall glass with condensation on the outside. It gave me shivers when I picked it up, but I drank long and deep, ignoring the cold. The drink was bitter in my mouth, but it was heaven having something that would lighten my mood.

  I was ready for this next round no matter how it was going to go. The alcohol was going to pull me through if nothing else was. The hand was dealt and I got good cards for a change. An ace and a ten. There was hope this time. An ace was always a good kicker.

  The game commenced, and we bet our chips and I sipped my gin. Everything seemed lighter and easier the more I drank, and after a while, my body forgot about its tiredness, too. Alcohol really was the magic remedy for the wicked.
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br />   I lost the hand. I didn’t know what happened, but somewhere between my getting the good cards and the end where Antonio revealed his cards he ended up with a straight and I ended up with more of my belongings going down the drain.

  So much for hope.

  I downed the rest of my glass and swooned under the force of the alcohol as it all hit my bloodstream in one go. The dizziness swept over me in a wave, and I put both palms flat on the table to keep my balance.

  “Is the alcohol hitting you?” Antonio asked. And yes, it was.

  I shrugged. What was I going to say when he asked me a question to which he already knew the answer?

  “You know it will affect your playing.”

  I shrugged again. “I’m good at poker.”

  “But you’re losing,” he pointed out.

  I did what I hated the very most in anyone I was speaking to—I shrugged again.

  Antonio chuckled and the next hand was dealt. I was really starting to hate poker, and that was a damn shame because that was one of the games I used to love the most.

  My next hand was a crap one, and I didn’t even have to think twice about folding it. When I did, Antonio looked annoyed. He actually looked annoyed which I thought was pretty damn selfish if you considered that he was the one who was causing this whole game and all my belongings to go down the drain.

  Playing for all my stuff was one thing, but at this point, we were playing for me. My body. That was so much worse.

  Antonio stopped and paced around the room as if he was thinking about something. John left the room again to get me a refill, thank God. I really needed the alcohol. Alcohol to deal with what was happening now, and alcohol to deal with what I was going to do if I lost, which was pretty inevitable at this point.

  The dealer shuffled his cards, and I watched him. Everything seemed faster now that my system had slowed down from the gin, but it didn’t stop me from drinking more. I sucked down the refill John had brought me and watched the dealer’s fingers fly through the cards.

  And caught him shuffling it in a pattern. Which meant that I was being cheated in every sense of the word. No matter how well I played, this game was rigged for me to lose, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I took another long sip of my drink and then stood up.

  “What are you doing?” Antonio asked, stopping in his tracks and looking at me as if I was being an idiot. And maybe I was, but the alcohol had made me sluggish. Sluggish and confident. I couldn’t decide what was good to do and what wasn’t, and I was at a point where I was willing to take on the owner of the casino.

  “You’re cheating,” I said. “I’m not playing this game if you’re cheating.”

  Antonio raised his eyebrows at me. “Excuse me?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard what I’d said.

  “I said, you’re cheating. I’m not going to sit here and let you make me lose so you can just take my shit anyway? Why didn’t you just take it then? You already have me here, nothing is stopping you.”

  Antonio shook his head as if he couldn’t believe I was so ignorant. It made me feel dumb, and I realized that the alcohol was making me feel that way. My body felt like lead, and I put two and two together. The equation was a lot slower than it should have been, but John had brought me the drinks in the glass both times. I hadn’t seen it poured.

  And I wasn’t supposed to get drunk this quickly. I never did. There was definitely something in my drink.

  “You don’t have any proof that I’m cheating,” Antonio said.

  I shrugged and hated myself for it. I didn’t really have proof that he’d spiked my drink, either, but I knew that it had happened.

  “I’m leaving,” I said. I started walking toward the door. I couldn’t feel my legs, and I was trusting in muscle memory to take me out of there. John was next to me in a moment. I hadn’t even seen him move. Whatever he had given me was making my thought processes extremely slow. If Antonio was already cheating, why did he have to drug me, too? Or was I really playing well, and he wanted to stop me from winning despite his efforts to get me to lose?

  “Sit down, Miss Sunder,” he said. I wasn’t going to listen to him.

  “Get out of my way,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded hoarse and distant. Maybe even a little tinny, like I was in a metal room.

  He shook his head, and I wasn’t sure if it was a “no” or if it was just because he couldn’t believe what I was saying. He grabbed me by the arm, and this time it hurt—even through the numbness I felt because of the alcohol and other things in my body.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said, as I fought the clamp around my arm. However, John had me in a metal clamp, and he shoved me back toward my seat. He made me sit down and instead of going back to Antonio to flank his precious charge, he stood behind me.

  “You’re not going to be more trouble, are you?” Antonio asked.

  I shook my head. Of course not. He nodded and then told the dealer to do another round. I glared at Antonio. My thought processes were slow, and my hands felt numb, but nevertheless I was reeling with a way to get out of there. I had to escape. If Antonio won while I was drugged and then took me wherever he wanted to take me, I wasn’t going to be able to fight back.

  Maybe that was why he’d done it. I wasn’t going to be able to fight back. Maybe he’d understood that I wasn’t the type of person to just let someone take advantage of me without fighting back.

  The game commenced, and I looked at my cards, taking a deep breath. I didn’t register the cards at all. I was aware of John behind me and how far he was, how far I could get before he got his colossal body into motion. I also judged how far Antonio was from me on the other side of the table, and what the little creepy dealer would be able to do if it came down to it.

  Antonio placed his bed. I glared at him and placed mine even though there was nothing to base my decision on. My mind wasn’t in the game at all.

  When the second card was flipped, I twitched all my muscles, making sure I could still use them. I wasn’t sure which ones didn’t work, but my body was more in trouble than my mind was. This was good, and it was bad. At least I could still think relatively clearly.

  I lifted my leg to put my heel on the seat of the chair, and then I pushed off, lifting my body out of the chair and launching across the table. I skidded over the chips so that they scattered and reached my hand forward, scratching Antonio in the face. My nails hooked skin. Everything happened in slow motion. Antonio cursed. The creepy man cried out. John grabbed my ankles and yanked me back, but there were already three red marks down Antonio’s cheek starting from just underneath his eye. Dammit, I should have aimed higher.

  John hit me over the head with something. It was enough to stun me but not knock me out. Antonio was up and pacing, and the little dealer huddled in the corner like the old man he was, every bit of his skill as a dealer out of the window to leave a wrinkly shell behind.

  Antonio walked toward me. John turned my chair so that my feet were out from underneath the table. Antonio slapped me across the face so hard that my head snapped to the side and I saw stars.

  At the same time, I heard something sounding like glass breaking outside. John’s head snapped toward the door, and Antonio swore under his breath.

  “What’s going on?” he asked even though I had the idea that he knew.

  “Get her out of here,” John said. If that was the case, if I was the one whoever out there was after, I wanted them to know I was in here.

  I started screaming.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  I was just about to give up hope when they arrived in three cars. And they weren’t normal cars, they were minivans. The doors opened and the suspensions lifted as the men clambered out one by one. Men I recognized from before, men I didn’t know.

  “I was starting to think you’d left me hanging,” I said to Mickey when he got out from behind the wheel of the third van. His hair was longer and shaggier than before, but
his face was clean-shaven and free of stubble. He clapped my extended hand, and we bumped shoulders.

  God, it was good to see him. And not just because of what was going down, but because we used to be tight.

  “Benmore was thinking about it,” he admitted. “We convinced him.”

  The men flanked Mickey. Big men. Muscled men. Men I would take into the fight to get Alex back. I nodded to the few I knew. Marcus, Chuck, Donny. Behind them I spotted more people I knew. The ones I didn’t acknowledged me with a nod just the same, and I was nostalgic.

  This was how it used to be. If you were in trouble, you called your boys and they backed you, even if they didn’t always know you.