All In: A Vegas Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  Sage

  “This is why I don’t date,” I cursed as I fast-walked through the casino, drawing looks and annoyed glances. “Because it distracts from what’s important.”

  I’d only been gone what, 20 minutes? I was terrified I would be too late. They didn’t hold tables for people—they would start without me, and I wouldn’t be allowed in. Forfeiting my spot. Would they divide up my chips among the others at my table, or just take them away?

  I stopped, removed my heels, and then ran as fast as my bare feet could move on the carpet.

  As soon as I reached the player’s entrance, the security guards pointed at me. “About time,” he said, using the wand to check me again.

  “Sage!” Xander called somewhere behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw him pushing through the crowd. What did he want?

  The tournament handler pulled me into the room before I could find out. “Where were you? I told you not to go far! You’re lucky we’re on a commercial break. Anywhere else and they’d turn you away and wish you better luck next time.”

  “You told me I had an hour!” I said. “It hasn’t even been half that!”

  “I was wrong. Table four. Go!”

  The room was a lot emptier now that most of the players had been eliminated. The six remaining tables weren’t bunched together though: they were spread throughout the room. Probably so the audience in the gallery could spread out.

  I put my heels on and walked to table four with as much calmness as I could muster. The other four players and the dealer stared at me as I approached with various looks of annoyance and anger.

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The second I sat down the men with the chip racks appeared and passed out everyone’s stack. We were starting with $50,000 for this round. A lot more silver chips.

  $50,000 holy moly that’s so much money right in front of me, Sage what are you even doing, this is insane you have no business being in a tournament like this. My heart was still racing and I was out of breath, and I was embarrassed for being late, and the spotlight on our table felt like a hundred degrees. And the woman on the right, with a stupid conductor’s hat pulled down over her face, wouldn’t stop sneering at me.

  The dealer finished shuffling his cards and said, “Good luck, everyone.”

  I took a deep breath and waited for Bryce to say something about my competitors. It took me a long moment to realize what was wrong.

  There’s nothing in my ear.

  And my ring isn’t on my hand.

  I left the ear piece with Xander.

  I looked up in the audience gallery and spotted his cowboy hat immediately. He watched with a worried look on his face.

  Crap.

  The dealer dealt out the cards. I carefully pulled up the corner so only I could see: 10s, 7h.

  Was that a weak hand? It sort of was, but it might be a good idea to start this round strong. I didn’t know what Bryce had planned, and my mind was totally frozen without his advice.

  “Honey?” the woman with the conductor hat said with more than a little annoyance. It was my ante.

  I tossed my chips in.

  The other three players were all men, two grey haired gentlemen in dress clothes—one chubby and one skinny—and a younger dude who looked like a football player with a too-wide neck. One of the old guys raised twice the ante amount. Conductor Hat folded, as did Chubby. Should I call? It wasn’t a lot, but my hand was weak.

  “Call,” I said, desperate to make a decision quickly.

  The flop came out:

  Ad - Kh - 10h

  Okay, think Sage. I’d nailed my pair of Tens, but there was no way it was the strongest hand with an Ace and King showing. The betting came to me and I tapped my knuckle to check.

  The other player slowly picked up a stack of chips, letting them click together as he placed them forward. “Raise.”

  I tossed away my cards like they were on fire, then winced. Maybe I should have taken longer to fold, making a show of thinking about it. It was all about deception.

  The other two players kept going until eventually Skinny won. The dealer smoothly gathered the cards and began shuffling.

  “When’s the first scheduled break?” I asked.

  Conductor Hat snorted. “Already? First you’re late…”

  “Two hours,” said one of the tournament handlers standing behind the dealer. “Since we began at 4:00, that will be at 6:00.”

  “Thanks.”

  Two hours. I needed to survive for two hours without any help.

  I’m fucked, I thought as a new hand was dealt.

  38

  Eddie

  “Fuck!” I said from my vantage in the audience gallery above. We were supposed to be on the look out for anyone suspicious up here, but mostly we just watched the tournament.

  “What’s up?” my guard partner said. His name was Rob.

  “Nothing. Just remembered something I left on at home.”

  “This is a disaster,” Bryce said in my ear. “Why the hell would she take it out?”

  “Probably when she went to the bathroom,” Xander said. “Or at least that’s my best guess.”

  I turned away from Rob and pretended to scratch my eye. “I saw you chasing her with something in your hand. How did her ear piece get into your possession? You hold her hair in the bathroom while she vomited from nervousness?”

  Xander hesitated. “When’s the first break?”

  I could tell he was avoiding something. Being a cop gave you an instinct for that sort of thing. And I had my suspicious as to what it was. Both Xander and Sage had gone silent for a few minutes after she left the tournament.

  They were fucking.

  So what if they had been together? None of us owned Sage. She’d made it crystal clear she didn’t like to date, preferring the simplicity of hookups. Plus, she had already been with Bryce and me, separately. I didn’t have any right to be jealous of Xander.

  I still wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but one thing was certain: I couldn’t afford to worry about it now.

  “First break is in two hours,” Bryce said. “That’s a long fucking time for her to survive by herself.”

  “Want me to pull the fire alarm?” I asked.

  “I know you’re joking, but I’m half tempted to take you up on that.”

  “It worked whenever I needed to avoid a math test.”

  I returned my gaze to the poker room floor. We couldn’t hear anything from up here, but some of the signs were universal. Rapping your knuckles on the table. Tossing your cards away. Sage looked at her cards, chewed on her lip, then folded.

  “It can’t be helped,” Xander said. “Let’s focus on what we can control. Our parts of the plan.”

  “Right,” I said, returning to my spot next to Rob.

  I waited a few minutes before looking sideways at him. He was a young kid with a pock marked face and still lanky like he had some growing to do. His hair was mostly shaved, making his head look like a fuzzy egg.

  “You been in this job long?” I asked.

  “Two weeks,” he said. “You’re new, right?”

  “Got promoted this week. Worked normal security since the Volga opened, though.”

  “Me too. They’re good about promoting from within.”

  “Seems like it.”

  The head of Yegorovich’s special security team was particular about how we did our job. In some ways the rules were stricter for us: rather than random patrols around the casino we had to be in specific places at certain times, we were restricted as to who we could speak to, and the dress requirements were strict. But in other areas we were given more wiggle room so long as we didn’t slack off.

  Generally, we were allowed a short break every couple of hours. And we’d been on this shift for a few hours already. I waited until I caught Rob yawning.

  “I hear that, buddy,” I said casually. “I’m gunna grab a coffee. You want something?”

  Take me up on it. You
haven’t drank anything since we got here. You’re thirsty as fuck. You want a coffee or a soda or some other shit. Please.

  “Ehh,” Rob said. “I think I’m good.”

  Fuck.

  “I thought I was good too,” I said. “But I heard a rumor that the boss caught one of his guys napping on the job. Drove him out to the Utah border and left him there. Guy barely made it to the nearest town before dying of thirst.”

  That wasn’t even a lie. It was the honest truth I’d heard from one of the other guards on my first day. Trying to impress upon me how important it was to stay vigilant in this job.

  “So I figure,” I said, “I don’t want that to happen to me. Know what I mean?”

  Rob pursed his lips. “I heard that rumor too. Yeah, good call. I’ll take a coffee. Two creams, four sugars.”

  “Coming right up.”

  I weaved through the crowd of people watching the tournament. Someone said, “How’d she even get this far?”

  “Must have been a weak first table,” someone else said. “It’s like she’s never played poker before.”

  I put it out of my mind as I went downstairs and then across the casino to the employee lounge. Hardly more than a broom closet with a faded loveseat crammed against one wall and a counter with a coffee maker, a microwave, and a mini fridge stocked with soda and water. One other guard was leaning against the wall looking at his cell phone while sipping on an energy drink.

  There was already a full pot of coffee, but I needed to buy some time. I poured it into the sink and began brewing a fresh pot. I leaned against the counter and pretended to surf my phone while impatiently waiting for the other guy to leave. Then I prepared two styrofoam cups, dumping two creams and four sugars into one.

  As soon as the other guy left, I slipped a little eye dropper from my pocket. I’d filled it with ethylene glycol. Otherwise known as antifreeze.

  It was totally colorless and tasteless. That’s why it was used so often by people who wanted to kill their spouses. I’d seen two cases while I was on the force, both times women poisoning their husbands. Both succeeded too… Until the coroner looked a little deeper during the autopsy.

  But I didn’t want to kill poor Rob. The six droplets I added to his coffee wouldn’t cause life threatening kidney or brain damage: just the worst stomach cramps of his life. Plus a little dizziness and nausea for good measure.

  Enough to keep him from his shift accepting the crates of money from the helicopter in a few hours.

  I poured coffee into the cups, stirred Rob’s up, and carried them out of the lounge and across the crowded casino. I hoped he wouldn’t get fired over it. He seemed like a nice kid, despite the job he’d found himself in. But it was better than knocking him out to take the money, or worse.

  I was nearly to the poker room when a big guy at a video poker machine threw his hands in the air and shouted, “Four of a kind! Woohoo!”

  The coffee cups tumbled out of my hand, blowing open on his shoulders and dousing him with hot coffee. He shouted and jumped to his feet, whirling to confront who had spilled them. His demeanor changed when he saw I was one of the special casino guards.

  “Oh. I’m, uhh, sorry about that…”

  I gritted my teeth and returned to the lounge. I’d wasted enough time already brewing a fresh pot. If I got in trouble for being gone too long then my boss certainly wouldn’t put me on the money shift later tonight.

  But I ran into a different problem as I readied two new cups of coffee: my eyedropper only had four drops left in it.

  “No, no, no,” I whispered. I twisted off the top and shook it out, trying to get as much as possible. Six drops was guaranteed to give the kid stomach cramps. But four?

  “Here’s hoping,” I said as I walked back across the casino with my fresh cups, taking extra care to avoid anyone who might bump into me.

  “Thanks pal,” Rob said when I returned and handed him his cup. “Now that you mention it I could use the pickup.”

  “Just lookin’ out,” I said while I watched him sip it.

  The symptoms would last anywhere from 90 minutes to 10 hours. It was 4:20 now. Six drops should have been perfect timing to keep him out of commission when the money arrived around 8:00 or so.

  But only four drops?

  It’s out of my hands now. I sipped my own coffee and watched Sage down in the poker room.

  39

  Sage

  I was totally, completely, embarrassingly outmatched.

  Part of it was a mental block. I’d gotten used to Bryce whispering in my ear, a crutch on which I could rely while playing. The lack of advice was suddenly jarring, making it difficult for me to think at all. I second-guessed every decision I made, even throwing in my ante at the beginning of each hand.

  But it was more than just my own nervousness. I had no business being at this table. I was lousy at reading the other players. I didn’t have the experience that came with years of practice. And every other person at this table was very good at what they did, serious competitors who weren’t here for “funsies” like the country woman at the first table or the two bros would go home and brag that they’d won a few hands. The four players at my table were here for keeps. They had their eyes on the final table.

  Meanwhile I had my eye on Vladimir Yegorovich over at table three. Occasionally the big screen showed his table and the stack of chips accumulating in front of him. He was doing well. Just like Bryce had insisted, he would make it to the final table.

  Everything was falling into place… Except me.

  The ante at the table started low, allowing me to buy some time. I didn’t need to do super duper well. I only needed to survive long enough to take our break and get my ear piece back. But the antes would rise a few times between now and then, and the dealer was moving quickly. If I folded literally every hand, how many chips would I have at the break? Probably not many. I’d be digging myself a big hole to crawl out of.

  But what other choice did I have?

  Two and an Eight, suited? Fold. Jack and a Three? Fold. Jack and a Nine? Fold.

  Half an hour into the game I was dealt an Ace and a King, both spades. I tossed my ante in for that hand, and even landed a pair of Kings on the flop, but I quickly folded when Chubby raised big with a straight chance showing on the board. Then it was back to folding every hand.

  Xander and Eddie watched from the gallery. I tried to ignore them but it was impossible not to think of how badly I’d fucked up. The pressure of the heist was intense. My mistake might cost us $16 million. The opportunity of a lifetime squandered because I couldn’t keep my legs shut for one goddamn day.

  A commotion went up over at table three as Yegorovich clapped to himself after winning a hand. We might be able to find a way to distract him even without making it to the final table, even though we’d discussed—and discarded—those ideas while planning this job. Figuring something out on the fly was a terrible idea too. Improvising at the last minute was how you got caught. Bryce had reiterated that again and again.

  Fold. Fold. Fold. I was hardly more than a spectator with a front row pass, my stack diminishing one chip at a time.

  I constantly looked at the clock on the wall. The first table had flown by but this one was dragging on forever. I would never make it to the break. My stack was dwindling, down from $50,000 to $31,000.

  Finally I was dealt pocket Aces. I was sick of folding, and sick of the looks my competitors gave me. Looks that said I didn’t belong here, that I was an annoyance, that I was in their way as they tried to reach the final table. I needed to win a hand to boost my confidence. And to show the others I wasn’t going to be pushed around.

  “Raise,” I said, throwing in a few silver chips. Skinny called, but Football Player raised again. I called his raise, as did Skinny. The others folded.

  The dealer revealed the flop:

  Jd - Ad - 2h

  Nice. Three Aces, and there was no strong chance of a straight or flush to threaten me. I
had the best possible hand right now.

  I hesitated. What would Bryce say right now? Should I slow play it to draw them in, or be aggressive?

  Stop being afraid. I knew exactly what he would say: raise a strong amount, but not too much. Just enough to draw them in deeper.

  “Raise,” I said, arranging five silver chips on the table. It still made me tingle placing such a large bet. $5,000, an amount which would have been life changing any other time.

  “Well well well,” Conductor Hat taunted. “So she does have a pulse.”

  Skinny was staring intently at my face, trying to read me. I doubted I could keep my emotions hidden but I tried my best anyway.

  Football Player didn’t like what he saw. “Fold,” he quickly said.

  Skinny nodded as if he agreed, tossing his cards away too.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I collected my winnings. It felt good to take the chips but I was left wondering if I could have played it better and won more.

  I ended up folding every single hand for the next 30 minutes. Not just because I needed to last until the break but because I had garbage hands anyways. Even if Bryce were in my ear I wouldn’t have been able to do much. That was a small comfort.

  I practically celebrated by the time our break was called at 6:00. But my stack was down to $24,000, less than half my starting amount. The leader, Conductor Hat, had more than I cared to count.

  “Be back here in 15 minutes,” the tournament handler said.

  “Are you sure it’s 15?” I snapped. “Or are you going to call us back after five?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  I exited into the main casino floor. Xander wasn’t anywhere in sight. I quickly realized why: the curtain on the stage across the casino was retracting and the audience cheered. He was beginning his early show.

  How was I supposed to get my ear piece? Had they given up on me? Were we aborting?

  A hotel bellhop came running up to me. “Sage Parker, ma’am?”

  I told him that was me and he shoved an envelope into my hand, disappearing before I could even give him a tip or thank him. But the envelope didn’t hold my ear piece and ring—inside was a single handwritten note: